I can't believe that Howard Dean injected the Confederate flag into the Presidential campaign the way he did. The Democrats should be bashing the Republicans over their increasingly open ties in the South to some really unsavory "neo-Confederate" type groups. Not coming up with half-baked slogans around the Confederate flag. It's silly.
And the blunt fact is that the Republicans have almost a "Solid South" in Presidential votes. Florida and Tennessee could well be in play in 2004. But the Democrats don't necessarily need even Florida to win. And they aren't going to win it by saying nice things about the Confederate flag.
From Wednesday's Washington Post:
<< Former Vermont governor Howard Dean came under fierce attack Tuesday night from several Democratic rivals, who accused him of arrogance and insensitivity and demanded that he apologize for saying last week that he wanted to be the candidate for "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."
<< Dean, saying "I'm no bigot," declined to apologize for the comment and told his rivals the Democrats will never recapture the White House until they find a way to appeal to working-class white voters in the South. "I make no apologies for reaching out to poor whites," he said. >>
There's just something as weird as there is misguided about using the Confederate flag as a symbol for appealing to working-class Southern whites.
Joan Walsh defends Dean's original comment that caused the current flap on that basis in Salon.com. It's not a very persuasive argument. Also, the subtitle of the article refers to the "Stars and Bars." It's the Confederate battle flag that is the controversial symbol, and that is not the Stars and Bars flag. The Stars and Bars flag was one of the official state flags of the Confederacy; 99% of the "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" wouldn't recognize the Stars and Bars if they saw it.
2 comments:
I think the Democratic Party needs to be reaching out to working-class Southern voters. If there was ever a group that votes against their own economic interests, this is the one. But the Repubs are good using the old trick of divide and conquer by focusing on peripheral issues. But yes, I think Howard Dean could have made the case a little better than he did. And you are right. The Confederate battle flag is the St. Andrews Cross flag.
The timing of Dean's comment was especially bad. Haley Barbour was just elected to be Governor of Mississippi after a campaign in which he made it clear that he was happy to be known as the candidate of the White Citizens Council. It would have been the perfect time for Democrats nationally to make Barbour a poster boy for the Republican Party's unholy alliance with neo-Confederate groups. Dean effectively blew his party's chance to do that right now. - Bruce
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