Savannah is one of the YouTube vloggers to whom my kidlet subscribes. I just happened to be in the room this week as she exhorted her viewers to view others complexly and by trying to understand others and their experiences, we begin to understand ourselves better. Out of the mouths of babes, as it were.
But it's something I've been thinking a lot about this week. When the workers voted against unionizing the new VW plant in Tennessee, I heard a lot of otherwise sharp progressives piss and moan about the stupidity of Southerners operating against their interests. But here's the thing that smug outside liberals aren't getting: they *are* voting their identities. We can't get their votes by calling them stupid. We can't get their votes by dismissing them as a lost cause because of their home region. What we can do is to try to understand them--complexly. And to let them get to know us. We can work helping them identify more with us than them. And maybe we can then start pushing the narrative back to what works for most Americans instead of the few elites.
And then maybe I can stop seeing George Bush, Bill Kristol, John McCain, George Will, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Rick Perry and all these other wealthy conservatives with whom no ordinary Americans should identify on my damn television Sunday after Sunday.
ABC's "This Week" — Former President George W. Bush and Marine Corps veteran and Team Rubicon co-founder Jacob Wood. Roundtable: Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman, and Weekly Standard editor and ABC News contributor William Kristol.
NBC's "Meet the Press" — National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Political Roundtable: New York Times columnist David Brooks, New York Times White House Correspondent Helene Cooper, Co-Anchor and Managing Editor of the PBS NewsHour Judy Woodruff and Host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” Chris Matthews. Energy policy: Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. Olympian Mark Wells.
CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Govs. Bobby Jindal, R-La., and Martin O'Malley, D-Md. Margaret Brennan, CBS News’ State Department Correspondent. Panel: Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent for The New York Times, Dan Balz, chief correspondent for The Washington Post, Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report, and our CBS News political director John Dickerson.
MSNBC's "UP with Steve Kornacki" -- St. Sen Linda Greenstein (D-NJ); Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, msnbc contributor; Adrienne Elrod, communications director, Correct the Record; Perry Bacon, Jr., msnbc contributor; Robert George, New York Post; Corey Stoll, actor, “House of Cards” Season 1; Sahil Kapur, Talking Points Memo.
MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry" -- Igor Volsky, Managing Editor at ThinkProgress.org; Ilyassa Shabazz, Daughter of Malcolm X / Author of “Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X”; Tsedeye Gebreselassie, Staff Attorney at the National Employment Law Project; Seema Iyer, Criminal Defense Attorney / Former Prosecutor in the Bronx DA’s Office ; Andy Kroll, Mother Jones; Lucia McBath, Mother of Jordan Davis / Spokesperson for Moms Demand Action; Avik Roy, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute ; Marcus Mabry, New York Times Lede Blog Editor; Tamara Draut, Vice President of Policy and Research at DEMOS; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
MSNBC's "Disrupt with Karen Finney" -- Grace Garcia, Annie’s List; Jared Bernstein, MSNBC Contributor; Robert Draper, contributing writer; Viviana Hurtado, Wise Latina Club; Jodi Jacobson, RH Reality Check; Heather White, Environmental Working Group.
CNN's "State of the Union" — Govs. Rick Perry, R-Texas, Mike Pence, R-Ind., Dannel Malloy, D-Conn., Jay Nixon D-Mo. Panel: Robert Costa of the Washington Post, Democratic Strategist Penny Lee, and the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" -- Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
"Fox News Sunday" — Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; Govs. Scott Walker, R-Wis., and Peter Shumlin, D-Vt. Panel: George Will; Jane Harman, President of Woodrow Wilson Center & Fmr Congresswoman (D-CA); Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America; Juan Williams.
So what's catching your eye this morning?
