> > Funny thing is, class seemed to play more in some > > of the Southern Dem victories . . . > > According to my correspondent in Auburn, Ala, proposing using a > lottery for higher ed bucks really helped the Demo (forget his name) > to win there over the egregious theocrat Fob James. It seems if you > dangle college tuition in front of even the most devout bible > thumpers, they take the money and run. The funny thing is that James > had a tough primary and if Blount had won the primary the Repups > probably would have won the election. James had just gotten too weird > and scary for many of the voters. I would put a much more benign construction on these two cases, namely that somewhere inside the Southern white working class, Bible-thumper or otherwise, is a constituency susceptible to left economic populism, and the emergence of such a tendency would radically transform U.S. (and world) politics. To appeal, however, such a populism would have to forswear a number of currently fashionable liberal and left hobby-horses. MBS
