Sunday, February 25, 2007
Can the Democrats regain the South with a return to populism?
The Dallas Morning News picks up The Nation on its Op-Ed pages. This I am sure was chosen to balance out the Dallas Op-Ed Sunday pages with its counter-weight being a Weekly Standard look at the changes in GOP front runners.
An intriguing issue and one that has been debated in liberal policy magazines for the last few years. Populism doesn't have the ringing endorsement of the professional middle-class yet but with out-sourcing becoming a bigger and bigger issue that is starting to change. Populism was the winning issue for some high-profile Democrats in the West and South in 2006. Part of the appeal is that Democrats can be tough and be for something and on the attack instead of running as a technocrat with 12-point programs to tweak policy issues.
I found it a little amusing but troubling to hear a friend of mine who works for a NASA subcontractor and is a solid Republican saying that the unionized industries of America should go bankrupt as it was only the lean nimble companies that outsourced all the jobs overseas that should survive. The NASA subcontractors are anything but lean and nimble and are full of over-paid managing engineers like my friend. These white color jobs and government related jobs are the coming trend in outsourcing. Will he feel still the same way when an Indian or Chinese engineer is assigned his projects for one fifth his salary?
I think populism is generally the way to go and that is why I support John Edwards for President. Edwards also has a natural charisma that highly successful politicians seem to have. I think in 2007 he might start to be seen as a more rugged Kennedy and his Two Americas populist campaign, which has been named One Corps, is only becoming more relevant. I am not locked in to John Edwards as we have a strong group of Democrats running this year. Interesting that the most conservative one is Hillary.
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i voted kerry/edwards in '04, or i should say i voted against bush/cheney. i really enjoyed kerry in the debates because of his ability to articulate solutions to problems. i really sweated it out watching edwards debating, as he obviously does better in personal interviews. he better hope he does not end up debating obama, because sen. obama is a seasoned,calm, calculated speaker who can resonate to a wide variety of audiences. edwards will be around as long as campaigning strikes his fancy - he's young and has unlimited amounts of money to spend. eventually he'll land a spot, but his smartest move would be as obama's veep in the upcoming election. that would more or less pave the way for him to the presidency when obama terms out. he should get going if he wants that route, because i predict hillary will approach obama as a running mate soon. she's no fool and realizes by now that obama will be tough, if not impossible to overcome. should obama run on the ticket with hillary, the prospect of the first woman and first african american in the white house at the same time could prove difficult for even the slickets gop to overcome. about "nimble, lean" companies who outsource, they will NEVER bankrupt unionized industries. especially down here in good old tejas, where the illegals are flocking to janitorial jobs that are unionized. illegal immigration alone could keep union trades booming, and we all know big daddy bush loves illegl immigration. he and vincente fox cooked up the whole enchalada together and what's done cannot be undone. with the dems promising to raise minimum wage, we should see retail and food service jobs moving employees into the lower middle class income and illegal immigrants moving into the working poor income bracket. perhaps the blue collar industry will then become the middle class and god help those in the white collar fields like your friend. because their jobs are already in the process of being outsourced offshore via nafta and cafta.
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