Jim Webb is blogging on TPM Cafe this week. Is this guy cool or what?!? Webb's current "guest blog" post is entitled "'The Reagan Democrats' ? and how to get them back." Here's an excerpt, but check out the whole thing at TPM Cafe:
Toward the end of the Vietnam War, a large number of previously loyal Democrats left the party, many of them feeling unwelcome after the party?s drift away from its more traditional support of national defense and blue-collar workers. Some of them ended up supporting Ronald Reagan, while others took positions as independents, and formed much of the group that supported Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996.[...]
It?s time for the Reagan Democrats and others who left the party to understand that their natural base is in the traditional Democratic Party ? the party that best gives a voice to those who lack a full voice in the halls of power. To start with, the Republican party of George W. Bush is not the Republican party of Ronald Reagan. Other than with those who identify with the Christian right, it would be wrong to think that the Republicans have the firm loyalty of those who left the Democrats for Reagan. The decline in public education and the outsourcing of jobs has hit this culture hard. Their sons and daughters serve in large numbers in a war whose validity is increasingly coming into question.
Great stuff. Let's see George Allen write something like THAT! (I mean all by himself, without anyone helping him. Ha.)
[UPDATE: Also, see Webb's interview at MyDD Here's Webb on the blogosphere: "I have really been gratified by the encouragement and the support I have gotten from the blogs, from the blogosphere, for the most part."]
[UPDATE: The MyDD podcast is available here.]