POLITICS OF RESENTMENT: EDWARDS CONSULTANT DIVISION. Several people have already commented about the self-immolation of Mudcat Saunders' poor-poor-pitiful-rural-Democrats shtick at Swampland. Obviously, substantive engagement with someone who declares that "I don't care what the "Metropolitan Wing" of my party thinks. I don't like them," while in the same paragraph claiming that the Strawman Resentment Built is guilty of "erroneous stereotyping of my people and culture" is impossible. So, instead, I thought I would summarize the content of his posts in quantitative terms:
- Number of serious policy proposals: 0
- Examples of substantive disagreements between the crude stereotype wings of the party adduced by Saunders: 0
- Citations of actual Democrats who express contempt for their rural allies: 0
- Citations of urban, online Democrats who disagree with his earth-shattering claims that we need to "fight Republicans": 0
- Actual content of the posts once the blubbering self-pity, crude attacks on large groups of people based on cultural stereotypes straight out of GOP anti-Dean ads, and insincere apologies are boiled off: Too small to be measured.
Although I tend strongly toward Tom's view of such matters (though we all know how Dems like Saunders and Don Fowler feel about it), I'm very open to serious arguments about ways in which Democrats can appeal to more rural voters. Saunders's post, however, has absolutely nothing useful to contribute to this question. Why the Edwards campaign thought that sending out someone with literally nothing but insults about unnamed urban elitists and banalities about how we need to oppose Republicans was a good idea, I can't tell you. --Scott Lemieux
