The Black Republican

Defeated Democratic Senate candidate Bread Carson has written what I believe is the first truly insightful self-analysis of the election from the liberal side of the isle. In The New Republic, he describes how he lost the race - by being tied to a liberal Democratic Party that's trying to force "modernity" down our throats.

For the vast majority of Oklahomans--and, I would suspect, voters in other red states--these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma--and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states--reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.

Meanwhile, David Sirota in Washington Monthly tells the fantastic tale of a reformer crusading to bring a Western state out of the vice and corruption of one-party rule. But, of course, since that state is Republican, Governor-elect Brian Schweitzer is a Democrat. (hattip: Gnostical Turpitude)

How did Schweitzer pull off such a dramatic victory in an election year when Democrats seemed to have lost their capacity to win red states? The answer should give Democrats everywhere some hope and Republicans reason to worry.

The story begins with the man himself. If you look in an encyclopedia under Montana: Self-Image of, you'll find a picture of Brian Schweitzer. He is the grandson of Montana homesteaders and looks the part: He is a burly six-foot-two, always clad in jeans with a gilded silver belt buckle. Schweitzer put himself through college by mopping floors at sororities, got a master's degree from Montana State in, of all things, soil science, and then worked for eight years on irrigation projects in the part of the world that's hardest to irrigate—the Sahara Desert. When he returned to Montana in the late 1980s, he built a farming and ranching business from scratch—no small task at a time when corporate agribusiness was swallowing huge swaths of America's heartland. He is gregarious, tough-talking, and utterly without self-doubt.

But in addition to a winning personality and strong populist convictions, Schweitzer had an innovative, three-part political strategy, one that perfectly fit the current conditions in Montana, but which Democrats across the country could learn from. First, Schweitzer took advantage of public dissatisfaction with two decades of insular one-party rule in the state capital, casting himself as an outsider and a reformer. Second, he rallied small business, usually a solidly GOP constituency, to his side by opposing the deals Republicans had cut in Washington and Helena to favor large or out-of-state corporations over local entrepreneurs. Third, and most interesting of all, Schweitzer figured out how to win over one of the most important, reliably Republican, and symbolically significant groups of voters: hunters and fishermen.

Pardon me if I don't get worried. First of all, I might well have voted Democratic for governor in Montana, from the sound of it. There's little attraction in any party that becomes so insulated that its members believe they can get away with stealing "from the folks" (as the aforementioned populist Bill O'Reilly would say). But I'm also not worried that the Democratic Party of Barbara Streisand and Michael Moore will come down out of their penthouse apartments and luxury mansions any time soon to march for gun rights and sensible land use rights for hunters.

No where in Sirota's piece does he mention the cultural Big Daddy of abortion, and gay rights receives little more than a passing glance. The entire article is merely a case study in campaigning: "Conservative Montana voters had to believe that a Democrat was 'one of them.'" Actually being one of them appears to be of secondary importance to the operative. Hopefully for Montanans, Schweitzer will not merely act the part.

If that's the case, more power to him. A vigorous and honorable opponent is someone that will keep the hustlers and con men of my own party at bay, and keep politics where it should be: a contest of ideas.

UPDATE: Amazingly, the deplorable Frank Rich deftly parries these opinions and makes a strong case for the fact that - despite the right's electoral victories - the hedonists are still winning. "Not that there's anything wrong with that." No, Frank - there's a lot wrong with that.