Thank you. I've been wanting to say that shit for 2 years.

SouthNow: Why did the Democrats lose in 2004?


Mudcat: They can't fuckin count. That's the Democrats' problem. You don't get in the football game and punt on first down. You concede nothing. We condeded 20 states at first and then six more by Labor Day. That's 227 electoral votes. Bush only needed 18 percent of the remaining electoral votes to win.

Or have you forgotten Andersen already? I hope Tester wins, but he's against gay marriage as well as gun control, and I don't intend to sign up for his agenda if the Democrats recapture the Senate any more than a rural Christian conservative would shrug and embrace Roe if that's what it took.

Yes--I know someone will say that folks shouldn't be living in small towns anymore. If life were a textbook that would be true, but people have their own deep roots everywhere. Time to get past the shallow charecterizations and to look for common causes to build progressive coalitions.

Read as a response to the paternalistic "we know what's best for your sinful selves" rural right-wingers, it is understandable. (Any one else remember the "Out of the way liberal pussies. We'll protect you." posters from ca 2003?)

Most of us have moved on from the ugly morning after two years ago. Look at Howard Dean's 50 State strategy. His political support is primarily young and liberal urbanites. After getting control of the levers of power, he focused on re-building a nationwide Democratic party, including both Seattle and Montana.

Like Annie said, that piece was an emotional purge, an attempt to claim some kind of righteousness (or, ok, self-righteousness) in the wake of an election that left many of us feeling utterly bereft, disenfranchised, and impotent.

And while Eli is a smart cookie whom I respect a great deal, I urge him to extend his little road trip a few 100 miles east or south (or west) and see if he still finds non-urban America to be such a bastion of unlikely liberalism. I love the idea that there has been progress, but rural types voting for a few democrats doesn't mean that America is getting any less fractious, provincial, conservative, or Christ-laden. It means that the dems may finally be learning how to effectively pander to them.

But really, D vs. R doesn't have much to do with it. Polls don't have much to do with it, either. People are coming no closer together, the world is getting uglier, and the people who run the government seem less interested than ever in working to remedy the situation in any meaningful way.

Speaking of catharsis, your cartoon in that same edition of the stranger is an all time classic. Perfectly encapsulated how many of us felt that night.

Make sure to ask around in MT about a comparatively little known scandal that I think played a major role in the collapse of the GOP in the state: Montana Power. It was the perfect example of a well regulated public benefit monopoly: built with taxpayer dollars, providing good jobs, some of the lowest electric rates in the nation, and paying a steady dividend that made it a classic "widows and orphans" stock.

Then in the '90s, the MT GOP caught deregulation fever and pushed through a bill written by industry lobbyists. Montana Power ended up selling off all the power plants that built the company to go into the fiber optics business at the height of the .com boom.

Needless to say, it didn't end well. Electric rates skyrocketed, retirees ended up holding a penny stock that owned nearly worthless assets, and only management and investment bankers made money. I think it turned a lot of Montana voters off the free market gospel the GOP likes to preach. 60 Minutes did a great piece on it.