Nation-Building >> Dr. Dean and Dixie | return to front page

...Dr. Dean first made his remark about wanting the votes of guys with Confederate decals on their pickup trucks at a meeting of national Democrats about three months ago. His remarks drew thunderous applause.

It was only after he became a front-runner that his tag-along rivals decided to raise a stink. One opined that Dean was stereotyping Southerners. Another accused him of being a racist. It was all much ado about nothing.

Most people knew immediately what Dr. Dean meant by his Confederate remarks. He knows that unless the Democratic Party appeals once more to working men and women in the South, it will remain a minority party of extreme feminists, extreme environmentalists, silk-stocking socialists and the professional civil-rights crowd who live in comfort around the Washington Beltway. I think he wants to revive the Democratic Party of Harry Truman.

While it is fashionable for Democrats now to say they are fiscal conservatives and social liberals, they need to understand that most Southerners are social conservatives and fiscal liberals. [...]

Personally, I don't think most blacks give a hoot about the Confederate flag one way or the other. In the referendum on the Mississippi flag, which incorporates the Confederate flag, folks voted overwhelmingly to keep it, and about 30 percent of the blacks who voted also voted to keep it. The flag was a big issue for liberal white politicians and chamber-of-commerce types, but apparently was no big deal for ordinary Mississippians, both black and white.

The working men and women of America of all races know they have more important things to worry about than historic flags and monuments. I wish Dr. Dean had stuck to his guns and not apologized. You can't appease an insincere critic by apologizing.