I'm serious at least not entirely unserious. I want to turn this talk into a pledge drive. What we need in 2002 and beyond is an articulate, well informed, suburban-pragmatic voting public. They care about protecting the environment and their daughter's or kid sister's right to choose an abortion. They worry what the fundamentalist creed called Globalization will do both to job security at home and to cultural diversity abroad.
Middle managers lose their jobs too when the plant closes.
Whether labor or management, these suburbanites have more or less the same set of concerns. That's the other side. That side has the 700 Club, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, the American Enterprise Institute, and the University of Chicago Law School. The suburban coalition finds that sort of fundamentalist talk, whether religious or economic, distasteful. Give them NPR's Talk of the Nation, Diane Rehm, Todd Mundt, and other call-in shows where the talk is reflective, multilateral, and civil.