Morality and the Democrats
by Jessica Farmer

John Kerry's defeat has led many to question whether a Democrat can win in 2008. The record turnout at the polls did little to change the color lines drawn in 2000, with most of middle America and the South holding their formidable red hue. If Democrats want a shot in 2008, they must reclaim the Heartland's blue collar, white, culturally conservative voters in the South and Midwest who have left the party of their parents to join the ranks of the GOP.

Democrats know that they have no chance of winning the vote of the Christian right. Karl Rove's "four million evangelicals" may be new voters, but they are by no means swing voters (if they exist at all). Democrats can learn an important lesson from them nonetheless. Framing issues in terms of values will attract the very voters that have left the Democratic Party. The Christian right is still a minority in this country, albeit a powerful one, and in order to successfully battle them, progressives need to use the same prescribed moralistic terms that the right utilizes.

There has been an uproar among Democrats that so many Americans are voting "against their interests." But a quick look at the blue states will show you that they're some of the wealthier parts of our great country. The lesson is that values count for everyone involved: Republicans aren't the only ones voting against their interests. The first step to winning elections on this new turf is finding the right nominee for the job. The successful candidate will be one who scores big in the "relatability" category, someone who can dispel the notion that Republicans are the party of the Folgers drinking, meat-and-potatoes America that cares about their families and goes to church, while Democrats are the party of the Starbucks drinking, Francophile, New York Times reading secular elite.

So how do you find such a candidate? A good nominee will be able to pass the "truck stop test," which goes something like this. Picture your candidate walking to a truck stop restaurant anywhere in America at 2 a.m. Sitting in the booths are truck drivers, waitresses, line cooks, second-shift factory workers. Though they intuitively distrust Democrats on cultural issues and national security, they are also likely to be suspicious of Republican economic motives and disapproving of John Ashcroft-style government meddling into their personal lives. Though they may classify themselves as religious, they are skeptical of public displays of piety. They have traditional values, but are much more likely than a wealthy suburbanite to have had personal experience with an unwanted pregnancy. They're also acutely affected by rising health care costs (many may be uninsured), and probably know someone who has lost their job, or lost a job themselves.

If one pictures the candidate taking his time visiting each booth and making his pitch to these potential voters, it immediately becomes clear why Al Gore and John Kerry were not good choices. This candidate cannot be stilted or false, robotic or awkward, he must be able to talk to these people and cast his policies in terms of values. Both Gore and Kerry suffer from a weirdness that, despite his shortcomings, President Bush does not share.

The next step is the pitch itself, framing the issues in a way that is attractive to voters — is progressive rather than reactionary, and it is simple, leaving no ambiguity as to whose side the good guys are on. Bill Clinton was able to do this effortlessly. Republicans ignore families who work hard and play by the rules, he said, and that's wrong. Though Clinton is just as intelligent and well-educated as Senator Kerry, he masked his wonkishness through this moral framing. When asked during the New Hampshire primaries if — in the wake of draft deferment and Gennifer Flowers allegations — he was anxious to move the discussion away from "character" and back to "the issues," Clinton responded that he was ready to talk about character, especially with Bush, Sr. Character is defined by what you do when you are in the most powerful political office in the world, Clinton said. The question is whether you use that power to reach out to people, to expand opportunity, or for the gain of the few. He then seamlessly segued into the Democratic platform on the issues. After all, these are the choices that any politician with character would make.

The political feat of the GOP in the past generation has not been to make the values agenda more important, but to narrow the values agenda to an absurdly small number of issues: abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in school. Somewhere along the way, regressive taxation, child poverty, millions of uninsured workers, low performing public schools, or continued racial and gender disparities in employment opportunities and education stopped being immoral and un-Christian. This is because Democrats crafted their policy arguments in terms of costs and benefits, while Republicans managed to transcend politics by casting the debate in epic terms: right versus wrong and good versus evil, beyond criticism or question.

Here is the opportunity, Democrats can take the attacks of the right and sling it back in the terms that Republicans have primed Americans to accept and understand. The task in 2008, then, is to expose this over-arching moral vacancy of the Republican agenda. Republican policies are morally wrong and hurt everyday Americans like you. The president and his administration are radicals with a radical agenda, they are not everyday Americans, and they are not like you. The Republican promise to America is a house of cards. It is the promise of security and lower taxes and cheap oil without questioning and without sacrifice. It relies on fear-mongering. It is radical, and it is wrong.

In the end, economics will eventually win out, but not before the suffering is acute. Though Tennessee had been labeled Bush country for weeks before the election, I spent the days before November second going door to door in some of the poorest neighborhoods in south and east Memphis, encouraging registered voters there to get out to the polls. Knocking on the door of one modest ranch is east Memphis; I met a 65-year-old white woman. Though she was on oxygen to assist her breathing, she told me feverishly about her beliefs. She explained that she was a lifelong Republican who was voting for Kerry this election. Now that she was poor and sick, she realized the empty promises of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is the party for all Americans. It is the party of the right, and it's time we started talking like it.

E-mail Jessica Farmer at jessicatfarmer@hotmail.com.