Oh no, I didn't say that!
This part was my contribution: <> I think if you can get 59% of *anybody* to admit they've been lied to about *anything*, it would be an amazing thing. The tendency is to think "I am a fool" because you did get fooled.
Much resistance there. <>
----- Original Message ----- From: Wojtek Sokolowski To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 7:28 AM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Fw: And you voted for Bush, because?
Correct attribution... ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin Robert Dean To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 7:33 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Fw: And you voted for Bush, because?
<> Maybe Bush won because the Kerry folks stayed home on election night and voted over and over on the same online poll? <>
WS: I think Bush won because he successfully captured the ABUL (Anybody but an Urban Liberal) vote. Kerry was an incarnation of an Urban Liberal as evidenced by him attracting mainly urban votes. As such he was an icon of what the suburban and rural folks love to hate. Bush operatives knew that and successfully portrayed voting for Bush as a protest vote. A vote for Bush was really a vote against Kerry or rather against the "intellectual liberal elite."
That was a real political mastery - selling a well-connected patrician member of a political dynasty as a "challenger" and voting for him as a protest vote against "business as usual." But Democrats still do not get it - they still think is about "values" and "issues." It ain't. It is about popular myths, icons, "reality" shows, insecurity and making one feeling good about oneself by kicking unpopular scapegoats.
If the Democrats are serious about coming back to power, they should start recruiting all-American looking, tough talking, and ass-kicking celebrities and actors who look more emotional than intellectual to run for president and other important political offices. I am not sufficiently versed in pop-kultur to name any names, but may be others can suggest the names of those who fit the profile.
Wojtek
I don't think the rural/suburban nexis is really a very homgeneous grouping of citizens... at least in the U.S. The income and class of the rural people of America is quite different than a suburban dweller, and I suspect using geographic divisions leaves anyone trying to take a sociological snapshot on shifting unstable ground.
There are dramatic differences in vested interests between those groups, but the common element seems to be conservation of what has been "achieved" in private/personal property terms.
That's something the rethuglicans continually address in their agenda, even if the truth lies far from their public agenda
I've watch the comings and goings of the _not_really_very_rural culture around the Santa Cruz moutains for years now. What I've observed is dynamic. When jobs are plentiful and well paid there is an influx of upper class workers with cash, and semi-rural areas become suburbs. When times are tight and the job market is sketchy those folks tend to migrate to living situations closer to work.
In the 1960's I watched my mom's neighborhood in Long Beach New York fluctuate between welfare recipients and middle class.
Truly rural areas are different.
If you are born in some small town in Minnesota, you will probably live there for your whole life. The same potential for geographic mobility exists, but it generally isn't imperative to exersize it.
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