There's no such thing as a blue or red state. Looking past stereotypes critical to electoral success
"Many progressives trade in stereotypes about Kansas with childlike pride, writes Sarah Smarsh in Wichita, KS. But to use geography to separate the righteous from the scourge is dangerously simplistic."
The Guardian
This is a long but excellent article with some very important points for electoral success. It's so good that I was hard pressed to decide what to excerpt. I chose something from near the end, but the whole thing is well worth reading and has important observations.
(Lots of snip)
The test for a relatively young nation being forced to grow up is whether it can recognize simultaneous truths.
Thompson shows the way for Democrats in areas they’ve long failed at the polls by being a walking integration of categories: a gun-rights defender who goes hunting, a liberal activist, a commonsense graduate of the school of hard knocks, a fighter who doesn’t mince words with wonky policy talk but shows up as an ally for his local Jewish community, people of color, the LGBT community.
At a recent Wichita rally supporting transgender rights, a couple of hecklers wearing masks used a blow horn to try to drown out event speakers. When Thompson went to the microphone, one of the disrupters tried to talk over him.
“I told him to shut the pie hole three feet above his ass – over the speaker system,” Thompson recalled and cracked up. “My director of communications asked me later, ‘Please don’t ever say that again.’”
But Thompson’s vernacular would have gained the admiration of my straight-talking family, who rarely engage in activism because it often speaks a language they didn’t get to learn.
At this perilous moment in America, the only victory to be had is not on the red and blue map but above it, not with clever strategies but through human connection.
Thompson’s progressive, populist momentum in “deep red” Kansas – where he respected people enough to knock on their doors and look them in the eye – is proof of that. His showing at the polls echoed bipartisan resistance seen in recent months at town hall meetings and marches in seemingly unlikely places and suggested a playbook for Democrats aiming to reclaim districts vacated by Montana, South Carolina and Pennsylvania Republicans in special elections yet to come.
America is one place. Every state shares in her sins, and every state shares in her progress.
snip
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/25/us-politics-kansas-election-red-state-blue-state?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=223147&subid=20993289&CMP=GT_US_collection
