Mad Voter: A new Sagebrush Rebellion?

I was recently in Nebraska, where Democratic Senate candidate Scott Kleeb has his endorsement interview with the Omaha World Herald and came out of it mulling over one question in particular: What would a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president mean for the rural American west, particularly since the Democrats are the party of urbanites?

Never mind Democratic western governors Brian Schweitzer, Dave Freudenthal, Bill Ritter, Janet Napolitano, and Bill Richardson--some of whom have the highest approval ratings among all the nation's governors. Never mind Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Ken Salazar, Harry Reid, Jeff Bingaman or (ahem) Ben Nelson, many of whom have served their rural, western constituencies well enough to be handily reelected.

But for the Omaha World Herald editorial board, and far too many voters out here in the middle, they've just come to accept without question that they and their neighbors are all Republicans, that their own senator or governor is just an anomaly, and that Democrats have been utterly irrelevant to their lives. The Democrats are those people out on the fringes (literally, on the coasts) of the country. Slowly, and increasingly, Democratic candidates across the region are working to change that mindset.

In the 70s and into the 80s, the Sagebrush Rebellion swept through the region, comprising a key component of Ronald Reagan's 1980 win, and cementing in the prevailing western mentality the idea that Republicans were the party that would protect their gun rights, stay out of their lives, ensure their jobs, and make sure that they could do whatever they wanted to do with their land.

Along with the message that the Democrats, who had been in control for so long, had amassed too much land, Republicans and conservative issues groups kept piling on the number of issues in which the government--which they equated with Democrats, so that even when the Republicans gained control they weren't blamed for their messes--was out of touch with Western lives. Slowly and surely, the region forgot that it only exists and prospers because of massive, unprecedented federal intervention: the huge water projects undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation, without which major populations could not be sustained in the region; rural electrification; billions and billion of dollars worth of agricultural subsidies.

It all came down to the Democrats wanting to take away your guns and your land to give it to some kind of bird or something that nobody had ever heard of. Once those believes about Democrats had been established, the rest was easy. Democrats were portrayed as only caring about urban America, and worse, wanting to impose "urban values" on the rest of the country. It's the same story of division that played out in the south, though the racial overtones were less of a focus in the west.

Combating that well-established view of the political world has been the major challenge for Democrats throughout the region. Most of them who have been successful in the past three decades have achieved their success the same way as the Republicans--by running against the national Democratic party. And in this region, that was a smart thing to do. The way the national Democrats, pre-Howard Dean and the 50 state strategy, approached the region left little for a Democrat out here to hang on to. The same national consultants ran the same races across the nation, the same ads with the names and faces changed depending on the district or state. A candidate wanting to run their race their way, tailored to their district, were going to have a damned hard time getting any help from D.C.

Along the way, the Democrats that live in some places out here, who have lived out here all along, lost heart. They stopped meeting, stopped talking to each other, forgot that other Democrats even existed. They didn't dare talk about politics in public settings. This was true even in the Clinton years, when prosperity reigned. Clinton was hugely unpopular in large parts of the interior west, if for nothing else than being a Democrat. But in the first few years of the Bush administration and following the attacks of September 11th, that self-imposed silence became increasingly oppressive.

Then along came the likes Brian Schweitzer, and then Jon Tester. Candidates who didn't apologize for being Democrats, who didn't falter from the strength of their conviction as Democrats that the place for government is to protect the common good. They weren't afraid of confrontation. They weren't afraid to talk to everyone, even people they knew would disagree with them. They took their message to the people of Montana, and Montana responded. And some people remembered that they were Democrats, and they remembered why. And they started talking to their neighbors. Maybe they decided to try to resurrect their precinct or county organization. Or even a Drinking Liberally chapter. And they stopped feeling so isolated.

Since Schweitzer's 2004 election, the purple has been spreading, and with it a growing conversation that reminds people that they don't have to be a Republican. It's a conversation spurred by having someone like Gary Trauner showing up on your doorstep. By having someone from the Scott Kleeb campaign call to ask what you're concerned about in this election. By having a presidential candidate actually come to your state.

Joan McCarter is a contributing editor of DailyKos.com and a researcher of Western politics

The conversation is turning on issues, as well. The original Sagebrush Rebellion was sparked over public land. Ironically, so is this nascent new one, but this time it's the fire sale of public lands to industry that's fueling it. As more and more lands that generations of Westerners have enjoyed for hunting, fishing, hiking, rafting and riding are essentially sold off to the highest bidder for drilling, the landscape is changing, and not for the better. When the pronghorn herds around Pinedale, WY are dying off because the groundwater is poisoned and their breeding grounds are disturbed by the massive drilling in the area, there's backlash.

And when the government decides it can spy on us illegally, and the Congress okays it, the issue of civil liberties suddenly becomes more nuanced. If a Republican president is willing to ignore our Constitutional rights, our 4th amendment protections, who's to say they're not going to find a reason to take away that key amendment out here, the 2nd.

And how can anyone look at the current financial crisis and think that privatizing social security really makes sense? Too many small farmers and ranchers have little more to show for their years and years trying to make a go on this unforgiving land than the social security they've been paying into. Too many small business owners have been trying to do the right thing by their employees and provide health care to think that individual health savings plans are going to solve a crisis, when they know how tough it is for their people to make ends meet.

And far too many people out here have lost someone they love in a war they know was unjustified and unjust.

This year, those are the things people are talking about, and they're talking about it with Democrats, volunteers and candidates alike. The energetic campaigns in Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada are reminding people who might not have seen a Democrat in decades that we don't have horns and forked tails. And that we might just have some good ideas on how to fix the mess that one-party rule has gotten us into.

That's a long answer to the World Herald's question. A better answer would be a Democratic sweep of the region in 2008, and the Democratic party proving to them, and to the nation, that we're the party of all the people.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter's weekly blogs are part of a feature on PoliticsWest called "Diary of a Mad Voter." The group blog, published in partnership with NewWest.Net/Politics, is intended to give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the 2008 election year.

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