The only real sparks in last night’s rather tepid debate were when many of the candidates ganged up on Howard Dean over he remarked “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks”. To be honest, I’m a little shocked about all this controversy. His confederate flags quote (which he’s been saying for months) is one of the reasons I’ve supported him in the first place.

Here was the initial spat between Sharpton and Dean :

QUESTION: I recently read a comment that you made where you said that you wanted to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. When I read that comment, I was extremely offended.

Could you explain to me how you plan on being sensitive to needs and issues regarding slavery and African-Americans, after making a comment of that nature?

DEAN: Sure. Martin Luther King said that it was his dream that the sons of slave holders and the sons of slaves sit down around a table and make common good.

There are 102,000 kids in South Carolina right now with no health insurance. Most of those kids are white. The legislature cut $70 million out of the school system. Most of the kids in the public school system are white. We have had white Southern working people voting Republican for 30 years, and they’ve got nothing to show for it.

They vote for a president who cut 1 percent of this country’s taxpayers’ taxes by $26,000, which is more than they make. And I think we need to talk to white Southern workers about how they vote, because when white people and black people and brown people vote together in this country, that’s the only time that we make social progress, and they need to come back to the Democratic party.

COOPER: Reverend Sharpton, I just want to point out, in the last couple days, earlier last week, you have called some of Governor Dean’s positions anti-black. It sounds very close to calling him racist.

SHARPTON: No, I don’t think the governor is a racist. I think some of his positions would have hurt us. But I think that doesn’t answer, Governor, this young man’s question.

First of all, Martin Luther King said, ‘Come to the table of brotherhood.’ You can’t bring a Confederate flag to the table of brotherhood.

And you can’t misquote Martin Luther King like that. I come out of the King movement, I didn’t just read him. He talked about us leaving racism there. And I think that Maynard Jackson said that the Confederate flag is America’s swastika. If a Southern person running, if John Edwards, a Bob Graham had said that, they’d have been run out this race.

I don’t think you’re a bigot, but I think that is insensitive, and I think you ought to apologize to people for that.

When Bill Clinton was found to be a member of a white-only country club, he apologized. You are not a bigot, but you appear to be too arrogant to say ‘I’m wrong’ and go on.

COOPER: Governor Dean?

DEAN: We’re not going to win in this country, and even worse, Democrats, if we don’t have a big tent. And I’m going to tell you right now, Reverend, you’re right. I am not a bigot. And Jesse Jackson Jr. endorsed me and has stood up for what I said. And Reverend Jesse Jackson went down to South Carolina last week and went to a trailer park which was inhabited by mostly white folks making $25,000 a year. We need to reach out to those people, too, because they suffer as well.

I understand the legacy of racism in this country, and I understand the legacy of bigotry in this country. We need to bring folks together in this race, just like Martin Luther King tried to do before he was killed. He was right. And I make no apologies for reaching out to poor white people.

Y’know, I really hate the confederate flag. I can’t think of anything more un-patriotic than flying the flag of a country that seceded from your own, but that’s just what many in the South do. If I were in charge, I’d celebrate every Fourth of July by marching to Virgina and burning the flag as a warning to the neo-Confederates out there not to try that shit again.

But, what I find so frustrating about all this is that Howard Dean is right. As much as it sucks to admit it, the Democratic party does need to reach out to “people with confederate flags on their trucks”. This doesn’t mean campaigning in Georgia and saying things like “The South shall rise again!!”. It means convincing rural, poor white people that it’s not in their economic best interest to vote Republican.

What’s even more frustrating is that all the other candidates know what Howard Dean means. He’s been saying this for months. The way they’re freaking out, you’d think that Dean had supported flying the Stars n’ Bars over the Capitol or something.

Let’s not loose sight of the fact that there are people on the other side of the aisle that really do love the confederate flag. Although most of us see it as a symbol of racism, there are plenty of well-meaning, non-racist people who see it just as a symbol of southern pride. If you’re serious about making the senate platform appeal to as wide as base as possible, you’ve got to accept these people while sticking firm to your convictions that the Confederate Flag is a divisive and un-American symbol. From what I’ve seen, that’s exactly what Howard Dean has done.

That said, Dean’s defense of himself on this issue was half-assed at best. It left him open to other attacks and ensured that this issue isn’t going to die as soon as he’d like. His responses, while designed to protect himself, ended up just looking like he was protecting those who love the Confederacy. And worse, he left himself open for a big legitimate complaint from Sharpton and Edwards :

SHARPTON: But Confederate flags is not for white people, and that’s sounds more like Stonewall Jackson than Jesse Jackson. And he… Jesse Jackson went to South Carolina with all of us protesting the flag. The issue’s not poor Southern whites. Most poor Southern whites don’t wear a Confederate flag, and you ought not try to stereotype that.
. . .
EDWARDS: And I want to respond to this young man’s questions. Because let me tell you the last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do. That’s the last thing in the world we need in the South. I grew up in the South. I grew up with the very people that you’re talking about. And what Al Sharpton just said is exactly right. The people that I grew up with, the vast majority of them, they don’t drive around with Confederate flags on pickup trucks. One of the problems that we have with young people today is people talk down to you. You know, you get all pigeon-holed. They’ve stereotype you. Exactly the same thing happens with people from the South. I have seen it. I have grown up with it. I’m here to tell you it is wrong. It is condescending. And the only way that we as a party are going to win the White House back is to reach out to everybody and treat them with the dignity and respect that they’re entitled to. That’s what we ought to be doing.

Ouch! That one hurt. Edwards and Sharpton were right, Dean did get awfully close to stereotyping southerners and for that he should be very careful. If he’s not careful, he could easily play into the elitist, New England liberal stereotype that the Republicans have been using against up for years.