WHY DEMOCRATS WILL KEEP LOSING

For the last three days I've been watching, listening and reading as Democrats and their allies in the MSM go over the election results and try to figure out what happened and what they did wrong. It's clear, as I said in the last post, that they just don't get it. It's also clear that they are completely blind to their own prejudices...So blind, in fact, that they won't be able to mount a true play for majority party status in this country again any time soon.

Just check out Paul Krugman in the New York Times...

Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html

Notice that Krugman believes people who oppose abortion and gay marriage are also racists. How about Bob Herbert?

For all the talk about values that we're hearing, the president ran a campaign that appealed above all to voters' fears and prejudices... He said, essentially, be very afraid. Be frightened of terrorism, and of those dangerous gay marriages, and of those in this pluralistic society who may have thoughts and beliefs and values that differ from your own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05herbert.html

Again, Bush supporters are bigots. Thomas Frank, like Herbert and Krugman in today's New York Times, also doesn't understand how to analyze the situation because of the limitations of his own world-view...

Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives, without any consideration for our values or traditions. The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html

Just as Krugman and Herbert cannot get past their prejudice concerning conservative religious folks in America as closet racists, Frank cannot read them outside his Marxist framework of characterizing the human condition only in economic terms.

In Slate, Jane Smiley is even more frank about her prejudices...

I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million...my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109218/

I wonder if she'll be invited to her next family reunion. The bottom line is pretty simple. If the Democrats nominate people who fail to refute the conclusions drawn by people like Smiley about Red State Americans, then they will continue to lose. Those traditional, conservative, God-fearing folks in places like Missouri, South Carolina, West Virginia, Iowa, Montana, etc. simply will not vote for people who think they are ignorant racist homophobes.

It's unclear as of yet if some Democratic strategists understand this problem. I suspect people like James Carville and the folks at the Democratic Leadership Council are tearing their hair out reading comments like those I've quoted in this post. As for me, to use the now in vogue marketing phrase...I'm lovin' it.