http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3017 2-2004Aug24.html" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3017 2-2004Aug24.html" target="_blank"http://www.washingtonpost.com...
The first national vote I ever cast was in 1994, when I voted for Ike Skelton. He is the congressman representing my old hometown, Clinton, MO. He represented a Democratic Party that was tough, that didn't take one ounce of shit from those fear-mongerers from the other side because he actually worked to support our military...in the right way. New, workable technology, not science fiction. Investment in the human capital of the military. We've got two major bases in the 4th District. Lots of my friends and family joined the military coming out of high school because it was honorable, yes, but it was also a road to a better life if you were willing to make the sacrifice. Ike was one of the guys who helped make it that way after Vietnam. Thanks to Bush's exploitation of the military, he's going to tear all that down in the space of one presidency.
Now, Ike still represents that Democratic Party. The problem is that he's a dinosaur. He doesn't quite fit. These people Ike talks to in the article are my friends and family. Back in the day, there weren't even Republicans *on the ballot* in Henry County, where I'm from. I don't think that's a good thing (some political opposition would have helped hold some things in check, competition is good, right?), but it was a time when Democrats could stand proud and tall in rural Missouri. They fought for farmers, for Civil Rights, for the idea that people should be judged on their merits, not their pocketbook or their birthright. They were strong enough to acknowledge the wrongs of our past, and that we obliged to make good on them. Rural Democrats were *tough*--they kicked ass. The Republicans were the elitists! They were self-interested and greedy!
And now, we've let the Republican Party convince the rural voters that Democrats are a bunch of pussies. It's no more, and no less. Let's look at Ike's district as an example, since I know it intimately. People here are very unhappy with the war. They'll even say "I support the war" and have serious misgivings about it. (That's part of the reason those polls come out the way they do.) They think it's a mistake. But look at why they support the President: "Saddam's a Hitler," they say.
The Republican propaganda machine worked. The He's a Hitler argument was ridiculous before the war (did we not box him in during the Gulf War?), and it's even more ridiculous in hindsight. But remember that memo where Karl Rove urged Republicans to "Run on the War"? They wagged the dog. They convinced the country that Clinton was wagging the dog (even though, as it turns out, he authorized the use of military force to fight a war that even al-Qaeda was involved in), and now they flipped it around. They have succeeded in convincing rural Missouri, and rural America, that Democrats who choose not to go to war are big, fat pussies. No more, no less. The evidence is in Ike Skelton's 4th district.
I know this has been said other places, but it bears repeating. This election is about Vietnam. Not Bush and Kerry, but the hippies versus the fifties. The war America has never really gotten over is the culture war, not the military one (thanks to men like Ike Skelton, Democrat from rural Missouri, who fought to rebuild America's military after the Vietnam debacle). The unwashed, bra-burning hippies versus the conservative values wrought by White Flight and the suburban explosion. Men of privilege like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Howard Dean, Bill Clinton (who at that point was out of Arkansas), opposed the war, but chose to evade it. They evaded it, and I don't blame them for it. I'm not sure I would have done anything different.
But then there's John Kerry, who voluteered to fight in that war (true, he signed up for swift boat duty *before* they were put in harm's way), came back, protested it, and joined the chorus of voices that helped end it. Say what you will about Cambodia or Swift Boat Veterans or whatever, but this is a guy who saw the shit, came back, and built a career as a tough-leftist Democrat in Washington.
John Kerry doesn't talk much about his Senate record, but he should. He voted with Clinton during the nineties (remember those good times?). He was a lead prosecutor of Iran Contra. He was a lead prosecutor against BCCI, the international financial conglomerate that funneled money from Saudi Wahabbis to Afghan-Arabs. He helped close the diplomatic wound between the US and Vietnam. John Kerry is a tough Democrat.
It's not that Bush and Cheney, or even Dean or Clinton, didn't fight in the war--they didn't fight at all. Vietnam is one of those rare wars ended not with victory or defeat, but under popular pressure for the government to relent. There was a fight abroad *and* at home, and those fighters at home eventually helped convince the government that it was time to pull out. No less than Robert McNamara acknowledges that in The Fog of War.
But those men chose no sides. They didn't believe in the war, and yet they did nothing to try to end it. Silence is compliance, my friends, and Dick Cheney's "other priorities" may have rightfully kept him out of Vietnam, but did he have the courage of those who marched and protested against this folly? Did they not have the courage to engage the fight? No, they did not. But what of say, Howard Dean, who vigorously opposed the folly of Iraq II at a time when Democrats were afraid to? He fought in the way he could, and for that, he's earned my respect.
But now, by wagging the dog, by weaving the fringe culture and the mainstream Democratic Party together in the mind of the rural voter, the Bush-Cheney machine has managed to convince once proud rural Democrats that the party they once believed in, the one they once fought for, is the party of Dirty Hippies. And in so doing, they've managed to crucify John Kerry--a man who fought that war twice when other elite wouldn't fight it at all.
What's worse is that once this sale was made, that opened the floodgates. Now Republicans have convinced rural voters that trickle-down economics is good for them, that health care savings accounts make sense for people who can barely make their house payments, that opposing the assault weapons ban is the same thing has confiscating your hunting rifle, and that gay people are the cause of America's downward cultural spiral.
I say congratulations to them. You've won. I hope you're proud of yourselves. You've dismantled the once proud Democratic tradition in the rural Midwest. All those things rural Democrats fought for, torn down in the space of Ralph Reed's construction of the Christian Coalition. Well, I hope you're proud of the exploitation, and to be honest, we haven't really fought hard enough, explained things well enough, to really make the case to them. Clinton could because he was one of them. But Kerry has little chance. You would think that they would judge the man on his merits, but not when he's such a Big Pussy Democrat!
I wish I could vote for Ike Skelton in this election. I kept my voter registration in Springfield, which means I can only get to vote against Roy Blunt. But I'm tired of voting *against* people. I want to vote for somebody. I'm voting for John Kerry, but there aren't enough of me in rural Missouri. And when I think of when I was younger, when Democrats fought hard for rural values, for social justice, for a prouder, stronger America in the aftermath of Vietnam, when we kicked ass in rural Missouri, I think of Ike Skelton. I want to vote *for* not just Ike, but the idea of Ike. The only reason the Republicans haven't pussified Ike is because Ike has built decades of trust here. I don't just like Ike, I want to feel proud of throwing my money and energy behind what Ike Skelton represents. We Midwestern Democrats have to figure out how to convince our friends and neighbors to like Ike all over again.
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