XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.politics.democrats, alt.fan.barbra.streisand   
   XPost: alt.fan.j-garofalo   
   From: rlewis@N0SPAM.0RG   
      
   Why America Hates the democRATs   
      
      
   What is with the democRATs lately? This past week they were nastier to   
   each other than we could ever be.   
      
   Andrew Cuomo blasted his party as "soulless and clueless" and even   
   praised President Bush.   
      
   Sen. Zell Miller renamed the White House wannabes and other leftists   
   for pushing the "shrinking party" into a "breakdown." Howard Dean   
   lashed back at Rep. Dick Gephardt and other rivals for "distorting his   
   positions for months" when, "with a combined three-quarters of a   
   century in Washington, D.C., they have delivered few real results."   
      
   New York democRATs such as Rep. Charlie Rangel lashed out at Wesley   
   Clark for his doomed support of the military's crucial base on   
   Vieques, Puerto Rico. (This just weeks after Rangel was lavishing   
   praise on the retired general.)   
      
   Even the presidential contenders admit that Americans don't like the   
   democRAT party. Their views on why this is so are fascinating.   
      
   David Brooks noted in the New York Times that the Dems campaigning in   
   New Hampshire and Iowa have been trying to explain why democRATs have   
   plunged from 49 percent of the electorate in the days of FDR to 32   
   percent today.   
      
   Dean says the party must return to its roots instead of compromising   
   with Republicans.   
      
   Gephardt says free trade has betrayed workers. Lieberman notes that   
   the party has gone too far left and too secular.   
      
   "John Edwards has the most persuasive theory," Brooks wrote. Voters   
   "are really good at knowing who respects them and who doesn't.   
   Edwards' theory is that the democRATs' besetting sin over the past few   
   decades has been snobbery."   
      
   The senator, a multimillionaire trial lawyer whose father worked in a   
   textile mill, said when announcing his candidacy, "democRATs too often   
   act like rural America is just someplace to fly over between a   
   fundraiser in Manhattan and a fundraiser in Beverly Hills."   
      
   Brooks wrote: "When I interviewed people during the 2000 campaign I   
   found some voters preferred democRAT policies to Republican ones. But   
   they didn't trust Al Gore because they thought he looked down on them.   
   They felt Bush could come to their barbershop and fit right in.   
      
   "Except for Bill Clinton, democRATs have nominated presidential   
   candidates who try to figure out Middle American values by reading the   
   polls, instead of feeling them in their gut. If they do it again, the   
   long, slow slide will continue."   
      
   There's just one problem with Edwards' analysis: he himself has   
   demonstrated a Gore-like contempt for the folks in North Carolina and   
   the rest of "flyover country" by making a condescending remark about   
   farmers and saying he no longer listened to country music, paid   
   attention to NASCAR races, or even owned a gun.   
      
   And the "long, slow slide" continues.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)