Letters to the Editor
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NEWS TO NO ONE BUT THE AUTHOR
The "NASCAR dad," or "Joe Six-Pack," or whatever else he has been called in recent years, is nothing other than the latter-day version of the Southern Dixiecrat. We have known for more than 25 years that this species no longer exists, having morphed into a peculiar creature who, once every four years, is somehow conned into voting against his own interests. This is hardly news.
And anyone who claims that Bill Clinton won the presidency by appealing to "Bubba;" Clinton seemed like him only superficially, and Clinton's substance, not just his style, let the electorate in on the joke in all those references to Astroturf-lined pick-up trucks: "Bubba" tends not to be a Rhodes scholar, and Clinton's refusal to hide that fact, but winning anyway, infuriated the right because it threatened their unwavering strategy of manipulating the electorate's lazy-mindedness and indifference to substantive issues. It was the very way Clinton defied their "conventional wisdom" (a phrase that is always an oxymoron) that so enraged Lee Atwater's surviving henchmen: after Clinton, it's easy to see for what they are the transparently fake and manipulative photo ops in which Bush "clears brush" as convincingly as an actor with no musical ability mimes piano fingering, failing to disguise the fact that this is a man who was born with a silver spoon up his nose.
In any event, "Bubba" is a constituency whose loss needn't be mourned by Democrats. People who, like turkeys, haven't even the instinct to close their mouths and get out of the rain before they drown will probably just get in the way of a reform agenda, anyway.
Auctorial intentions notwithstanding, Schaller's article seems not to be what it's presented as. It impresses, not as an objective report on a newly-discovered political phenomenon, but rather as the dismay of a mind that is accustomed to seeing the world in terms of stereotypes, cultural cliches, and sweeping assumptions, and is having trouble reframing its world view. It seems to me this "bulletin" is irrelevant to anything meaningful, and an unnecessary waste of bandwidth and your readers' time.
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Southern Strategy
I find the reactions to this article quite interesting. Since the 1960s, the Republicans consciously pursued a Southern Strategy, using race baiting to draw off white voters who had traditionally voted Democratic but who were "discomforted" by the civil rights movement. Reagan's welfare mothers, Bush I's Willie Horton ads, Jesse Helms "black" hand ad--all of these images helped to reinforce the image of the Democratic party as giving away white rights to African Americans. Bush II added a new bogeyman to the race by successfully playing off homophobia.
Guess what? The Southern Strategy worked. The Deep South is now pretty solidly Republican and it's pretty darned unlikely that a Democrat is going to carry those states in the 2008 election. Schaller should have stuck to the argument he made in his book instead pushing the Bubba stereotypes. The Democrats should not waste resources trying to win over the deep South at the presidential level, or pandering to NASCAR dads or bible-thumper moms, or whatever the latest designer demographic the media designates as the deciding factor in next year's contest.
Instead of pandering to groups that will never vote for them, Democrats should come up with a positive strategy of their own, appealing to interests and issues that unite, rather than those that divide. Health care, the war, the loss of our manufacturing base and the good-paying jobs that went with it, the decline of the middle class--these are issues that will resonate with a lot of people who are deeply concerned about the direction in which this country is headed. These are the voters the Democrats should appeal to, rather than the interests of their corporate sponsors.
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Forget Bubba; forgotten Bubba
I live in Bubbastan- the rural West- and I can confidantly assure you that, as in the deep South the bubbas here will never vote for a Democrat. And it is not just because they are gun totin' Bible thumpin' yahoos- though in fact the vast majority are exactly that. Being a Republican is the default here. I know people here who would be Democrats if they lived in, say, coastal California, where that option is acceptable. In the county in which I live there are commonly no Democrats on the ballot in any local race.
Some of these default Republicans have come to recognize what a disaster the Bush years have been, but few, if any of them would vote Democratic for the same reason pre-Reagan Southerners didn't vote Republican. Or that old school union members don't vote Republican for that matter. It just ain't done. Barring some seismic change in the political zeitgeist this is the way it is going to be for the foreseeable future. Under this circumstance alone it is a waste of time for the Democrats to try and woo this crowd.
The only way the Democrats can hope to change this is to make the non-college graduate blue collar white male (of which I am one, BTW) consider them is to make them see that their economic interests are more aligned with their brown and black co-workers with those of the CEOs in their McMansions in their gated communities. And that's a tough one, because the tides of history are running against this. Bubba is used to being the top dog by default: that with his unskilled or semi-skilled job he can get paid enough money to buy a house and all the toys even though there are people both here and around the world that will eagerly do his job for a fraction of what he gets. But Bubba's day is rapidly drawing to a close. His role as a player in the world economy is rapidly coming to be limited to a mere consumer- and this is only because he is enabled by the usury industry. He continues to vote for the party that screws him hardest because Rush Limbaugh and his unholy spawn have convinced him that it's them brown and black folks' fault- and that they have been aided and abetted by them Volvo drivin' latte sippin' Democrats. Alas Bubba is partially right. The Clinton Dems ignored him to get the support of the fat cats and the various special interest groups that fit rather loosely under the Democratic tent. Even Bubba is smart enough to recognize this.