Left, Right, and (Mostly) In-Between. Last
Sunday's Washington Post presented an intriguing look at the
governor's race in Minnesota. As a microcosm for national political
trends, this race shows voters rejecting both the Democratic and
Republican parties as captives of special interests, a point which
the traditional parties simply won't grasp -- thus creating a real
opening for the independent candidate, Tim Penny. Write reporters
David Von Drehle and Dan Balz:
As elsewhere, the deciding votes belong to cultural moderates. -- The [Democratic-Farm-Labor] nominee for governor, meanwhile, gives scarcely a nod to the idea of reaching out beyond his base. Instead, Roger Moe -- majority leader of the state Senate for an incredible 22 years -- describes a by-the-book campaign strategy based on accumulating slivers of the population. In a three-way race"Moe says, "it's going to take 34 or 35 points to win. It won't take 40 points. So you get ducks where the ducks are." Finding enough ducks will be a matter of "narrowcasting rather than broadcasting," targeting the "distinct, small groups" that Moe says constitute the base of the DFL.
But such "narrowcasting," whether practiced by Democrats reaching out to minorities and gays, or Republicans targeting religious conservatives, won't heal the rifts in the social fabric or nourish a sustainable and growing political foundation. Politicians who don't see the need for attracting broad-based majorities by growing their base, rather than relying on narrow pluralities, are dooming their parties to eventual extinction. Republicans and Democrats should both pay attention.
Not a "Commie." A nice piece by David Harsanyi
is now posted
at FrontPageMagazine.com, responding to gay "progressive" (and
attacker of gay moderates) Richard Goldstein's rebuke to all who
would call him a communist. I particularly like Haranyi's
remark:
"Classifying himself a "liberationist" who fought "bitter battle with Marxists who regarded sexism and homophobia as a distraction from the class struggle," Goldstein seems to have less of a problem with Marxism's all-encompassing tyrannical dehumanization than he does with totalitarian views on sexual persuasion. Communism's 100-million plus victims are not as damaging a crime to him as a fellow traveler's lukewarm support for the local same-sex prom."
Which brings to mind Urvashi Vaid, the former long-time head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who took umbrage at being called a Marxist, noting, instead, that she was an "anarcho-syndicalist." Oh.