July 15, 2009

Deep thought

Despite the similarity in the spelling of their names, 'Palin' doesn't rhyme with 'Stalin'.

posted by The Front at 3:56 PM

1 Comments:

Blogger Lee Harvey said...

I like Palin less than you do, trust me. But in this comment to a Frank Rich column, a NYT reader describes Palin's audience very well. I live farther from the ocean than you do.

eva
california
July 12th, 2009
9:01 am

Frank,

The fans of Palin aren't feral racists.

They're the people "left behind" by the Democratic Party for well over a decade, going back to Clinton's signing of NAFTA.

Earlier than that, they're the people whose brothers couldn't get college deferments out of Vietnam, and who, after that debacle, quite reasonably needed a more optimistic leader than they got some years later in Jimmy Carter.

(Let's leave aside what our last Democratic President Clinton did to the overall middle class, or what's left of it, with his repeal of Glass-Steagall, and his signing of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which was just icing on the cake.)

We on the coasts and in the cities long ago abandoned those lower to middle class white rural voters. Then we mocked them and their values, because we were shocked they weren't Gandhi-esque.

And for years, Instead of addressing their economic concerns (manufacturing jobs, jobs, jobs being outsourced!), we came at them with gay marriage and abortion that had almost no relevance to their lives. It's like sticking your finger in a stranger's eye, and then pretending you're shocked that they don't want to buy you coffee! Doh!

Let's please stop insulting Palin (who isn't worth the ink!) and instead find a way to reach out to these lost Democrats.

Thank you. And by the way, I usually like your columns.

July 16, 2009 at 9:21 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home