We need more of this. If Democrats do not learn this lesson, we will have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. We think a lot of it goes back to popular shows like "Hee Haw", "Green Acres", and - maybe worst of all - "The Beverly Hillbillies". Lordy, how loaded those were with every demeaning stereotype! Thanks, Deanna and Jim.
For some real misogyny, see the Perry Mason series which originally ran from 1957-66 (now re-running on METV and Great American Family channels and I'm sure others). The Great American channel is a RWNJ channel backed by--- you guessed it, Evangelicals. They love them some REAL misogyny!
Yikes! Thanks for sharing this, Jerry. We did not know who was backing the Perry Mason reruns, but we are not really surprised! (BTW, never liked that show.)
The one thing that Perry was solid about was the truth. It's odd (ok, weird) that the evangelicals have attached their wagon to a man (tRump) who in the era of Mason would be run out of town on a rail in the late 50s...lol
I love rurality! The sweet smell of manure to This Lancaster County (PA) city boy turned world traveler, appreciates what it is like to be home again. Tuscany's world gourmet treasures, Piraeus' and New York City's odiferous fish and produce markets, South Carolina's lowland tomato fields.
As a surveyor, I trampled over harvested corn stalks (even finding an Indianhead penny as well as arrowheads), their crunch under my feet stoking my hunger for the evening meal.
I was an Independent until Republican rediculousness drove me the more reasonable Democrats.
I don't know that I was in the Southern Tier precisely. I was in the Catskills for 1st and 2nd grades followed by 3rd and 4th in the uplands above the Hudson Valley near West Point. And there was that 6 month stint in Cataraugus County but I was over 30 by then. But I also spent time in Pike County, Illinois which is between the Illinois River and the Mississippi River and there was no big highway in the vicinity at that time. (There is now.)
For most of the last 40 years I have been in Centre County, PA -- the rural eastern half. I think that counts.
I’m from the southern tier of NY state too! West Windsor to be exact (about 20 minutes outside of Binghamton) - and our community was always more liberal, our church funded the minister to march with Dr. King in the late 60’s when I was a kid. I marched with my dad when the CWA went on strike against Ma Bell back then too. Things have changed there a LOT, but my buddies in Windsor still run the Community library and have a very active local presence to share information and the open exchange of ideas. But now I’ve lived in TX for decades, and it’s a whole different world in rural TX - NY had a stellar education system in the 60’s and 70’s, where even a kid from the sticks got decent schools. But I’m not sure TX had stellar education anywhere, and esp not in rural areas….I’m not sure there are sufficient folks in those small towns who know about such things, or even care - so you’d have to bring in outsiders to do this kind of outreach, who may not be accepted - or may even face threats to their safety, in this maga world. Biden’s campaign bus was threatened harassed driving across the state in 2020 and law enforcement did NOTHING - except encourage such behavior. In upstate NY you’d probably find people more open to this kind of organizing.
I don’t know what the answer is, but there are different kinds of rural voters in different states, I guess that’s my point. Even rural voters are diverse all around the nation, with some more open and some not so much. THANKS so much for the video - it was great, and thought-provoking!! 🥰
West Windsor! My cousin is the manager of the Big M in Windsor! (My dad's family is from Deposit.) Some of the culture war fights there I've seen have been scenes straight out of what stereotypically gets categorized as the rural South-- white supremacist biker gangs trying to intimidate the people of Islamberg, a whole battle about Confederate flags at the Delaware County Fair... it's wild how much it's changed. (My childhood there was the late 70s through the early 90s, my parents still live in the area.)
As both working class and as someone who managed local Dem campaigns when the party still relied on rank and file activists and not corporate donors, I know by long experience you're right.
It's difficult work, though. Try being in the same room as union people and small business owners; women's rights activists and members of a Catholic men's organization; farmers and environmentalists.. The difference was that when New Deal ideals still dominated the D party, we believed in and worked for the common good. In nature, the dominant mode of existence is cooperation, symbiosis, not competition. By giving up a little for others, the system as a whole thrives.
The antithesis is a trickle up corporate econ system where devastation of human and natural resources are irrelevant externalities. Something the current neolib (econ status quo) D party never acknowledges. We're not supposed to notice it was the Ds who enacted deregulation, resulting in the Wall St. frenzy causing the '08 crash. When millions lost their houses, jobs, bank accounts, and pensions. The Ds did for the suffering formerly industrial Rust Belt and rural Appalachia same as they did to the guilty Wall St. vultures--nothing!!! Yeah, the elected Ds are nice people. Sure.
Related is the D elite smug dismissal of the majority working class as a "basket of deplorables." Some of us can read, write, and think. Proof of this and evidence we're not a bunch of bigots is Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying The Working Class and What to Do about It)//. My testimony is anecdotal; his is solid stats and years of research.
Viva Labor Day! Solidarity forever--in memory of the effective populists of the Farmer-Labor coalition.
I think the video on rural people is mostly on target, but it seems to blame the democratic party for chasing money in big donors and forgetting about rural people. I think it's been big money as the primary destructive force, not faulty thinking in the democrats, though that's certainly not missing. Louise Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice in the early 20th century warned us then that “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” And here, after a century of attacks by the wealthy, we are losing one person one vote and replacing it with "lots of dollars, lots of political influence," - to the detriment of regular, including rural, suburban and urban people. Follow the money, not the wrong thinking that's been fooled and corrupted by the money.
Yes,.. there are liberals living in rural areas in Michigan. There are a lot more conservatives living out there, too. Even folks who have joined unions and work for major corporations who continue to expand out into non-union territory, whose employees continue to vote republican. I know many of them. Many who are (or have been) working unionized employees have left the farms, and enjoy the benefits they are provided by their employers and still vote for those who work to eliminate it all. Why? Because those who formerly lived in urban who no longer live there,.. and farmers who have left the farms all do the same things. Even with Detroit being the engine that funded so much for them (high percentage who benefit from social programs created by liberals in cities) as if it was all created by the the other side. They don't live in urban areas because so many of them a just plain prejudiced. Nationality; religion; skin color and gender, the four basic foundation of it. There are so many examples (Forced bussing in 1967 vs. Private Sector Schools) it is difficult to cover all the angles.
Yes,.. the democratic party decided to go the easy path, and focused on urban areas. It was also driven by funding. Liberals never have the cash needed to do it all, and focus on heavily and densly populated areas. However,.. changing the focus by creating innovative initiatives could deliver positive results. But, without the cash of the deep pockets (constantly buying polls; studies on human nature and think tanks) democrats simply rely on "textbook politican science" and go where the liberals live. You may contact this former party Chair (6 years) and Local Party club (8 Years) President for how that change was achieved between 2010 and 2018 when we got EVERYONE elected in stead of no one.
Great explanation. It's the reason I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. Politics is not a sport to me - I'm not for a side. I am liberal so currently I vote primarily for Democratic candidates. I hate debt.
Superb & right on the $$$$. This goes along with the writings of the late, great Molly Ivins and Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas" and Listen! Liberals) and Rev. Barber.
And just as assuredly, why the corpo-DINOcrats who run the Party (like at this last Convention preventing any supporters of Palestinian rights and the 1st Amendment Right to Freedom of Assembly, without being attacked or censured, who also were supporting Kamala Harris, but may not now) don't listen or willing to recognize the underlying reasons for the majority of states turning "Red". Or as Pelosi calls: fly-over states.
Howard Dean as DNC Chairman showed how to do it in 2006 & 2008, but Obama brought in too many old Clinton-types, like Rahm Emmanuel & Hillary, who hated Dean & progressives.
Walz was a great pick for VP, but then he isn't at the head of the ticket. Maybe he might have had a chance if there were open DEMO - primaries (I doubt it though...much like I had supported Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, but he wasn't receiving any substantive MSM recognition or $$$$.). Down ticket ballots are just as important as the head of the ticket. It is go'in be tough since the DINOcrats have ceded about 230 electoral college votes right out of the gate. The right-wing built this take-over over several decades. It will take the same $$$$ & grassroots effort by progressives as a long term project.....like this great Hightower segment reflects.
And another thing I see are people being recruited to run in rural elections and then getting next to no support from the local or state or national party to run an effective race. The result is those people, lose by a big margin, get discouraged, quit, and never run again, and others see this and say why should I run look what happened to ________ even though they are excellent candidates. Part of the problem is the major work to build this needs to be done in the OFF years (which is not being done), not during election year.
AMEN!!! The Democrat Party ignores many districts, not even running a candidate, or in the D district just running the same-old same-old. Look at MA, NV, W Virginia Opportunities always lost It seems the only difference is Big Business or Big Business light. I try talking to neighbors, etc. But it seems "I've already made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts"
Indeed, here in Iowa the state Democratic Party seems to be in some disarray, not really knowing what message to get out to the people or what political races it should support. The messaging piece - really discouraging. I've mentioned it to a few local Dem office holders, and they pretty much throw up their hands, saying something like: "Well, the state party will do what the state party wants to do. As for me, I'm raising money and awareness for [fill in the Dem candidate at the state/regional level]."
We need more of this. If Democrats do not learn this lesson, we will have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. We think a lot of it goes back to popular shows like "Hee Haw", "Green Acres", and - maybe worst of all - "The Beverly Hillbillies". Lordy, how loaded those were with every demeaning stereotype! Thanks, Deanna and Jim.
For some real misogyny, see the Perry Mason series which originally ran from 1957-66 (now re-running on METV and Great American Family channels and I'm sure others). The Great American channel is a RWNJ channel backed by--- you guessed it, Evangelicals. They love them some REAL misogyny!
Yikes! Thanks for sharing this, Jerry. We did not know who was backing the Perry Mason reruns, but we are not really surprised! (BTW, never liked that show.)
The one thing that Perry was solid about was the truth. It's odd (ok, weird) that the evangelicals have attached their wagon to a man (tRump) who in the era of Mason would be run out of town on a rail in the late 50s...lol
I love rurality! The sweet smell of manure to This Lancaster County (PA) city boy turned world traveler, appreciates what it is like to be home again. Tuscany's world gourmet treasures, Piraeus' and New York City's odiferous fish and produce markets, South Carolina's lowland tomato fields.
As a surveyor, I trampled over harvested corn stalks (even finding an Indianhead penny as well as arrowheads), their crunch under my feet stoking my hunger for the evening meal.
I was an Independent until Republican rediculousness drove me the more reasonable Democrats.
I don't know that I was in the Southern Tier precisely. I was in the Catskills for 1st and 2nd grades followed by 3rd and 4th in the uplands above the Hudson Valley near West Point. And there was that 6 month stint in Cataraugus County but I was over 30 by then. But I also spent time in Pike County, Illinois which is between the Illinois River and the Mississippi River and there was no big highway in the vicinity at that time. (There is now.)
For most of the last 40 years I have been in Centre County, PA -- the rural eastern half. I think that counts.
Nice cartoon--rich content and clear presentation. Hope it gets a lot of play. A sorely needed antidote to the stereotypes and prejudices on the left.
Thanks for the good work, Michael Krasner makrasner@gmail.com
I’m from the southern tier of NY state too! West Windsor to be exact (about 20 minutes outside of Binghamton) - and our community was always more liberal, our church funded the minister to march with Dr. King in the late 60’s when I was a kid. I marched with my dad when the CWA went on strike against Ma Bell back then too. Things have changed there a LOT, but my buddies in Windsor still run the Community library and have a very active local presence to share information and the open exchange of ideas. But now I’ve lived in TX for decades, and it’s a whole different world in rural TX - NY had a stellar education system in the 60’s and 70’s, where even a kid from the sticks got decent schools. But I’m not sure TX had stellar education anywhere, and esp not in rural areas….I’m not sure there are sufficient folks in those small towns who know about such things, or even care - so you’d have to bring in outsiders to do this kind of outreach, who may not be accepted - or may even face threats to their safety, in this maga world. Biden’s campaign bus was threatened harassed driving across the state in 2020 and law enforcement did NOTHING - except encourage such behavior. In upstate NY you’d probably find people more open to this kind of organizing.
I don’t know what the answer is, but there are different kinds of rural voters in different states, I guess that’s my point. Even rural voters are diverse all around the nation, with some more open and some not so much. THANKS so much for the video - it was great, and thought-provoking!! 🥰
West Windsor! My cousin is the manager of the Big M in Windsor! (My dad's family is from Deposit.) Some of the culture war fights there I've seen have been scenes straight out of what stereotypically gets categorized as the rural South-- white supremacist biker gangs trying to intimidate the people of Islamberg, a whole battle about Confederate flags at the Delaware County Fair... it's wild how much it's changed. (My childhood there was the late 70s through the early 90s, my parents still live in the area.)
I loved and learned a lot from the explainer cartoon; and to make these changes happen we must elect more Progressives.
As both working class and as someone who managed local Dem campaigns when the party still relied on rank and file activists and not corporate donors, I know by long experience you're right.
It's difficult work, though. Try being in the same room as union people and small business owners; women's rights activists and members of a Catholic men's organization; farmers and environmentalists.. The difference was that when New Deal ideals still dominated the D party, we believed in and worked for the common good. In nature, the dominant mode of existence is cooperation, symbiosis, not competition. By giving up a little for others, the system as a whole thrives.
The antithesis is a trickle up corporate econ system where devastation of human and natural resources are irrelevant externalities. Something the current neolib (econ status quo) D party never acknowledges. We're not supposed to notice it was the Ds who enacted deregulation, resulting in the Wall St. frenzy causing the '08 crash. When millions lost their houses, jobs, bank accounts, and pensions. The Ds did for the suffering formerly industrial Rust Belt and rural Appalachia same as they did to the guilty Wall St. vultures--nothing!!! Yeah, the elected Ds are nice people. Sure.
Related is the D elite smug dismissal of the majority working class as a "basket of deplorables." Some of us can read, write, and think. Proof of this and evidence we're not a bunch of bigots is Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying The Working Class and What to Do about It)//. My testimony is anecdotal; his is solid stats and years of research.
Viva Labor Day! Solidarity forever--in memory of the effective populists of the Farmer-Labor coalition.
I think the video on rural people is mostly on target, but it seems to blame the democratic party for chasing money in big donors and forgetting about rural people. I think it's been big money as the primary destructive force, not faulty thinking in the democrats, though that's certainly not missing. Louise Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice in the early 20th century warned us then that “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” And here, after a century of attacks by the wealthy, we are losing one person one vote and replacing it with "lots of dollars, lots of political influence," - to the detriment of regular, including rural, suburban and urban people. Follow the money, not the wrong thinking that's been fooled and corrupted by the money.
Yes,.. there are liberals living in rural areas in Michigan. There are a lot more conservatives living out there, too. Even folks who have joined unions and work for major corporations who continue to expand out into non-union territory, whose employees continue to vote republican. I know many of them. Many who are (or have been) working unionized employees have left the farms, and enjoy the benefits they are provided by their employers and still vote for those who work to eliminate it all. Why? Because those who formerly lived in urban who no longer live there,.. and farmers who have left the farms all do the same things. Even with Detroit being the engine that funded so much for them (high percentage who benefit from social programs created by liberals in cities) as if it was all created by the the other side. They don't live in urban areas because so many of them a just plain prejudiced. Nationality; religion; skin color and gender, the four basic foundation of it. There are so many examples (Forced bussing in 1967 vs. Private Sector Schools) it is difficult to cover all the angles.
Yes,.. the democratic party decided to go the easy path, and focused on urban areas. It was also driven by funding. Liberals never have the cash needed to do it all, and focus on heavily and densly populated areas. However,.. changing the focus by creating innovative initiatives could deliver positive results. But, without the cash of the deep pockets (constantly buying polls; studies on human nature and think tanks) democrats simply rely on "textbook politican science" and go where the liberals live. You may contact this former party Chair (6 years) and Local Party club (8 Years) President for how that change was achieved between 2010 and 2018 when we got EVERYONE elected in stead of no one.
Great explanation. It's the reason I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. Politics is not a sport to me - I'm not for a side. I am liberal so currently I vote primarily for Democratic candidates. I hate debt.
Nice.
Superb & right on the $$$$. This goes along with the writings of the late, great Molly Ivins and Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas" and Listen! Liberals) and Rev. Barber.
And just as assuredly, why the corpo-DINOcrats who run the Party (like at this last Convention preventing any supporters of Palestinian rights and the 1st Amendment Right to Freedom of Assembly, without being attacked or censured, who also were supporting Kamala Harris, but may not now) don't listen or willing to recognize the underlying reasons for the majority of states turning "Red". Or as Pelosi calls: fly-over states.
Howard Dean as DNC Chairman showed how to do it in 2006 & 2008, but Obama brought in too many old Clinton-types, like Rahm Emmanuel & Hillary, who hated Dean & progressives.
Walz was a great pick for VP, but then he isn't at the head of the ticket. Maybe he might have had a chance if there were open DEMO - primaries (I doubt it though...much like I had supported Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, but he wasn't receiving any substantive MSM recognition or $$$$.). Down ticket ballots are just as important as the head of the ticket. It is go'in be tough since the DINOcrats have ceded about 230 electoral college votes right out of the gate. The right-wing built this take-over over several decades. It will take the same $$$$ & grassroots effort by progressives as a long term project.....like this great Hightower segment reflects.
And another thing I see are people being recruited to run in rural elections and then getting next to no support from the local or state or national party to run an effective race. The result is those people, lose by a big margin, get discouraged, quit, and never run again, and others see this and say why should I run look what happened to ________ even though they are excellent candidates. Part of the problem is the major work to build this needs to be done in the OFF years (which is not being done), not during election year.
AMEN!!! The Democrat Party ignores many districts, not even running a candidate, or in the D district just running the same-old same-old. Look at MA, NV, W Virginia Opportunities always lost It seems the only difference is Big Business or Big Business light. I try talking to neighbors, etc. But it seems "I've already made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts"
This is such a great way to communicate a much needed message across a broad swath of people.Is the link evergreen so I can share widely?
Indeed, here in Iowa the state Democratic Party seems to be in some disarray, not really knowing what message to get out to the people or what political races it should support. The messaging piece - really discouraging. I've mentioned it to a few local Dem office holders, and they pretty much throw up their hands, saying something like: "Well, the state party will do what the state party wants to do. As for me, I'm raising money and awareness for [fill in the Dem candidate at the state/regional level]."