The Democrats can win Kansas

These northern elites in the Democratic Party and in the media just don't get it. They cast Kansas off as a lost cause. But here in Kansas we have a popular Democratic governor. In 1991 the Democratic Party controlled the Kansas congress. Why is it that on a statewide race a Democrat can get more then 50% but Kerry looses 62.2% to 36.5%? Because that Governor Kathleene Sebelius ran on three things only: Education, Healthcare and Jobs. ECONOMIC ISSUES. See, you have to shut the hell up about social issues such as god, gays, guns and abortion, because that's what divides people here. But everyone needs a job, everyone needs healthcare and everyone here supports education. Many people assume Kansas is just packed with partisan Republicans. How is it that 70% of Kansans strongly support education funding, yet the BOE can ban evolution and Susan Wagle can get reelected on a platfrom of shutting down all of KU because of the content of their sex ed class? Because politics isn't as important or as divisive here as it is in Massachussets. It's not that people are either partisan pro-choice Democrats or partisan anti-labor Republicans in the midwest. People can consider themselves pro-education, but when Republican politicians shift the focus to moral issues, that moral value can trump a progressive value. There are actually three parties in Kansas, the Democrats, the moderate wing of the Republican party, and the growing religious right-wing of the Republican party. The latter with the backing of lots of pro-life money is now going after the moderates that had been in control for a long time of the Republican party.
All people want to be united behind something, and for people here in Kansas religious fundamentalism unites us more than common political progressive values that would also unite us would the Democrats ever stop electing elite intellectual liberal multimillionaire like Kerry who married into more mony than anyof us have here and inherited more drug money than any of us have here.
The Democratic Party is full of old, out of touch rich guys who get elected to the Senate and stay there forever. We need to change this because who is electable is whoever can connect with voters, not whoever is most established in the party. Those who argued that John Kerry was the right pick because he was the most "electable" are retarded. Whoever we decide is our candidate is electable, and then we only have to reach out to extra voters with charisma from there. We need progressive down-to-earth people to take over the Democratic party, indeed, to SAVE to Democratic party.
It is not all Kerry's fault however. Kerry didn't get media exposure beyond two minute answers and 30 second jabs at Bush. I saw the mainstream media cover one of his speeches and he was very charismatic and witty. Unfotunately, they cut back to discussion when he started talking about the issues, because heaven forbid, the voters vote on the issues instead of moral values.
Also the nature of social stratification and the rich being so rich right now makes it hard to get anybody that is in touch with the American people from either party. Aynone who has political power has gotten so by rigorously conforming to the nature of our elite political structure.
There were two ways to frame this election: either with a progressive outlook or a moralist outlook. Kerry shunned his liberl record and tried to convince voters from a moralist perspective that he was the better candidate. He didn't use Clinton's masterful approach by saying that both parties are full of good people, but they have two completely different ways of approaching the issues and here is why my approach is better. No, he didn't lay out the issues and show his his way of thinking and approach works better for solving the problems America faces and will take up into a better America instead of into a regressive America full of nepotism, fear and lies. Instead, Kerry said that he can fight a better War of Terror. That he agrees with Bush on foreign policy, but by simply changing leaders our allies will respect us more and come help us because John Kerry is smarter than Bush. A moralist approach hails the myth of the American rugged individualist and believes that the best a country can do is get a competent, strong-willed leader to get things down and stand up to evil and corruption. Kerry tried to appeal to this and simply posed himself as the better, stronger, more hopeful, smarter candidate. That is not enough!
The fallacy of this approach is that it assumes people are either moralists or progressives. Places like Kansas (and other midwest states like Minnesota and Texas) used to be dominated by progressive Christian leaders. There is still a religious left in America and the Democrats are killing it by abondoning progressive values. When people are thinking from a moralist outlook they aren't being as rational as we want them to. But these same people can think from a progressive outlook if you focus on getting people to vote in their best economic interests, and not on moral values. Remember: everyone needs healthcare, everyone needs a job, and everyone needs education. These values unite people.
We have to focus on these values long-term, at every juncture, in every race. Once we have taken back over the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court, the social issues such as gay rights, and abortion can come naturally because they are decided by the courts, not so much by legislators. Furthermore, those issues will be won out because people will be voting and thinking rationally and progressively instead of voting on sigle issue moral choices and justifying a moralist approach by seeing two rich powerful guys running against each other. Also, Republicans won't be able to Jerrymander half the states to give them near permanent power for the ten years between every census. Since we have failed to unite people and get them to vote in their own best economic interests, the court will fall further into the hands of the Republicans and the Democrats have lost their social and economic agenda.
How do we do this? People have a fundamental need to coopeate and find identity in a community. Fundamentalist evangelism provides this for them. We need a simple campign focus that will tear through barriers and unite people as evangelism does. Investing in renewable energy sources is an issue that is in Kansas' best economic interest because Kansas is the ideal place to put lots of those new expensive energy windmills and harness the power of our great flatness! This would bring lots of money to Kansas for building them, create high-paying jobs, and then produce revenues from energy harvested. Everyone in Kansas is feeling the high price of gas and our home energy bills have been increasing like you wouldn't believe as well.
It's puzzling to many how 70% of people in the United States can say that they want less money to go to welfare, but 70% of people also say that more money should be given to help the poor. It's because people aren't just one thing or another. We aren't either progressives or moralists, most people in Kansas are both and if we focus on issues that have the potential to unite everyone, instead of issues in which we can coast by with 50% of the vote we will grow stronger and stronger every year. When it comes down to it Kansans fund a quality education system and fully fund their roads system. But when an issue is framed in terms of a moral debate, such as the BOE evolution or the KU sex ed. issues, moral issues will trump that. We have to make sure we are focusing on issues that unite people so that they vote in their best economic interests so that wealthy Republicans can't keep destroying the United States by shifting the focus of the elections voting on moral issues because it happens to help them to continue to prop up their business interests over the interests of the American people.