Nancy Meets the Tea People

Speaker Pelosi's overture towards the Tea Party set is too little, too late. It's all well and good to say we have something in common, but it reminds me of one of those awkward, halting monologues Captain Kirk gives to stop from getting his ass kicked by some gigantic rubber monster:

"We... havemanythings... in... common. We...dislike...specialinterestsinWashington."

I've heard the Tea People called all kinds of things. Hell, I've said all kinds of things about them too. Call them the mob, shills for industry, dumb rednecks, whatever. You can't change who they are. Regardless of the paranoia that makes good press coverage, there are a lot of normal, pissed off people in those crowds, and a lot more people watching TV and listening to radio who are sympathetic to what they do.

I can't imagine a more flexible, independent and decentralized inroad to white, middle-American unease. No need to circumvent the Christian Right, no need to defuse a lot of well-entrenched and heavily financed ideology. It's about as pure a movement can be imagined in these times. I happen to buy what they're selling, but Obama's Organizing for America is a bought-and-sold subsidiary of the Democratic party. The Tea Party represents what is still the largest voting bloc in the country, and the Republicans have been duping them into a whole lot of nonsense for way too long.

If progressive ideas are good for the tea set, there should be no problem selling those ideas to them. And I believe they are. So do lots of people. So what's the disconnect? Maybe it's time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "pretentious, moi?"

We know our ideas are good for America. Progressive ideas actually deal with our long term fiscal solvency. We actually care about whether people can get a job somewhere other than flipping burgers. We're not indifferent to the mission of making sure everyone can see a doctor when they need it.

And we write these people off because we find them distasteful. Time to rethink things, guys. Something's not right when the very people you want to help hate you, and you can't just blame the Republicans.

I've talked to enough of white, rural America to know that most of them will listen to reason if you put it the right way. I've heard enough stories to believe that it really is that bad out there. People aren't working. When they are, they have no money saved up for a rainy day, no benefits in case they get sick, no future. And they fall in with anyone who says simply, enough is enough, life sucks, let's get free again. Well, there's more than one kind of freedom.

Progressives (I won't even say Democrats) will never win over all of the Tea People. They probably won't even get to most of them. But this movement isn't owned by anybody. When it comes to white America, there has been a real lack of imagination among progressive strategists. That has to change. That's taking back our country. That's change I can believe in.