American Progressives Need to Listen to Orbison, Not Policy Wonks

[Wiley50]

"Empathy is scarce stuff in America in these times of "culture war." And all these folks, Pauline, Wilf, and even Denney to a certain extent, despite the political stereotyping his sexuality invites, are supposedly the "other side," in the culture war. Which is actually a class war by another name. We call it a culture war because educated influencers write books for similarly educated people who have been indoctrinated to interpret reality in such terms. Not a person here has ever heard of the culture wars. No one here cares about politics because politics is no longer cares about them, or the increasing struggle of hard working people. This makes them the traditional natural base for the Democratic Party, though the party refuses to claim them, and seems to have forgotten (or simply refuses to acknowledge) that the pyramid of American society is far broader toward the bottom than the top. In any case, they have become numb to America."

"Still, in this place you can feel America's people. Just like Roy felt them. It's not an inspiring America. It's not even a passable America. But it's an America where, contrary to the national lie, people do manage to accept one another. Poorly educated, beaten-down working folks, essentially Christian people, accept the queer, the biker, the Mexican and the Iranian swish, laughing and joking and singing until that last sad hour when their ten or twenty bucks is spent. Then they go back to lives that cannot ever achieve what middle class people would call modest success. But they know as truth what I can only allege in brittle, lifeless text. They know that all of us are in this together. They understand because in life they are exposed to the truth about what our country has become, and perhaps always was. There is no escape for them into insulated suburbs or high rise apartments or condos. They must live it every day of their lives to survive at all. Consequently, in this redneck beer joint is human respect and open laughter, drunken crying, friendship between people whom we are told are bigots, and whom we are told do not associate and do not like one another,. We are told this by people in whose best interests it is to see the working class divided. Still, it would be beyond naïve to say the mutual acceptance of these people offers hope for social unity among Americans. Not in a country where every living citizen has breathed in the air of Darwinian capitalism from birth. It merely offers small respite from animal struggle."

"Roy's People"

http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant09022006.html

Joe Bageant's mission in life is explaining
America's Hardest Working People
The beer joint and trailer park crowd
to educated uptown liberal elites

Because until we REALLY UNDERSTAND them
we can't win them over
And we HAVE TO WIN them over
If we want to WIN ELECTIONS

( He's also a good buddy of mine)

[MADem]

1. Roy? NT

[Wiley50]

2. Yup. These are "Roy's People" Read and Learn n/t

[Upfront]

5. Oberson

Spelling may be wrong.

[MADem]

6. My first thought

http://www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/covers/large/METRCD100.jpg

That boy could sing. If he wasn't so damn ugly he would have crushed Elvis. Even without the Elvis looks, he did pretty well.

[Wiley50]

7. You must be thinking of someone else

You must remember Roy Orbison,
really, how old are you?

[Eric J in MN]

16. Since Roy Orbison is the theme of the article,

...it would be nice if the author had included ONE THING Orbison did, said, or sang which illustrates the point.

[MADem]

17. I was looking for that thread in the piece, too NT

[Skidmore]

3. Progressives know this already--the party leadership

has forgotten that "base" means just that--the base or foundation of the party. A pyramid does not stand on its apex, but on its base. The nass of votes are at the base. Those votes can reconfigure the apex. If the party will not claim progressives, someone else will eventually.

[Wiley50]

4. The Working Poor Do Not Vote

or they vote against their own best interests
(battered spouse syndrome)

If we could give them a real reason to vote for

WE'D WIN EVERY ELECTION

There are a WHOLE LOT of potential voters that the party
has turned off.

We need them back

[MADem]

8. Single young folk, females especially, are a bit lame, too

But you can rely on the elderly, bless their hearts....

[bobbolink]

14. Debunking Number 123,856, 723!!!

Remember Florida 2000???

Remember Ohio 2004????

Remember the reports of people standing in line for 3, 5, 7, 9 hours???

Who do you think that was standing in line hour on end, just to vote?

Do you think that was Republicans??? Rich, white RWers??

Really??



When are you all gonna give up this smear that poor folk don't vote???

Why do you hate poor people?

THEY ARE THE ONES STANDING IN LINE FOR MUCH LONGER THAN YOU WOULD.

Plus, the party doesn't even care about them, yet they stand in long lines for hours just to vote.



So, drop the smear already. This was old years ago.

[Wiley50]

15. Not the point. Lots of black folks stood in lines

We're talking about how to motivate the white one.

I get your point

Not meant as a smear.

We saw the videos.

[bobbolink]

22. Amazing. I didn't know we were putting in a racial divide.

That is really amazing to me.

Is this the Dem "line" now???

If it is, and not just yours, then what about the voting suppression in New Mexico?? Those lost votes were mainly Indian (OK, not white...sigh...) and Latino, which is often counted as "white".

So, what about that?

I'm white, I lived in the inner city, I was poor, and I voted. And I was in the company of lots of other poor whites who voted.

What am I, dear sir, chopped liver?

This is just amazing to me, on so many levels.

If this is what is now being spouted, and I'm being dismissed on one other level, then to hell with it.

Go find your votes somewhere else, because I fucking give up!

[Wiley50]

23. You misunderstand me I'm Poor, white and I voted

And I didn't bring race into this.

You did.

I wasresponding to your post
where you said
"Remember the reports of people standing in line for 3, 5, 7, 9 hours???

Who do you think that was standing in line hour on end, just to vote?

Do you think that was Republicans??? Rich, white RWers??

Really??"

So I said that I saw the videos of Ohio lines
(which were overwhelmingly people of color.)

I don't think you actually read the OP
or the article it quoted.
The whole point was that Dems need to give
more poor people a reason to vote.

I can't help that the Dem VIP's don't get it
andy more than I can that Grover does get it
and thinks it's just great
(at least for his side

Please read enough to understand the context
before you respond

[bobbolink]

24. What I heard was you repeating the same meme that poor folks don't vote

I'm sick of that.

Over and over, without a challenge.

"Please read enough to understand the context
before you respond"

Whoa! Do you really think I'll respond to that?

Look, I've had it with this discrimination against poor folk, either by the Right or the Left, and it goes on constantly here.

I've been shot down repeatedly for trying to bring some understanding, until I've just plain had it.

Until you can show me that, IN FACT, poor folks vote less than muddleclass folk, I'm not buying it.

Show me some accurate, demonstrable stats.

Just repeating the same crap is hurtful, and WRONG. And repeating it certainly doesn't give poor folk a REASON to vote.

I know that I'm now figuring, for the first time in my life, that not only do I not need to work on any campaigns again because they don't include me, I don't see a need to vote. It doesn't include me, and that goes for DU also. It took me all these years to get to that point, and I can certainly see why other poor folk would get it a lot sooner.

Dems don't give a shit, and they don't have any reason to whine about not getting votes when they shun so much of their "base", either poor or "left".

I'm hurt and disgusted. So, show me the stats that prove that meme. Show me that muddleclass people vote a lot more. I don't buy it.

[bobbolink]

25. "The Working Poor Do Not Vote"

Those were your words.

Exact quote.

Nothing fuzzy there.

Can't get more definitive than that.

Show me the stats.

Back up that contention.

I don't buy it!!

Not even ONE working poor person votes????

Wow... amazing....

[Selatius]

19. Gore beat Bush by 500,000 votes in 2000.

If somebody ran on an economic Bill of Rights that FDR envisioned, he probably could've blown away Bush by far larger margins just on economic platform alone by connecting with working class folks. Hell, Huey Long's economic platform would've allowed him to beat Bush to shit. As it stands, Gore himself admits he ran a shitty campaign. It was only after he ditched DLC advice that he tried to go back to his populist roots, but it was too late to avoid making the race close enough to steal.

[Wiley50]

20. Score! DLC -1 (for the other side) / Working Poor-0

Thanks for getting it.
I wish more people here did.

[bobbolink]

21. You're so very right!

But, the meme Dems are now putting out is taken from Grover Norquist -- the poor don't vote, so don't bother with them.

Being poor myself, it has hit me in the gut, and will probably have the desired effect... I might give up voting this fall, also. I mean, if I'm invisible, and accused of not voting, then.....

You ignore people long enough, and they go away. Pretty obvious!

I can't even begin to tell you how much all of this hurts.

But, hurt and pain don't matter to Dems anymore.

It all sux.

Thanks for understanding and caring. :hi:

[Selatius]

26. It hurts when somebody steps on you, doesn't it?

I know where you come. I've been walking that mile for a while now.

[Wiley50]

9. C'mon Folks, at least read it n/t

[Wiley50]

10. Here's some more

"Like all great fiction, it provides moments of comic relief, typically through irony. Thus, we watch the development of liberal political "strategy." One has to laugh. Laugh first at the notion that the Hamptons Country Club leadership now designing "national strategy" could ever make working people getting poorer by the day ever believe in them for Christ sake. The people sitting around the Shenandoah this morning will never believe that a gaggle of cagey, sophisticated multi-millionaire party leaders being limoed from the Ritz Carlton to their appearance on Jon Stewart are somehow going to look out for the blood smeared guys and gals down at the chicken plant. Or the blood smeared guys in Iraq for that matter. It's too late for that. They cannot raise the already dead. They are complicit in the same power poker game as the Republicans and they will remain that way, as my neighbor puts it: "Until the dumb motherfucking voters can see beyond the price of a gallon of gas." Or the office basketball pool or the next staged election year non-issue. The real issues are always moral, usually involving purposeful neglect of some portion of society, which is supposed to be the Democratic arena.

Yet every honest candidate who dares mention such issues is deemed "too far left to be workable." Then they are squashed like Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich, or the notion of kicking the insurance companies entirely out of our health care system and declaring universal health care as a citizen right like most civilized nations have done. And then, after having killed everyone around them but members of their country club, the national leadership comes back to us talking about "renewal." And offers brilliant us ideas such as pulling out of Iraq three years and thousands of corpses too late.

Even being aware of the process is not much help. What we can do personally that would make the slightest difference? So we continue to let a political managerial expert class advise and run the only game in town, and contribute time and money to the very people who engineered liberal failure for the past 30 years. Academic "framers," wonks and just plain bullshit artists hawking out-of touch candidates-though there small signs of hope as we enjoy watching Joe the ho' Lieberman finally strangle in his own stench. Nowhere was it more savored than amid the drooling political junkies of the blogosphere, that cyber-fiction of freedom where unhappy minions of the Empire rant about "strategies" instead of taking to the streets where the voters and potential voters are, particularly those very voters who damned well need what the Democrats once offered. Time was, when Democrats used to put money in the budget for older Americans and others for social programs-at least enough for some goddamned bingo games and an occasional dance for the widowed and the lonely. Maybe we need to kidnap the leadership and force them to listen to Roy's songs for twenty-four hours straight. "

[MH1]

11. Not if it's posted at Counterpuke they don't

a site that supported George W. Bush in the 2004 election.

(Don't believe me? Look up some of their trashing of John Kerry before the election. Progressive, they are not.)

[Wiley50]

12. OK, Go read it at joebageant.com

They just picked up on it.

So do plenty of other sites.

The guy really has something to say

[Wiley50]

13. I'm still crazy after all these years

Crazy to believe the wonks will hear

[Wiley50]

18. Fuck! Grover Norquist Gets It!

See?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

So, why do I have to keep kicking my own thread?

WAKE UP DEAR PARTY!