I am going to stand and fight, alright, but I am doing it at home, in Jackson County, where the Democrats are a solid majority and not totally worthless.
But I am furious with the Missouri Democratic party right now. What has been, for several years, a constant, low-level annoyance is now outright disgust. Somewhere along the line, they abandoned their natural, populist allies in the rural areas. They might not have been a strong presence in the southern part of the state, but the northern tier and the Sixth congressional district, that runs from the northern suburbs of Kansas City to spittin’ distance from the Mississippi river in the northeast corner of the state, was solidly Democratic for decades. Suburban union members and rural populists elected Democrats consistently.
So when Ronald Reagan appealed to the ethnocentrism of rural voters and spawned the apostasy known as the “Reagan Democrat,” the Missouri Democratic Party, in one of the stupidest moves of any political party ever in the history of party politics, abandoned those voters, just wrote them off, as if the two big blue cities plus Columbia would be enough to sustain the entire state party.
Because the state party abandoned that segment of voters, the republicans were able to get term limits enacted. That destroyed the institutional memory of the legislature and changed control from Democratic to republican. Term limits was never about term limits, it was always about wresting control of state legislatures from Democrats they couldn’t beat straight-up in head-to-head elections. Just look across the state line at Kansas. Republicans run the show and term limits have never been brought up.
That was foisted on us because the Democratic party wasn’t present in the rural areas so there was no one there to fight back.
Robin Carnahan’s name on the ballot (I refuse to call whatever that was a “campaign”) yesterday encapsulates exactly what is wrong with the state Democratic party.
Roy Blunt didn’t beat Robin Carnahan last night. Roy Blunt beat Robin Carnahan fifteen months ago. Roy Blunt beat Robin Carnahan when he visited all 114 counties in the state and shaking every hand in every small town diner and walking in every communities two-car parade before the primary.
Roy Blunt beat Robin Carnahan by actually mounting a political campaign. I have no idea what the fuck that was that Carnahan was doing, but it wasn’t even in the same time zone as “mounting a campaign.”
Two years ago, she won reelection to the Secretary of State’s office and set a record with the number of votes cast for her being the most votes any candidate on any ballot had ever collected in the state of Missouri. Her father served two terms as Governor, and defeated John Ashcroft for a Senate seat two weeks after perishing in a plane crash. She had the name recognition and she could have won, but she didn’t bother to run. She sat in Jeff City and went to fancy-schmancy fundraisers in Plaza highrise penthouses and garden parties held at Ward Parkway mansions, but she never showed up at the diner on the square in Cainsville and shook anybody’s hand. She didn’t attend any high school football games in Bethany, she didn’t stop at the Dinner Bell in Eagleville and order a cinnamon roll. She didn’t show up at any of the fall weekend events in small towns. She didn’t buy a plate of brownies at a Lord’s Acre sale or a quilt at a Harvest Moon bazaar. She didn’t ride in the Calamity Jane Days parade in Princeton or do anything else that would have signaled to the people in the northern tier that she knows they are there and she knows they are hurting and if they would vote for her she would help them out.
She didn’t even bother asking them for their votes.
That is just flat-out insulting.
By abandoning the rural parts of the state and just concentrating on the cities, the Democrats screwed the cities yesterday. Proposition A was a ridiculous ballot initiative aimed at defunding public safety in St. Louis and Kansas City. Both cities are unique in that they sit on the border of Missouri with another state, and to make things fair, they collect a 1% earnings tax on people who live or work in the cities proper. But a libertarian lunatic billionaire decided that voters all over the state should have a voice in how public safety is funded in Kansas City.
I am furious that people who will never be affected by that tax voted for Prop A simply because it was an anti-tax measure.
It ought to tell you something that the measure was rejected in St. Louis and Kansas City – you know, where we actually pay an earnings tax – but it passed in the outstate area because our paternalistic country cousins know what’s best for us squishy urban liberals.
It was none of their damned business, and without a party presence in every county to get that message out, they fell for Sinquefield’s bullshit hook, line and sinker. Like Ridgeway might institute an earnings tax if they don’t nip this shit in the bud right now. Or something.
Yesterday was the worst election in the history of the Missouri Democratic Party, hands down and bar none. We lost seats in the General Assembly and we lost Susan Montee in the Auditor’s office.
We got slaughtered, and the Missouri Democratic Party deserved the drubbing it took yesterday. And so long as they are pathetic, republican-lite, “oh just run a Carnahan, they always win” morons, they will never get another dime of my money.
My county committee isn’t worthless. I will support them, but screw the state party until they get contrite and hit the road, going to 114 counties and apologizing to every single voter they have abandoned over the last thirty years.
The republicans built their machine at the local level from the ground up. If we don’t do the same thing, we deserve to be in the minority.
Missouri Democratic party. I have only lived here for eight years, but I’ve seen them miss or mismanage one chance after another – most remarkably in 2008 when they could have really capitalized on the widespread disgust with the GOP.
I do wonder, though, if you don’t underestimate what you refer to as the “ethnocentrism” of the Reagan Democrats – it seems really strong to me where I sit in a St. Louis suburb and everyone tells me it is even stronger in rural areas. Protest all “they” may, nobody can persuade me that the color of the President’s skin hasn’t stirred up some serious worries on the part of my snow-white fellow Missourians. This fear of the brown is particularly strong when united with the anti-tax narrative (“freedom” in Tea Party circles) which sees hard-earned white dollars fleeing via government transfer to brown pockets. That this anti-tax story ultimately describes a slow-ride in a suicide car becomes irrelevant when it’s coupled with such potent racial resentments.
This anti-tax, fear-of-the-dark story that was pioneered by Reagan has been polished to perfection over the last few decades and is working its pernicious spell over the dazed voters who buy it reflexively (the big lie really works!) and the idiot Democratic politicians who fear it. It will take lots more cohesion and organizational skill to combat this narrative in Missouri than the state’s “official” Democrats have shown to date.
What is the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans?
Democrats must defend the notion that government is important for a good and just society. Republicans still believe that the scariest thing anyone can ever say is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Robin Carnahan, who has a compelling story to tell about health care (I have heard it), never explained that Roy Blunt is not fit to represent us in the Senate because he fundamentally believes government is not necessary for a good and just society (although it has made him and his trophy wife very rich).
Where was a full-throated support for the stimulus package? First, a full third of the package was tax cuts for working people and Roy Blunt voted against it. A significant part of the package allowed the state of Missouri to meet most of its obligation to those who need help and public education and Roy Blunt voted against. Robin Carnahan should have been all over outstate Missouri and holding a press conference in front of any work that was funded by the stimulus package and reminded EVERYONE that this would not have happened if Blunt’s position in the House had prevailed.
She could have challenged EVERY Republican member of the Missouri General Assembly to explain what they would have had to have cut in the budget if Roy Blunt’s position on the stimulus package had prevailed.
Of course, Ike Skelton could have done the same think in the Missouri 4th and reminded a lot of people that with the stimulus package they would have been even worse off. However, only on the rarest occasions have I heard Ike talk about how important government is for a just and decent life.
I know Ike adores Truman. He could have had a compelling story to tell about why that health care bill, flawed as it was, was a major step in fulfilling a goal of Truman’s, but Ike never saw himself as a teacher. That had consequences because he did not have the passionate supporters he needed to beat the vapid Hartzler.
And, now we have Jay Nixon. Where was he in all of this? I guess if you compromise on everything and don’t force the Republicans too much you are doing a good job. What will he campaign on: I made compassionate cuts in government; Republicans won’t? Will anyone be able to tell the difference?
Many of us tried to get the message to Robin Carnahan’s campaign during the past year that she needs to play up her extraordinary qualifications, do the photo ops at infrastructure projects (as Blue Girl said) and make assertive and powerful statements about the differences between what’s important to Dems and Repugs. Hanging the “corporate toady” label on Repugs was beginning to work in the last few weeks of the campaign, but Robin never used it. The St. Louis Post Dispatch summed up the theme of her campaign as “painting Roy Blunt as corrupt.” So what? And then what? She missed the hanging fruit – videos of Blunt’s negative comments about Medicare, etc.
Franklin County Dems started asking her 3 months ahead of schedule to visit our fall picnic in late Sept. Her campaign kept stringing us along. At the last minute her mother showed up and gave the same bland platitudes about the Carnahan family and the Democratic party we’ve all heard too many times. Nothing gripping or motivating.
The tea partiers (and please don’t capitalize the name because they are not a proper noun) know how to get people charged up enough that they stood outside polling places in Franklin County with their candidates’ signs from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. They are assigned in pairs so they can do the double shuffle on unsuspecting voters as they approach the polling place. My husband and I were accosted by two of them shouting stupid lies about Prop B while wearing their Repug t-shirts. Anyone who had no idea how to vote on Prop B but planned on voting Repug had only to see the t-shirt and make the connection with “vote no on Prop B.”
I agree with Blue Girl that the state party must confront the old guard within the party, shake things up, open up the process for new ideas and fund some think tanks to come up with sharp, powerful messages – ASAP.
Greene County has a full-time, year round office with a full-time paid executive director who is wonderful. They have 3 or 4 different Dem clubs that meet at different times of the month and have different jobs to do. Why can’t St. Louis County have a vibrant, productive full time Democratic office? Calcification. Snobbery. Dead Wood.
How can the state party revitalize itself when those in charge are smug and complacent with the status quo?