I'm still convinced that Bush is a loser, and the race appears to be as close as I want it to be, what with Democratic caucus and primary voters' miscalculation of "electablity," Kerry's own steady rightward march, and Kerry supporters' self-defeating snobbery toward the mythical Middle America and the South (which overlap in their imagination):
***** April 12, 2004 NO CLASS
Caught a bit of Air America this weekend. I think it was Janeane Garofalo, whom I like, and nameless others. It was awful.
Bush and his cronies were derided ad nauseum as a bunch of gun-crazy, ignorant rednecks. It was the worst of 60s-era, pseudo-radical college antics.
First of all, it is inaccurate. Bush is not a southerner, nor a cowboy. He didn't own or live on a ranch until recently. He is old money Eastern establishment crony capitalism. Neither are his war-mongering associates -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, the neo-cons, who hail from elite circles of the Midwest, the West, and the East.
Second, it is a class stereotype, founded on a bankrupt analogy between regional culture and reactionary politics. The connotation of redneck is low-income, coarse, and dumb. It is one thing for a southerner to have fun with this, but quite another for some libs on AA. (Full disclosure: MaxSpeak has been guilty of this sin in the past.)
Third, it is rock-stupid politics. Southerners, including whites, are low-income, on average. They should be voting Democratic. Kerry needs their votes. We help Kerry here more by bashing him than AA does with that sort of babble.
There is liberal, and there is populist. In respect of this example, AA was the former, not the latter, and not in a good way.
Posted by maxbsawicky at April 12, 2004 02:51 PM | TrackBack <http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000320.html> *****
According to Seth Ackerman, "Polls whose wording IDs Kerry as the 'Massachussetts Senator' (including the two polls that came out today) show Bush with a 4 or 5 point lead, while those that just say "John Kerry" show a tie or a small Kerry lead" ("ABC/Post Poll: Bush Holds Significant Advantages Over Kerry," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040419/008526.html>). Kerry supporters who look down on Americans who do not live in big coastal cities are in effect helping brand Kerry as the "Massachusetts Senator," so to speak.
Like I said, though, if you wanna make Kerry quit being a spoiler, be my guest. :-) -- Yoshie
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