Pandering to the right is not the answer

Once again, Digby has a great post up. In this one, he takes umbrage with a commenter to Josh Marshall's blog who argues that we need to pander to the red states and to the religious right if we ever expect to win an election.

Digby argues this is exactly the wrong strategy. As he points out, the last two red state Democrats, Clinton and Carter, got pummelled by the right despite their right/religious leanings. He argues that this goes back a long way. As evidence, he quotes Lincoln in a speech at Cooper Union saying that there is no way the slave states will stop complaining about the North unless the North wholeheartedly adopts slavery itself and fights to preserve it.

Digby concludes the piece with Lincoln's conclusion:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

That should be our motto as well!