In places like Montana, it might be time for a Plan B.
 | By John Guida Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Things have gotten so bad for Democrats in certain parts of red America that they should be voting for candidates who aren't Democrats. |
That's the argument Sarah Vowell, a writer and historian, makes in a guest essay today about places like the Second Congressional District in eastern Montana, where a Democrat is very unlikely to win. |
Instead, she says, Democrats should vote for the independent candidate, Gary Buchanan, and against the Republican, Matt Rosendale, who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. |
"Realistic Democrats allying with Republican defectors and the unaffiliated to elect civic-minded independents could look like the bipartisan coalition" backing Buchanan. She also points to the Senate race in Utah, which pits the independent candidate, Evan McMullin, against Senator Mike Lee, a Republican. |
In a brief conversation, I asked Sarah about Montana politics, why the state, or so much of it, has become an unwelcome place for Democrats and what still makes her hopeful about her home. |
John Guida: Not so long ago, Montana had two consecutive Democratic governors (Steve Bullock and Brian Schweitzer). In 2008 Barack Obama lost the state by only 2.5 points. Now the only statewide Democrat in office is Senator Jon Tester. And Joe Biden lost it by over 15 points. What happened to the Democratic Party there? |
Sarah Vowell: Finally! I always wanted to be one of those provincial rubes interviewed by The New York Times about how the hinterlands resents Democrats. Let's pretend I'm answering this question from a barstool at the Western Cafe. |
After the last election, on a conference call in which House Democrats debriefed on how the party got crushed down ballot, moderate Democrats like Representative Abigail Spanberger (Democrat of Virginia) reportedly pleaded with colleagues to stop using the word "socialist" because it helped elect Republicans. I agreed with her, but I also laughed, because Montana Democrats cannot even campaign using the word "Democrat." Steve Bullock, who was running for U.S. Senate in 2020, was slightly ahead in the polls that spring, but the second I saw my first "defund the police" protest sign I knew he would lose. The ads wrote themselves. |
The most half-baked, stuck-up pronouncements of what I call the "upstream" Democrats all float down river onto the middle of the country and help elect Republicans. The beauty of independents as candidates is that they carry none of the baggage or knee-jerk cultural disdain that comes with the word "Democrat." |
JG: What moved you about the coming together of the former gubernatorial opponents Dorothy Bradley (a Democrat) and Marc Raciciot (a Republican)? |
SV: When they ran against each other for governor in 1992, they sparred in about 30 debates across Montana. So seeing them come together to endorse the independent was an especially historic moment of solidarity — or an urgent warning about the degraded state of the two-party system, depending on my mood. Bradley was my girlhood state legislator, and I looked up to her and her circle of female Democratic colleagues. When I was a teenager some local chauvinist farmer claimed that a woman shouldn't fill a vacant seat on the county commission because women can't operate heavy machinery. So Bradley and her pals rode tractors down Main Street in the Sweet Pea parade as a wry counterargument. |
Liberals standing up to unfairness doesn't always have to involve some condescending, humorless tirade. And her friend Jane got appointed commissioner, so there. |
JG: After the 2020 census, Montana got awarded a second congressional district. Why is that important, and who are all these new Montanans? |
SV: The population surge predates the pandemic, but that definitely amped up the influx of newcomers. Some of them arrived with laptops and mountain bikes and probably lean Democrat. Some of them are the sort of right wingers that make you look up whether the F.B.I. has a field office in Kalispell. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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