We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my brother’s; his wife cooked a yummy Southern holiday meal (all great, except for her insistence on boiling the stringbeans until they were limp and gray – a characteristic of Southern cooking I’ll never understand). As usual, the Beaujolais Nouveau went incredibly well with the turkey.

They live in a lovely duplex in South Pasadena; they are talking about moving, though because the living room isn’t big enough to contain their television set. It’s one of the ones that’s about 5′ wide and 3′ tall, and they have it hooked to a satellite dish that numbers it’s channels in the 100’s. They’re both sports fanatics (unlike me) and we spent quite a bit of the pre-meal warmup drinking martinis and watching the Dolphins-Cowboys game. I know the basic rules of football, but the appeal is lost on me. Same with baseball – although an August evening game at Dodger Stadium has its pleasures. I’ll fess up to asking friends to tape Tour de France coverage or coverage of Motorcycle Grand Prix racing, so I’m not a total sports teetotaler.So we drank and snacked and chatted about all and sundry, with a substantial detour into politics – they’re both big moveon.org supporters – when the game paused, and halftime began.

The halftime show was elaborate, and somehow brought Larry McMurtry to my mind – and it featured a performance by country singer Toby Keith.

I’ve talked about the divide between the country-music part of America and the non-country-music part of America before, and while my sister-in-law isn’t too fond of Toby’s politics (as expressed in his music), she does like him a lot.

The show was – surprise – highly patriotically themed, and I recall that he chose both ‘American Soldier‘ and ‘Beer For My Horses,’ both sung in front of a giant American flag backdrop, with video insets of troops in uniform.

I looked at my brother and said – “That’s why the Democrats are in trouble. The imagery right there is currently owned by the GOP, and until the Democrats figure out how to stand in front of it without looking silly, they’ll have a hard time winning national elections.”

We’d been discussing the election. He & his wife are of the visceral hate-Bush crowd, and my mother wants desperately to oppose Bush, but is anxious about national defense – i.e. is in my mind the perfectly typical voter.

I made my point, and they sat glumly watching the halftime show.

I was reminded of this because I just caught something on my homepage, Google News.

Liberal columnist Tom Teepen has an op-ed up: ‘Nasty nonsense, yes, but Democrats must answer.’

The Democrats who would be president are fuming over a TV ad the Republican National Committee is running in Iowa, where the nominating caucuses are near.

The Democrats’ anger is understandable, but the ad is doing them a service. It makes plain, and inescapable, the challenge their nominee will have to meet if he is to have something better than the proverbial snowball’s chance of contesting President Bush’s reelection.

…

It is not enough for the Democratic contenders to pound on the president’s assorted missteps and misrepresentations in the Iraq War. An increasing number of Americans share that unease, but the terrorist threat remains real — and the abiding question is how it can best be confronted, contained and defeated.

…

The executive director of Amnesty International USA makes the same point the Republican ad does. William Schulz says junk slogans like “Regime change at home” and “No blood for oil” mask a liberal “failure to give necessary attention, analysis and strategizing to the effort to counter terrorism and protect our fundamental right to security.”

When you are hearing the same message from both your friends and your opponents, it would be wise to listen.

Word.

I desperately want to want a Democrat to win in 2004 (no, that’s not a typo). I’m unhappy as hell with Bush’s domestic policies; I think the GOP ‘hand the keys to the Treasury to our donor base’ is arguably worse than the Democratic version of the same thing; I doubt that the kind of tax, employment, energy or domestic security policies that I want to see implemented will make the grade in a Republican Administration.

But I’ve got two large roadblocks in my path.

The first is that I need to see a credible response to what I see as a multinational Islamist threat. Note that ‘using the criminal justice system’ and ‘seeking UN action’ is not, prima facie, a credible response.

Bush has done a lot wrong as I note, but he seems to be doing one thing right.

Yes, the postwar was imperfectly planned. But perfect plans only exist in movies made by Joel Silver. reality is be definition messy, contingent, and frightening – as we are seeing today. His trip and speech meant a lot to me; I’ve demanded for a while that he show an ‘iron butt’, and I’d have to say it will be hard for him to get up from the table after what he’s done now.

The second is that I want to see a Democratic ideology that embraces America instead of holding it at arm’s length.

I know that one comment or one blog post doesn’t define even the individual who wrote it. But I see things out there that lead me to believe certain things.

Here’s a post from Alas, A Blog, a major left blog (note that I’ve had some great and productive discussions with Barry; the quoted post is a Thanksgiving post by his co-blogger Bean):

…many of us (myself included) will also be telling ourselves that we aren’t celebrating the “real” Thanksgiving and all its racist and genocidal history, but rather enjoying the long weekend that allows out-of-town friends and family to visit, the excuse to eat lots of good food, and treating it as any other holiday, with or without awareness of what this day has historically meant. Why should it be any different from the way we celebrate any other holiday — Memorial Day, Labor Day, and (for some of us, at least) Christmas or Passover?

But today is not Thanksgiving for many of our fellow Americans. And, while I will be spending my time with friends and eating good food today, I would like to take a moment to reflect on another “holiday” taking place today.

This was written by a dear friend of mine, Nikkiru, and my thoughts will be with her today.

As many of you are aware, The official U.S. “Thanksgiving” is observed by many indigenous people and allies as the National Day of Mourning. Some may not be aware of the history behind that.

I don’t single this post out to encourage people to rush over and hassle Bean or Barry. I don’t even disagree with them that much of the history of this nation (as all other nations) is written in blood – even often innocent blood.

I do completely disagree over the response to that history. And I do believe that my political party – the Democrats – and many of the supporters of their leading candidate – Howard Dean – are closer to Bean than to me in their view of how to value America.

That’s a problem for me. It’s also a problem for them, since they are really damn unlikely to get the votes of the Toby Keith fans who stood and cheered him on during his performance.

Even though those fans are the ones who would benefit substantially from policies tilted more toward the working and away from the owning. Because people don’t just vote their economic interests.

Sometimes they vote their hearts.

And sometimes they vote their fears.

Right now, both would seem to be in play.