« Spitzer Sues Dept. of Energy | Main | More Signs of a Top in Housing »
September 08, 2005
"Leadership means being the wind"
Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General, David Van Os:
I would like to stress something that Mr. (Don) Vincent said:"...the basic economic incentive for middle class workers to support Democratic candidates is gone. There is an overwhelming perception that the Democrats will not do any more for the middle class then the Republicans. As a result people are picking sides based on social issues, what a candidate looks like, who their friends and fellow church members are voting for or simply who they think will win..."
This is utterly true.
People vote the so-called social issues because it is the only thing they can find (with eager GOP encouragement) to fill the vacuum that the Democratic Party left when it abandoned the fight for economic justice for middle-class working people.
The social issues go away as governing motivations for voting when Democrats honestly return to the people's side as fighters for egalitarian economic justice. This is not academic theory. It is my direct experience, consistently proven during nearly two years on the stump in this state. When I am in so-called "cultural conservative" territory and connect with my listeners as a fighter for a better deal for them, nobody asks me a single question about where I stand on the "three G's." Those issues don't even come up in their minds when they realize I am serious and passionate about being their advocate in the daily struggles against the combined financial-political power elites.In one of my letters I put it this way: Joe Six-Pack is no more going to let his preacher run his life than the man in the moon; but when nobody is offering him a real chance to fight back against the powerful, he decides that he might as well follow his preacher's recommendation on whom to vote for, since there's nothing else to go by.
The problem with the current generation of the Democratic professional political class is that they are always trying to figure out how to be better weather vanes, when leadership means being the wind.
Posted by Guest Blogger PDiddie at September 8, 2005 12:47 AM | Permalink
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.houstondemocrats.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/539