Crossposted from Liberal Street Fighter
Brian Schweitzer is considered by many to be the face of a possibly brighter future for the Democratic Party. Sadly, though, he demonstrated some of the very characteristics of BOTH parties in an interview on This Week that fill me with despair for the future. After talking about global warming, alternative fuels (ever notice how many of the “new” Dems have only one or two issues they like to talk about?) he was asked about Democratic Party chances in Montana. This is where he lost me, where he revealed that he’s just another pandering white politician who doesn’t get how badly off track this country is. He said (this is a paraphrase, as This Week doesn’t post transcripts):
“People on the coasts are DIFFERENT.”
All of the cultural differences, all of the language barriers and misunderstandings I observed when I lived in NYC were often challenging, but underneath it all was a lot of commonality. In order to live in one of the cities on the coast, in order to do business, people learn to get along. This is not to say that there isn’t some of the same problems with prejudice and conflict. However, having grown up in suburban Chicago, it was really stunning to live in a place where people mixed much more openly. To see men walking down the street holding hands, to see Italians and latinos and blacks all working together in restaurants. It’s no paradise, that’s for damned sure, and there are neighborhoods where one group or another isn’t welcome. Despite all that, though, there is a common understanding that everyone is just trying to get by, to build a better life for themselves and their family.
In the midwest and Rockies, what I experienced was people trying hard to make sure people conformed. There is an insistance that there is one way to be, one way to act, and a lot of pressure to fit that mold. So yes, Governor, the people on the coasts maybe are different. Perhaps in order to survive in more dynamic areas, more dynamic cities with more diverse populations, people have to make their peace with a certain unpredictability in life. There is an almost pathological need in the “heartland” for conformity, predictability, COMFORT. Is that the difference, Governor? Is continuing to refuse to face that America is undergoing rapid change, that the “face” of America is getting slowly darker, and the music of daily life becoming more diverse, is that the future that leads us away from the dangerous and hateful policies of the Republican Party? Is adopting their stilted language of America going to help us build a better future? Yes, making white guys driving their SUVs feel better about being part of the “heartland” is probably good for a few votes, but it won’t help the Democrats build a winning coalition.
Take a look at that picture, the crowds that filled the streets in LA, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Chicago and so many other places in response to the racist fear-mongering coming out of the Congress thanks to the Republicans. Remember those pictures from the Gulf Coast, and not just the black faces from New Orleans, but also the forgotten poor whites in Mississippi. the Vietnamese fisherman who lost their boats and the workgangs of hispanic day laborers being paid pennies on the dollar. Look at the pictures you’ve seen of faces on the reservations, or the mining towns in the Virginia mountains. Working people, of all creeds and cultures and races, ALL being left behind by a government and a majority culture that panders to corporate greed. Whether the technologists that seek to maintain control of the Clintons’ Democratic party, or the religious zealots and racists of the Republicans, both seek to maintain a conformity to a way of living that is killing us, and our planet. A populist party, a party that helps all those different Americans find common ground, a party that brings forward a “live and let live” philosophy, where we find shared values, THAT could be the creedo of a revived Demcratic Party.
However, continuing to push the dangerous idea that people on the coasts are “different” doesn’t help us forge new coalitions. It won’t help us break down the boundaries that we’ve erected between us all by ribbons of highways and sprawling wasteful suburbs and fortress-like corporate campuses and cold hard glass-and-steel SUVs. So, Governor Schweitzer, I’m not impressed by your down-home faux populism, because it’s plain that you’re interested in just a small part of the American population. It’s plain that you’ll say some of the right things, but overall you just don’t get it, that the only way we’ll save this country from itself is to find what we share, not where we are.