One I May Have to Buy

After arduously getting rid of fourteen boxes of books through sale and donation (and moving the other forty) in this last big move across the country, I swore I would never buy another book. From now on, baby, it's the public library for me. But every now and again one shows up that I just can't resist, and I think this may be one of those: Laura Flanders' Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians by Laura Flanders (Penguin, 2007). I took the current quote in our sidebar from an excerpt published in Alternet.org this morning.

The excerpt expands upon what Tankwoman and I have both said in previous entries here, such as this one, about current Democratic candidates refusal to directly and honestly connect with "cultural" issues. The Flanders piece opens thusly:

In 2004 it was Swift Boating. In 2008 will it be gay-baiting that skewers the Democratic candidate? It's not too late for Democratic contenders to start thinking about the so-called culture wars. Indeed they'd better do more than think, if the campaign so far is any indication of where it might be headed.

She moves out from gay rights to other issues usually lumped under "culture:" abortion, civil rights, welfare, and makes the case that the Democrats need to stop distancing themselves from these issues, "those Americans are the Democrats' base, whether the party likes it or not."

Fights over "culture" are fights over the basic constitutional promise ofequality and freedom -- for whom and to do what? Although it's not very "cultural" when you're denied a job on account of your race or turned down for an adoption on account of your sexuality, people seeking to expand the reach of that Constitutional promise -- are ipso facto "culture warriors." Generations of them have spent decades in Right's cross-hairs and they've learned a thing or two about beating back the baiters' attacks.

I urge the reading of the excerpt I've linked to above, hoping you'll find it as cogent, clear and to the point as I do. If I get the book read before 2008, I'll write a post about the whole thing. What I hope is that it will be read not just by the folks in the street, but by the politicians themselves, and that it will serve as yet another wake up call to the DNC and its minions.

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