Following up on yesterday’s item about Russ Feingold exploring a presidential bid, the Wisconsin senator popped up again today with an interesting piece in Salon — written by Feingold himself — about what he learned during a recent trip through Alabama.
Feingold and his wife visited Greenville, Ala., which he described thusly: “If the red-and-blue map of the United States were to have an intensity meter, this place may well glow as the reddest spot on the whole map.”
The more time they spent in Greenville, however, the more discouraged he was about the local residents’ future.
After our meal that evening, we drove around Greenville to see what there was to see. And what we saw — check-cashing stores and abject trailer parks, and some of the hardest-used cars for sale on a very rundown lot — told us the people there were hurting economically and deserved more than they were getting.
Now, I know that some from Alabama reading this may dismiss my comments as those of a lesser Neil Young, just another person Southern Man doesn’t need around anyhow. But I’ve traveled enough to know that there are Greenvilles all over this country, including in my home state of Wisconsin. Having held town hall meetings in every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties each year for the past 12 years, I’ve heard repeatedly of the difficult struggles that so many working families are enduring in both urban and rural areas. And in this Greenville, the one in Alabama, I connected again to an American experience that isn’t dictated by whether you live in a red state or a blue state.
The people of Alabama appear to be among the most generous and most unsung philanthropists in this country. What they give is unimaginable to many others and they give it time and again: They regularly give their turn at the American dream to someone else. And they give it simply because they’re asked. So many people in Greenville don’t seem to have basic healthcare coverage or promising job opportunities. Meanwhile, their children volunteer to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can only be humbled by their sacrifice.
But because I am a lawmaker and a student of history, I also know who has been asking them to give so much. And I can only wonder how many more generations of central Alabamians will say yes when the increasingly powerful Republican Party asks them to be concerned about homosexuality but not about the security of their own health, about abortion but not about the economic futures of their own children. As my wife and I drove through Greenville that night, I thought how fundamentally unfair this all is in order to support an increasingly radical conservative movement.
Feingold added that he’s tired of the idea that working families should vote against their self interest because cynical conservatives, who exploit the politics-of-division, insist they should.
We need to go to the Greenvilles of every state, red and blue, and say, “Thank you. You’ve sacrificed long enough. Now it’s your turn at the American dream.”
Call me crazy, but this as the ring of a presidential stump speech. Hmm…