Reply #22: It goes with all the recent "Who are we and what do we believe" [View All]

[TayTay]

posts about the Democratic Party. Should we shimmy to the 'middle' and adopt centrist views? (What are centrist views anyway?) Should we go left and proclaim, "I'm lib and I'm proud."

This paper presents statistical data to show that Thomas Frank's assumption that the poor are voting against their economic interests in order to vote for conservative social stnads is not correct. Lower income people are NOT deserting the Democractic Party. This is true, except in the South and is due to the positions the Democratic Party made to support civil rights.

I found this so fascinating because I have heard Kerry say, repeatedly, that we don't need to rethink our values. (I heard him say this in August at the Faneuil Hall speech. Others have heard variations of this throughout the year.) I think he would concur with the report in question. I think this is the conclusion he came to at the end of the 2004 race.

I agree with Karyn, we need to get some pickups in the middle and upper class which have drifted from the Dem Party.

In other words, it was partly the loss of the Catholic vote, it was the 'security moms' who didn't want to change horses in mid-stream and all that. Kerry didn't lose last year because he didn't come out strongly enough against the war. He didn't lose because lower-income voters thought he was less virtuous than the Prez.

Food for thought.