The more things change...

I published the following post on my first blog, "Fuel For Thought," back in 2004, another election year.  I think the only difference might be that those days offered less stylized burlesque.  

A Tectonic Shift: The Metro/Retro Chasm                                                (August 9, 2004)

I stirred some minor concern among my faithful readers in my August 12^th posting when I suggested that perhaps the Democratic Party needed to morph into something more realistic and palatable to its confirmed base, and purge its DNC and DLC thinking.  Now along comes John Sperling’s The Great Divide, which, more or less, suggests the same thing.  Beginning with a $2 million pre-publication promotion in leading national newspapers, Sperling (founder of University of Phoenix, one of the country’s wealthiest people and a “lifelong” Democrat) simplifies matters for the Foxified electorate:  If you think and ‘believe’ like a red-stater, you’re a Retro (like Mel Gibson and Newt Gingrich).  If you think and ‘believe’ like a blue-stater, you’re a Metro (like Michael Moore and Mario Cuomo).

A Retro lives in the South, the Great Plains and Appalachia, and is dominated by Republicans and religion.  You pony up only 29% of the US federal tax dollars and represent only 35% of the US population.  A Metro lives on either coast and around the Great Lakes, and consider yourself progressive and mostly secular.  You coughs up 71% of the US federal tax dollars and comprise 65% of the US population.

At the end of the first chapter of The Great Divide, Sperling presents his vision:

“We hope the realities of the Great Divide will lead Democrats to abandon what one commentator called ‘the idiocy of the Democrats’ rural strategy’ and recognize that they are a Metro Party.  The Party must stop watering down its policies and programs to appeal to a national constituency that no longer exists.  In fact, there is no single national-base constituency.  There are two base constituencies: one metropolitan, committed to a rapidly changing, dynamic, and modern economy with a multi-ethnic society; the other, small city, town, and rural, committed to maintaining traditional industries, fundamentalist-based social values, and a White-dominated society.  The needs, interests, aspirations, and views of these two constituencies are more often antithetical than congruent.”

The rationale for this shift in political strategy is pretty simple.  The Metros outnumber the Retros in potential votes and out pay them in federal taxes.  So in one sentence you have a strategy and its justification (there’s a lot more, but that suffices).  Why try to convince, persuade and cajole voters who are steadfastly retrospective and retrograde?  Instead, satisfy and motivate your base, and you win the election.  As I have said here recently, this election is about getting the non-voters who share your views into the voting booth.  Visualize the concerns they carry in their heads each day, avoid discussing things Retro and continually refer to a 21^st Century that looks and acts like a 21^st Century, not like the 1950s. 

By the way, the 1950s were not “Happy Days” and “Grease”.   They were more like “Ozzie and Harriet” without the laugh track.