LETTERS.

Voting While Rural

Many responses to the February/March issue were about John Nichols's "Further Comment: The Price of Ignoring Rural Voters." Here is a sampling:

John, I'm as frustrated as you that our party is not performing well in rural America. I was raised in Winneshiek County, Iowa, by farming grandparents and Republican parents. I voted for Nixon's re-election in my first presidential election. My dad said, "They all do it, he just got caught."

Fifty years later, when virtually everyone is getting caught at some level of election atrocity--albeit way more of this goes on in the Republican Party--I am all about this rural-urban divide and why Iowans and Wisconsinites have lost their way to the ballot box for farmer and worker rights and social equity. These are troubled times, but rural voters will vote according to their kitchen table issues when they're framed appropriately.

--Julie Stroeve, web comment

We commend the writer for his astute and unbiased assessment of the recent [Wisconsin Third] District Congressional race and its outcome. Surely there can be no disagreement with the tenets of this article, as the politically neutral stance of this publication, The Nation, and The Capital Times of Madison are widely recognized by all except those who may be rightwing extremists.

--James Jenco, web comment

How many times do we have to hear that Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy works (if implemented)? But why do the feckless Democrats continue to flail? It's because the high-priced campaign consultants can't make any money off the smaller rural districts, so they don't work in those districts. Either there is a massive recession that ushers in the progressives or we get money out of politics. We're not going to change the trajectory of the United States by listening to the cabal of high-priced campaign consultants.

--Bobster33, web comment

Voice in the Wilderness

Leah Harris is the voice crying in the wilderness. Will we listen? Congratulations on the publication of this wonderful article, "Defining What It Means to Care" (February/March issue).

The Progressive used to be one of my mom's favorite magazines. She would read it cover to cover, religiously, although I always found it to be dry and rarely made it through an entire edition. This gives me hope that so-called progressives will ultimately see the futility of more "psychiatric beds" and the expansion of forced institutionalization, forced drugging, forced shock, etc., as the...