[QUOTE=furt]
To these people, Jim Webb (and Jon Tester, for another) look, sound and act like men you could look square in the eye and take at their word, while John Kerry looks like a snooty rich guy who thinks he’s better than you.
[/QUOTE]
Well here’s a point on which we can agree, at least. 
Check out the framing:
Webb and Tester are men, beefy, squinting, close-cropped, plain-spoken, low on irony.
Kerry is merely a guy, slightly shaggy, affecting a white-shoe look, a little too arch and articulate.
Also, Jim Webb is a Marine. You can look him in the eye and know he’s as good as his word, but he still thinks he’s better than you. In fact, he knows he is.
I’m not saying Democrats should pander on issues like school prayer, flag burning, women’s right to choose, gay-bashing, or any of that crap. In fact, I personally want the Dems to lead the way on LGBT equality and I will keep pushing that issue. If I’m reading Webb’s ideas right, he’s saying as long as Dems respect gun ownership and patriotism, and project warm personal qualities, they’ll have a chance with these voters. The other issues are negotiable, just keep your cotton pickin fingers off the guns and patriotism. The Vietnam-era image of protestors spitting on returning soldiers, even though it wasn’t true, held a big psychological wallop. You can argue a position against the war, but you can’t spit on soldiers.
As a Southern Democrat, I think the economic issues are of central importance, but not sufficient for election campaigns. I wonder if Democratic leaders have forgotten how to connect with the hearts and minds of voters, give the voters a feeling that you actually care about them as human beings. Somehow or other W. captured that sense even better than Clinton–even though I don’t see it in him myself, it’s what I keep hearing. But there’s more going on that just that.
Webb’s formula didn’t work for Harold Ford, whose defeat was attributed to the basest levels of racism and that really disturbs me in 2006.
Meanwhile McCaskill was able to win enough Ozark votes by, if Moser’s analysis is correct, her down-home people skills and not the issues, in a campaign where gun control doesn’t seem to have arisen. All of this considered, the picture isn’t as clear as it looked from Webb’s perspective.
As if to corroborate Webb, I noticed a couple things on Election Day. I was volunteering at a suburban precinct in Fairfax County, an elementary school, where the Allen supporter was ostentatiously wearing a camo jacket and hunter’s cap, and you know if it had been legal he would have been packing a hunting rifle too in that getup, just to show off what a gunhead he was and thought Republicans should be. Meanwhile a Democratic activist drove up to the polling place in a pickup whose bumper sticker proclaimed, “I’m a RIFLE HUNTER and I vote DEMOCRATIC.” That precinct voted overwhelmingly against the marriage amendment and for Webb, by the way.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
As if to corroborate Webb, I noticed a couple things on Election Day. I was volunteering at a suburban precinct in Fairfax County, an elementary school, where the Allen supporter was ostentatiously wearing a camo jacket and hunter’s cap, and you know if it had been legal he would have been packing a hunting rifle too in that getup, just to show off what a gunhead he was and thought Republicans should be.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think you understand the culture. Just because you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a camo jacket and a hunter’s cap, doesn’t mean that he was a “gunhead” and showing off. You’re projecting your prejudices onto other people. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I know many people who dress like that. You’re making a big mistake if you write them off as “dumb gunhead rednecks”.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
As a Southern Democrat, I think the economic issues are of central importance, but not sufficient for election campaigns.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe not, but it sure used to be. Old-time Democrats (really old-time) used to get themselves elected by railing against the banks and the railroads and the insurance companies and the big corporations.
I’m thinking banks (credit card banks in particular) and insurance companies and corporations could still make pretty good populist villains.
And I actually think Webb is very wrong when he says this about the Scots-Irish:
When he was practicing law, Tom Watson used to quote, to great effect, this Robert Burns stanza:
What tho’ on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin-gray, an’ a’ that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
Scots-Irish juries ate that up in lawsuits pitting the little guy against said banks, railroads, insurance companies and corporations.
Granted, that was over 100 years ago, but to argue that the Scots-Irish have never had an envy of wealth is demonstrably wrong.
As for guns, I agree absolutely that to succeed with this demographic you have to be respectful of gun rights and gun owners.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
Webb’s formula didn’t work for Harold Ford, whose defeat was attributed to the basest levels of racism and that really disturbs me in 2006.
[/QUOTE]
Tennessean here, I voted for Ford. It came down to 50,000 votes… not alot of difference and hardly indicative of a racist backlash against Ford. What hurt Ford more than anything was his relative inexperience and some of the unfortunate scandals involving his close family members. I held neither of these against him but some few did and in the end that was the determining factore. If Ford was actively pro gun control it wouldn’t have even been a contest, Corker would have won in a huge landslide. If the Democrats abandoned gun control issues and made upholding the 2nd amendment as zealously as they do some of our other civil liberties part of their national plank, there would be big changes come national elections IMO.
[QUOTE=mks57]
I don’t think you understand the culture. Just because you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a camo jacket and a hunter’s cap, doesn’t mean that he was a “gunhead” and showing off. You’re projecting your prejudices onto other people. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I know many people who dress like that. You’re making a big mistake if you write them off as “dumb gunhead rednecks”.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think you understood the context of my observation. The neighborhood is not one where rural hunting gear is everyday wear. It was an affluent residental suburb in the Dulles Technology Corridor, populated by professionals in suits and ties and high heels. That’s why I said the guy wore it ostentatiously. It was a costume worn as a political statement just as much as if I’d gotten up there in a Statue of Liberty headdress, robe, and torch. Political theater.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
Political theater.
[/QUOTE]
Lately, of course, that phrase is a redundancy.
[QUOTE=Steve MB]
This is more of less equivalent to dismissing (for example) a complaint about Republican anti-gay positions by asking “When did the Republicans threaten to round up all the gays into concentration camps?”
A restriction can be well short of total confiscation but still anathema to voters concerned about civil liberties.
Which ones?
The ones that say “If you’re a convicted felon, you can’t own guns”? Of course not (with the caveat that case-by-case exceptions should be made for non-violent crimes).
The ones that say “You can’t own guns with X, Y, and Z scary-looking (but functionally insignificant) features”? Damn straight.
[/QUOTE]
OK. Now I have answers. *(1) When did the Democrats say they were going to take all your guns? * They never did. (I don’t think the Republicans are planning to put gays into concentration camps, either.) And none of the gun owners I know are so easily led.
(2) Which gun laws should be repealed? OK! What pieces of metal are you jonesing for right now?
Note: Nick Lampson ran against Shelley Sekula Gibbs for Tom DeLay’s old seat. He is a Democrat & was endorced by his local NRA. I can’t find anything about guns on his website.
He won.
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
*(1) When did the Democrats say they were going to take all your guns? *
(2) Which gun laws should be repealed?
[/QUOTE]
New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina, and they did it.
I can’t buy a handgun unless it has been approved by a state board, which determines if it is suitable for plebs. Of course, some think no handgun is suitable. The state also insists that all handguns be test-fired for a ballistic fingerprint, even though this is a useless waste of time and money. There are other stupid laws in Maryland, all of which were championed by Democratic politicians and anti-gun activists. Not that previous Democratic administrations have shown any respect for their own laws. Their attitude is “If you don’t like it, fuck you, sue us”.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
Oh dear, speaking of Senator-elect Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), I found this oddly ironic factoid: “Claire has received an F rating from the NRA for her stance on gun issues.” And she’s an Ozark gal born and bred. Hmm… Bill Moser’s article on AlterNet says about her win – from a Southern point of view, which includes the Ozarks --Moser had nothing to say about guns, except that Democrat Harold Ford ran a pro-gun campaign in Tennessee and lost.
[/QUOTE]
I give credit to Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy. Do not concede any race. Every voter in every race in every county and town must always be given the option of voting for a Democratic candidate. He did it, even with Rahm Emmanuel fighting him every step of the way.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
Also, Jim Webb is a Marine. You can look him in the eye and know he’s as good as his word, but he still thinks he’s better than you. In fact, he knows he is.
[/QUOTE]
This is all image-making too, isn’t it? I mean, PBS’s Jim Lehrer is also a U.S. Marine (He gave the keynote speech at the dedication of the U.S. Marine Corps museum last week.), but who’s going to put the “real man” label on him?
[QUOTE=spoke-]
ExTank, that’s just not so. There were way too many Southern Democrats in the Clinton coalition for anything like that to happen.
Besides which, we do have the Second Amendment, you know.
[/QUOTE]
My apologies, spoke-, I wasn’t ignoring you, I’d just completely missed your reply to my post.
In answer, mks57’s reply pretty much sums up my answer, too.
I’m going to quit posting now; it seems everyone else can say what I want to say, and say it better, and in a more timely manner. 
I am a way out in left field liberal with a gun. I’ve been trying to tell the Democrats for twenty years that guns are not the problem, government is the problem. As it happens I also realize that the premise of the second amendment is based on a reality that has not existed since the invention of the Tank (assuming, of course that you don’t favor private ownerships of tanks). But the hard facts of politics are that folks with guns ain’t supportin’ candidates who think they ought not have guns. In Virginia, that’s a pretty fair majority. And the International Handgun Manufactuing Industry Political Action Committee (NRA) is a very efficient organization.
So, politicians willing to kiss the NRA’s ass can then support whatever sort of totalitarian nonsense they want, so long as they don’t threaten handgun sales.
It’s a bad deal.
Both of Virginia’s recent Democrat governors were elected because the Republicans could not remain silent on the abortion issue, being owned in fee simple by the religious right. But there is a slim majority in Virginia which does not support the concept of Government influence in private matters of reproduction to the extent that the way to the right folks want. (It’s not a matter of support for abortion, it’s a fundamental distrust of government as the appropriate group to make that decision.)
So, give 'em their guns, and let’s invite the rural moderates into the party! Heck, suppose we did, and there was a lack of support for invading any new countries until we have conquered all the other countries we have invaded in the last hundred years. Think of the money we could save.
Tris
Triskadecamus expressed very well what I think of the position the Democrats need to adjust to. I call it “reality-based.” 
Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy has been vindicated by this election. This would be a good time for Dean to quote Nelson Mandela’s inspiring words:
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
[QUOTE=mks57]
New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina, and they did it.
I can’t buy a handgun unless it has been approved by a state board, which determines if it is suitable for plebs. Of course, some think no handgun is suitable. The state also insists that all handguns be test-fired for a ballistic fingerprint, even though this is a useless waste of time and money. There are other stupid laws in Maryland, all of which were championed by Democratic politicians and anti-gun activists. Not that previous Democratic administrations have shown any respect for their own laws. Their attitude is “If you don’t like it, fuck you, sue us”.
[/QUOTE]
How about Democrats pledging to review gun laws that an average reasonable person could call “stupid” and repealing the ones that really are stupid? And really following through on this pledge. How would that go over with voters nationally and particularly in red states? Because I’m trying to think of how Democrats can sustain this sudden burst of good karma instead it quickly fading out. For the Democrats to be a national party, as Howard Dean envisioned and seems to have been proven right, I think this is necessary. I don’t like it, but they’re not there for the sake of wish fulfillment, they’re there for the sake of governance.
As a Southern liberal, I want to see Democrats succeed and enact a liberal agenda, so to that end it’s time for liberals to cut this one loose. If liberalism or progressivism is supposed to be about trying new ideas, sometimes you try something, it doesn’t work, you drop it. We’ve tried this one enough, stick a fork in it. It’s done.
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
I had never made a connection between Celtic descent and guns, but I’m of Scottish heritage and own guns, so who knows?
Here in Montana, the new Democratic senator who just replaced Conrad Burns actually sent out single-issue campaign flyers talking about his support for our right to hunt, showing him wielding firearms and posing with antlered animals.
He won by 1,700 votes. Had he been in favor of gun control, he wouldn’t have had a chance.
[/QUOTE]
I agree with your last sentence. As far as the Scots-Irish go, I think Webb is roughly correct in the context of a certain area of the country. Primarily Southwest, and South Virginia (excluding Richmond and focusing on small towns and rural areas), extending throughout all of West Virginia, and then up into central and western Pennsylvania.
Scots-Irish settlers were very important in this region. They tended to be relatively lower class or middle class economically, and their descendants continue to be so today. I don’t really think they have a coherent community as ‘Scots-Irish’ anymore, some of them probably only vaguely even aware of the term and most of them probably considering themselves of “English” or “Irish” origins and just vaguely viewing themselves as “white.”
West Virginia and the western and southwestern parts of Virginia especially tend to be descendants of these people, and they tend to be extremely avid outdoors men and hunters; I see no reason to go into the reasons behind that, as I don’t think most would dispute the claims (West Virginia in particular issues an extremely high number of hunting licenses each year in relation to its relatively small population and its annual number of deer killed is quite high.)
West Virginia was a Democratic stronghold up until the year 2000, while the West Virginia Democratic party bore little resemblance to the national party, it was extremely powerful. Democrats overwhelmingly dominated the legislature and overall dominated the governor’s mansion, all of the WV’s congressional representatives and senators were Democratic and most of them won in overwhelming margins. The GOP was about as marginalized in West Virginia as it is in any state today, and on the state level it continues to be fairly marginalized.
The Democrats in West Virginia are a powerful pro-coal political party that also has the support of the unions in the state (one of the most significant outside of the mining industry being the teacher’s union) as well as the support of the capital city and the county in which it is located (representing 10% of the state’s population.)
West Virginia is a small state, with only 5 electoral votes. However it proved to be fairly important in the 2000 presidential election. Not only did Bush win there, he won by a comfortable margin in a state that has almost never voted Republican in Presidential elections. The reason is fairly simple, Al Gore was portrayed as being supportive of gun control within the state, and very successfully so; whether or not that was a fair portrayal is a bit moot, the fact remains the GOP and the NRA were able to convince West Virginians of this fact and this most assuredly is why Gore lost that state in 2000. If Gore had won the traditionally democratic stronghold, the Florida recount, hanging chads and etc. would be a moot point, because Al Gore would control an absolute majority of the electoral votes without Florida. Virginia is not traditionally a Democratic stronghold (at least not in the modern era, I tend to think of the commonwealth as being fairly open to both parties) but it has always remained fairly open to Democrat politicians. Virginia represents more electoral votes than its western neighbor, although it is also less likely to be swayed over solely on the basis of gun control–an acceptable gun control policy by the Democrats could easily tip the balance in their favor in this state in a presidential election.
Note to '08 Presidential candidates:
Go ahead and buy your camoflage jacket now, so it has some wear and tear by the time of the election. Your mandatory “candidate goes hunting” photo will be much more convincing that way.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Note to '08 Presidential candidates:
Go ahead and buy your camoflage jacket now, so it has some wear and tear by the time of the election. Your mandatory “candidate goes hunting” photo will be much more convincing that way.
[/QUOTE]
Man, those are the worst. To a degree I wish there was a way candidates could just stand up and say, “here are the issues I think are important, and here are my views on them, and here is my plan for the country if I’m elected” and people wouldn’t care about whether or not the candidate goes to church, smoked pot in college, hunts in the fall, and etc.
I really wonder about the value of our representative democracy when so often voters and the public seem most interested about the aspects of candidates that have the least to do with how they plan to represent their constituents.
In any case, I value gun rights to a degree. I think it is telling that the landed aristocracy and absolute monarchies tended to restrict gun ownership to the elites and keep the guns from the peasants. I do not think that guns are essential to liberty because they can be used to defend oneself from government oppression, that just isn’t realistic.
I do think they are an essential part of being free, though. Saying that a human being doesn’t have a right to reasonably defend their lives when they are in mortal peril, or doesn’t have the right to use a weapon to kill game is really hitting at the core of what it is to be human. I consider self-defense a natural right. And I think hunting right along with foraging and farming are such basic human activities no government has the right to take action which effectively would ban the practice (although I recognize the issue of sport hunting and gun control are not one and the same, they are somewhat connected.)
Personally when it comes to hand guns, I favor a very strict licensing regime where you have to pass a test showing you know how to both properly use and store a hand gun. Furthermore I favor extremely harsh punishments if you are found to have an unlicensed hand gun. I think this system would do exactly what most gun control advocates really want, criminalize the use and possession of guns by the criminal element. Because most street criminals will not be able to get by the licensing regime (a license would not be available to any person ever convicted of a felony.) At the same time I really don’t think most of these efforts will do anything. We have more guns than people in this country, there’s just too many to realistically hope anything will keep them out of the hands of criminals, but I have no problem with enacting legislation that harshly punishes those who illegally possess guns.