Thanks. I hadn't heard about this, so I got it and read it just now.
What if Frank had produced, not a litany of economic woes, but cultural ones? What if his examples were of middle-American culture under attack? I think he could have made a pretty convincing case (leaving out the economics, as he leaves out the culture here) that all those Kansans should be voting Republican.
But let's take him on his own (economic) terms. I think this section of a Mark Schmitt post (other parts of which I disagreed with at the time) is a damn good rejoinder.
Maybe the first thing for Democrats to do is ask whether we've given these voters much to have hope about. All the debate has been about how much of the tax cut to repeal, and who opposed the Iraq war most strongly and when. Have any of the candidates offered much that would give downsized workers a reason to think their jobs will come back? Has Dean? Have we given them reason to think that their parents will be more secure in retirement, that their kids will be able to attend affordable good state colleges, and come out with the skills that they need in the economy? Until we can say that we've got something more to offer, perhaps we should refrain from telling people who they "ought" to be supporting.
At least Republicans hear them on culture.
Um, ogged, you say NOTHING of value. The point is that appealing to alleged "values" are never followed up on, and instead regressive, gilded age policies are implemented. Perhaps you missed this very important part of the article. Then again, most supply-side charlatans conveniently "miss" those kinds of details.
Please give an example of why those Kansans would give a shit about those "cultural issues" if the conservative beast-starving scumbags returned us to those "glory days" of the late 19th century?
Did I just get called a supply-sider? Well, if you blog long enough...
fabeggs, I'm responding to the piece as a Democrat concerned about Democratic political strategy: there's no arguing that Republicans talk values then screw the people they've duped. I made two points. First, that Frank is stacking the deck by concentrating on the economic issues. He could just as easily have devoted his article to the evolution debate, drug policy, and media censorship, and thereby explained why Kansans vote Republican. That would have been just as convincing as concentrating on economic issues to explain why they should vote Democrat; that is to say: not very convincing at all.
Second, as Mark states quite powerfully in the bit that I quote: it's not as if Democrats are offering a powerful vision or plan to address the needs that Republicans create (or ignore) in the economic realm. It's not even as if the decades-long decline of rural America was magically reversed during the halcyon days of the Clinton administration.
Finally, it's not for us to say why anyone would give a shit about one thing but not another. Clearly, many Kansans do care more about hearing their "values" vindicated than they do about economic policy. The underlying assumption of Democrats who think this is wrongheaded seems to be that Kansans are just confused, and if they only knew the truth, suddenly they'd start voting Democratic. I think that's deluded. Kansans can see what Democrats are, and they're not interested. Insisting that "no, really, we are what we are," doesn't strike me as a winning strategy. It's like being dumped and saying, "but, I'm me!"