No Sympathy for the Hillbilly.

[Cattledog]

Democrats need to stop trying to feel everyone’s pain, and hold on to their own anger.

...The outbreak of Hillbilly Chic among liberals is an inverted bookend to Radical Chic, the indelible rubric attached by Tom Wolfe in 1970 (in this magazine) to white elites in Manhattan then fawning over black militants. In both cases, the spectacle of liberals doting on a hostile Other can come off like self-righteous slumming. But for those of us who want to ring down the curtain on the Trump era as quickly as possible, this pandering to his voters raises a more immediate and practical concern: Is it a worthwhile political tactic that will actually help reverse Republican rule? Or is it another counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness of the sort that helped blind Democrats to the gravity of the Trump threat in the first place? While the right is expert at channeling darker emotions like anger into ruthless political action, the Democrats’ default inclination is still to feel everyone’s pain, hang their hats on hope, and enter the fray in a softened state of unilateral disarmament. “Stronger Together,” the Clinton-campaign slogan, sounded more like an invitation to join a food co-op than a call to arms. After the debacle of 2016, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it? Instead of studying how to talk to “real people,” might they start talking like real people? No more reading from wimpy scripts concocted by consultants and focus groups. (Clinton couldn’t even bring herself to name a favorite ice-cream flavor at one campaign stop.) Say in public what you say in private, even at the risk of pissing people off, including those in your own party. Better late than never to learn the lessons of Trump’s triumphant primary campaign that the Clinton campaign foolishly ignored.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/frank-rich-no-sympathy-for-the-hillbilly.html?mid=facebook_nymag

[msanthrope]

1. Well.... the fact is we don't need the extreme left or the alt right to win.

We had the numbers.

What we need is an electoral strategy and dealing with the gerrymandering issue to get us back into both the executive and the house.

[wcast]

2. Say in public what you say in private. Good advice

Two stand out pieces from the article. First: But it’s one thing for the Democratic Party to drain its own swamp of special interests and another for it to waste time and energy chasing unreachable voters in the base of Trump’s electorate. For all her failings, Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump and lost the Electoral College by the mere 77,744 votes that cost her the previously blue states of Michigan (which she lost by .2 of a percentage point), Wisconsin (.8 point), and Pennsylvania (.7 point). Of the 208 counties in America that voted for Obama twice and tipped to Trump in 2016, more than three-quarters were in states Clinton won anyway (some by a landslide, like New York) or states that have long been solidly red.

To me, this is the winner: ...the Trump vote is overwhelmingly synonymous with the Republican Party as a whole.

Rich continues with That makes it all the more a fool’s errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day. They will stick with him even though the numbers say that they will take a bigger financial hit than Clinton voters under the Republican health-care plan.

We democrats need to focus on our policies and positions that help everyone while embracing those that already vote for us. Large voter turnout, especially in the black and Latino demographics, would see democrats win across the country.

[fun n serious]

3. Fact is.. Democrats are pretty dang perfect just the way they are...

Redistricting, voting rights and propaganda are the fights we must fight

[babylonsister]

4. Frank Rich can write! He slaps the

Dems upside the head, and I think he's right.

[Orrex]

5. Fuck them. Fuck every last one of them.

Fuck them as their beloved leader starves them and cuts off their healthcare. Fuck them and their continued worship of the racist rapist who occupies the Whitehouse. Fuck them and their stupid Fox News mantras that they chant like sacred writ.

It is foolish to offer them sympathy or understanding, because they don't want it. Instead, they want our subjugation and permanent defeat.


And, in purely practical terms, fuck them because we don't need them. Our party's future will come from women and minorities, and sucking up to the deliberately stupid and unrepentant Trump-voting asshole is a slap in the face to the very people who should be the subjects of our outreach.

[liquid diamond]

11. I wish I could rec your post and

make it a sticky. I'm so fucking tired of so called dems here saying we need to reach out to those fucking rednecks. They will never change.

[get the red out]

6. I am a hillbilly

And in the years prior to this election, I've experienced other liberals getting mad at me for not seeing how they are just poor, misunderstood, hardworking people. They knew more than me because I was JUST A STUPID KENTUCKY HILLBILLY, LOL! Seriously, you can't fight brainwashing overnight, and you really can't easily fight people's religion (which has been hijacked by Rs the way Islam is hijacked by extremists like ISIS). They are being used because they have abandoned their critical thinking ability to Politicized Churches and RW media, but I won't let them off the hook for that group-think. Recall how President Obama was slammed for telling the absolute truth regarding "Gays, Guns, and God"?

But here's a big caveat, sometimes some liberals come off as more than a little "Ivory Tower" to even me. We do need to use plain speak, because there are people who are not as far gone as others. Hillbillys might be overwhelmingly R, but a lot of working class midwesterners are still capable of voting for democrats.

Sorry for rambling.

[riverbendviewgal]

7. Have you read DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS by Joe Bageant?

I have read his books and blog. He died of Cancer but I got to exchange emails a couple times.
He was a hill billy too and wrote why the rural Applachian think like they do.
If you read them what do you think ofhis writings?

[get the red out]

8. I haven't read them

But it sounds like I need to look for them! I need to see if he talks about the things I've seen since I was a kid.

[riverbendviewgal]

12. Check his blog

He died in 2011 but his books are still sold online.

http://joebageant.net

[get the red out]

17. I downloaded

I got it on Kindle this morning!

[The Polack MSgt]

13. Raised in coal country and I live in corn country now.

As a teen/young adult I watched amazed as Reagan put a black face on government services and demonized unions.

He did it to tap into the hatred and distrust bubbling under the surface of my neighbors and cousins. And it worked.

I was dumbfounded when almost overnight mill workers and miners abandoned the party that did more to raise their standard of living than any republican ever even tried to do.

Because of Cadillac driving welfare queens. Atheists. Mexicans. And the ace in the hole for ever - Dems will take your guns.

For my family deer season was really harvest season. Between the uncles (and one Aunt), cousins as, my dad and I - we filled several freezers with meat that we ate through out the year. Gun control was an immediate hackle raiser with all of us.

I won't down play the racism though... It's racist as fuck in the Appalachians

[ananda]

9. It's a mutually exclusive view of life.

Some are still living in pre-dustbowl America.

Some are not.

There is no mutual common ground.

Once our new "dust-bowl" hits, then the shit
will hit the fan, but not before.

[JTFrog]

10. Fuck that ridiculous bullshit.

So liberal and Hillary bashing is getting recs around here still?

Join them so they'll join us sounds pretty fucking stupid to me. Reverse Republican rule?

But hey.... keep on bashing those politically correct, guilty liberals until you get exactly what the Republicans want.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. Rich is saying we should forget about reaching the Deplorables for they are irredeemable.

[JTFrog]

15. Well I'd agree with that. nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. If they want to come to the side of light they can, but we aren't...

If they want to come to the side of light they can, but we aren't going to throw members of our coalition under the bus to appease them.

[tblue37]

18. Frank Rich is great. nt