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Reply #55: More from 2003....many understood what he was saying. [View All]

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Home » Discuss » Archives » General Discussion: Presidential (Through Nov 2009) Donate to DU
madfloridian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 11:00 PM
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55. More from 2003....many understood what he was saying.
Still irate this would be used to defend or attack candidates in this race.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. wrote about Dean's new Southern Strategy.

Blacks and Whites Together - Focused on Education and Health Care

Disappointingly, Democrats over several decades, rather than campaigning around common economic needs of southern whites and blacks, have mostly imitated Republicans on social and cultural issues, and failed to challenge around economic issues. White Democrats, South and North, want and need the black vote to win, but then avoid meeting black economic and political expectations that accompany their vote.

In lieu of offering an economic agenda to southern voters, Democrats instead have used the idea of a "regionally balanced ticket" as the way of dealing with this problem.

John F. Kennedy put Lyndon Johnson on the ticket in 1960. LBJ went with Hubert Humphrey in 1964. Jimmy Carter's running mate in 1976 was Walter Mondale. In 1988, Michael Dukakis ran with Lloyd Bentsen. And as the southern white Democratic vote continued to decline, Bill Clinton used a two-pronged strategy in 1992-96, appealing to social conservatism and putting a second southerner on the ticket. They campaigned in support of the death penalty, ending welfare as we know it, and putting an end to the era of big government. Most recently, in 2000, conservative northern Democrat Joseph Lieberman ran alongside southerner Al Gore.

Rather than repeating this stereotypical and condescending approach of appealing to whites in the South with a "balanced ticket" and "social conservatism," Howard Dean dares a new approach - to join whites and blacks around a common economic agenda of good schools and health care.


And the Black Commentator understood that Dean was using Nixon's Southern strategy reference to point out the way we should be going in the South.

Dean makes racial political history

"For four decades, the primary political project of the Republican Party has been to transform itself into the White Man’s Party. Not only in the Deep South, but also nationally, the GOP seeks to secure a majority popular base for corporate governance through coded appeals to white racism. The success of this GOP project has been the central fact of American politics for two generations – reaching its fullest expression in the Bush presidency. Yet a corporate covenant with both political parties has prohibited the mere mention of America’s core contemporary political reality: the constant, routine mobilization of white voters through the imagery and language of race.

Last Sunday, Howard Dean broke that covenant."


They quote part of his speech, with the whole speech given at the bottom.

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way – by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people.

They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America's problems.

The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us.


This statement made clear what risks Dean took taking this attempt for change.

Howard Dean has taken history in his hands by hitching his ascendant campaign to a straightforward, anti-corporate message that does not pander to white racism. He presents whites in the South and elsewhere with the only principled choice they should be offered: to vote their interests, or vote for their bosses’ interests (if they are lucky enough to have a job). Although corporate media called Dean’s statement his “southern strategy,” it is in fact the only position that holds out any hope for a national Democratic victory in 2004 – whether enough southern whites emerge from their racist “false consciousness” or not.









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