St. Rep. Erik Fleming on Southern White Males. Great analysis

[La_Serpiente]

I found this really really helpful. It is just an analysis. He doesn't berate Dean or anything.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Black Commentator

Southern White Male Democrats, Where ya at?
By Eric Fleming

As the dust settles after another election year, here is a request to those individuals who place missing persons on milk cartons: could you help us find the real Southern white male Democrats? It is obvious that they are MIA when it comes to local and national politics.

Case in point: in the recent campaign by incumbent Democratic Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove, he ran ads that said he was conservative and independent. He never once mentioned that he was the Democratic nominee for re-election. Many in the African-American community were upset and betrayed by this campaign tactic purportedly dictated by opinion polls. One prominent Democratic African-American official told me that his wife expressed outright rage when she first saw the commercial.

Unfortunately, this is not isolated to Mississippi. All across the South, white males that outwardly declare their Democratic pedigree are becoming increasingly scarce. They are constantly put in awkward positions on issues ranging from abortion to tort reform. They are not comfortable touting the party line, as their college buddies and co-workers shift their allegiance whole-heartedly to the Republican agenda.

They are being pressured to switch parties as the Democratic Party is labeled as “the Black people’s party.” This makes them uncomfortable and when we need them the most they turn up missing.

[JackSwift]

1. The Democratic Party is the party of working families

and the Republican Party is the party of families that are so rich they don't have to work.

[Classical_Liberal]

2. I think they need to rediscover Huey Long!

http://www.moshplant.com/prob/prob01/long.html

! were poor for the additional reason that the ruling hierarchy was little interested in using what resources the state had available to provide services and was even less interested in employing the power of the state to create new resources so that more services could be supported.... A woman who was a member of the caste described its psychology frankly: "We were secure. We were the old families. We had what we wanted. We didn't bother anybody. All we wanted was to keep it."

Those were the people that Huey Long took on in his meteoric rise toward what he was unabashed in admitting was his goal: the Presidency. Long's plan was to "Share Our Wealth," and he wasn't about to wait for the wealth to trickle down to the general populace of Louisiana (or anyplace else that might elect him to high office). To the (comparatively) wealthy, "Share Our Wealth" seemed less the outstretched palm of an occasional beggar than the rending claws of an army of zombies. Apart from the aristocracy of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Long took on the lumber, sugar, and oil industries in the state, most notably Standard Oil, Louisiana's largest economic power and "the only really big corporation in the South."

Huey Long's first (unsuccessful) bid for governor in 1924, at the age of thirty, was based on a platform of road construction, increased support for public schools, free textbooks for all children, improvements in the court system, and state warehouses for storage of farm crops.

He approved the right of labor to organize, and he condemned the use of injunctions in labor disputes, corporate influence on government, and concentrated wealth (the "bloated plutocracy" of two per cent owned sixty-five per cent of the wealth).... He had said what he stood for--an increased role for the state government in the economy--and if he decided to denounce in his own style the things he had said he was against, blood might indeed appear on the moon.

[Classical_Liberal]

3. Joe Trippi appears to be reviving Long's campaign style

but alas Dean isn't a Southerner, so whether he can overcome it in the south remains to be seen. there was no reason Musgrove couldn't have used this method.

[Maddy McCall]

5. You have GOT to be kidding!

And I am speaking from inside Mississippi politics.

Musgrove was in a vice that you can never understand unless you are involved in politics here. Have you ever seen Musgrove, much less listened to him? He would never stoop to Long's level!

Again, you need to read a little further into just who and what Long was before you start touting him as an example that southern Democrats should follow.

Long was a bread-and-circuses type guy. Everything he did benefited himself above everyone else. REad some history on this subject.

[Classical_Liberal]

6. He helped alot of Louisianians

I have seen no proof he was worse than other governers of Louisiana and much proof that he was a hell of alot better. Look at what we presently have in the whitehouse. Could there be anything more corrupt, and undemocratic. Also what he may have been as a person has nothing to do with whether his campaign technique was anygood. His being an appeal to working class voters.

[Maddy McCall]

4. Huey Long was a crook...

He came across as a populist, but his maneuvering behind the scene was despicable. Huey Long was in Louisiana politics for one reason and one reason alone: Huey Long.

Read some more recent historical works that expose the empire Long built to benefit himself. The working class bought into it, meantime Long swilled Dom Perinon in the mansion that the working class unknowingly built for him.

The south does NOT need another Huey Long, Teddy Bilbo, or James K. Vardaman. (Also, look at the race issues with each of these three demagogues.)

[Classical_Liberal]

7. Huey Long was no worse than the present idiot in whitehouse

and he helped alot of Louisianians.