Dispatches From Flyover Country (Indiana)

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=dispatches_from_flyover_country

Dispatches From Flyover Country

Thanks to the primary, states like Indiana are finally getting some attention from national reporters and Democrats. Now if only they could learn that not every Midwesterner is an awestruck hillbilly.


Lauren Bruce | May 6, 2008 | web only


Here's a tip for reporters and pundits covering the Indiana primary: If you can’t get through an article about Indiana without mentioning a certain 20-year-old sports movie, you aren’t qualified to write it.

Hoosiers have been in the national spotlight over the past few weeks, and I’ve noted that many disparaging stereotypes make it into the national media coverage of my fair state -- stereotypes that reinforce the myth of a beer-drinking, pickup-driving Republican stronghold that is hopelessly out of touch with coastal progressivism. As a life-long Indiana resident, I personally vouch for blue veins running through this state and throughout the Midwest, a fact frequently ignored in favor of maintaining the awestruck-hillbilly myth. If reporters and pundits took a look past the stereotypes, they’d see that Indiana is a lot more complex and important than they think it is.

snip//

The one thing about Indiana that the reporters have gotten right, sort of, is that Hoosiers are a practical sort who aren't excited about this elusive “change” agenda and its unforeseeable results. Most critics don't stoop so far as to tacitly complain that Midwestern folks vote Republican because they don’t know what’s good for them, but they still miss a major piece of the picture. Indiana, like the rest of the American Midwest, is pretty darn purple. Despite some Republican tendencies, Indiana's most respected long-term politicians are Democrats, namely Sen. Evan Bayh, the former governor who briefly flirted with a presidential run, and his father Birch Bayh, himself a presidential candidate who served as a U.S. senator for almost 20 years. The much-beloved Rep. Julia Carson, who passed away in December, had an astounding number of achievements in the House in her work as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Not to mention other prominent Indiana Democrats like former Govs. Frank O’Bannon and Joe Kernan.

But generally, outside of state politics, Democrats don’t pay a lot of attention to Indiana. When nationally known Democrats want a dying manufacturing city for a photo-op, they hit Detroit, and if they want to make a point about family farms, they head to Iowa. I recall President Bush visiting Indiana several times in the last eight or nine years for "his man Mitch," aka Gov. Mitch Daniels who has done his part to run this state into the ground just like his mentor did the country. But until last month, no Democrat with presidential aspirations really bothered to pay us any attention. Not in my living memory.

I personally found a grain of truth in Obama's much-maligned "bitterness" remarks, but not for the reasons he mentioned. Middle Americans are bitter about being ignored until it’s politically convenient to pay attention. These days, I feel mighty bitter when I hear liberal commentators exclaim that Indiana doesn’t matter, whether because of the delegate counts or the state’s perceived conservatism or because it’s only a primary. Maybe Indiana voters don’t care about national Democratic politics because national Democratic politicians don’t seem to care much about Indiana.

This primary season, Democrats ought to take note of what kind of response they get when they actively campaign in the states they usually abandon. Here in Indiana, I don't know a soul who will pass up the chance to vote today, and none I know are voting Republican. You might be surprised at what happens when Democrats and the media spend some time in our state, rather than reduce us to uniformly conservative, marginal stereotypes because it’s easier than respecting local culture and diversity of opinion. We are educated, unionized, literate, racially diverse, economically desperate, and as concerned about our course as the rest of the nation. We also know that the Democrats are campaigning in Indiana in 2008 because they must, but we’ll take that if we have to.