We're all in this together

David Neiwart at Orcinus has another well-written invitation to the Democratic Party and the 40% or so of us rural Red Staters to reconcile and reason together, with some charitable things to say about Idaho, our former governor Cecil Andrus, and the Blaine County D's up the road who raised hundreds of thousands for Kerry in one event without so much as a personal thank-you. He also linked to this line I can use in the future if I ever catch any Seattle attitude: "If you're gonna cop that attitude about people who live in red states, count me among the red staters. That's not just an abstract, Niemollerian stance: I have more in common with them than I do with most of you."

I think both writers would have liked my father-in-law Lloyd Walker, G d rest him, a son of a butcher and grandson of Blaine County hard-rock miners, who chaired the Idaho Democratic Party back in the glory days. Early on, he told our senator Frank Church to remember the average Idahoan and not tie himself too tightly to the Ivy League crowd (and to tweak your assumptions, my father-in-law was a graduate of Harvard College and HLS). A whole history of might-have-beens would be written if the lunch-bucket Democrats, the tree-huggers and the technocrats had held it together against the common foe. If the DLC types are serious about rebuilding the party, maybe they can listen to the West for a change. They could start by reading Orcinus.