Russ Feingold Gasses up the Van.

A couple days ago, the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel noted Sen. Russ Feingold's post-election trip to Alabama -- ostensibly to go golfing, but quite possibly testing the waters for a presidential bid.

Writing about the Southern trip recently in the politically liberal Web magazine Salon, Feingold sounded themes and used words that were novel compared with the rhetoric that charged his successful run for a third term in the Senate.

The column was reprinted in the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel yesterday, and it's rather banal in its obviousness. But it's that very banality that I think suggests Feingold may be serious about a presidential run this time.

A clue is there right in the second paragraph:

Right after the election, I confess I immediately went looking for a warm place to golf. So I piled into a van with some friends in Milwaukee and drove from Wisconsin to Alabama.

It's the van. The reference to the van is the clue.

Wisconsinites may remember the battered old van as a symbol of Feingold's original Senate bid. If he's hauling the van out of mothballs, he must be planning another run.

The rest of the column recalls John Edwards' "two Americas" theme, with Feingold noting the "check-cashing stores and abject trailer parks" in Alabama.

So many people in Greenville don’t seem to have basic health care coverage or promising job opportunities.

Meanwhile, their children volunteer to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A week after his election and he sounds like he's giving a stump speech. Out of habit? Or because he's now campaigning for something else?

But because I am a lawmaker and a student of history, I also know who has been asking them to give so much.

And I can only wonder how many more generations of central Alabamians will say “yes” when the increasingly powerful Republican Party asks them to be concerned about homosexuality but not about the security of their own health, about abortion but not about the economic futures of their own children.

That's the key paragraph in the whole piece, and it's common rhetoric from the Democratic party. The Republicans have supposedly fooled the people into caring about "God, gays, and guns."

In Tuesday's Opinion Journal, James Taranto notes the tension between the two stereotypes of Republicans -- that they're both the party of the rich and the party of impoverished dupes.

It appears that the latter stereotype is closer to the truth. The 2004 exit polls found that John Kerry outpolled President Bush by 63% to 36% among voters making less than $15,000 a year and 57% to 42% among those making $15,000 to $30,000. Among those in the $30,000 to $50,000 range the two candidates ran nearly even (Kerry 50%, Bush 49%), and Bush led 56% to 43% among those making $50,000 a year or more.

So the Democrats actually are the party of the poor. The problem is that there aren't that many poor people in America, or if there are, they tend not to vote. Only 8% of the exit-poll participants were in the under $15,000 group, and only 45% made less than $50,000.

Taranto also notes a paradox in Feingold's own arguments.

If Democrats care so much about the "downtrodden," and if the GOP is playing on their false consciousness by emphasizing things that don't matter like abortion and homosexuality, why don't the Democrats simply adopt pro-life and antigay positions, so that they can win office on their superior economic programs and actually do something for these fortuneless folks?

The question answers itself, doesn't it? Russ Feingold would never endorse, say, the Human Life Amendment or the Federal Marriage Amendment, because they are against his principles. Indeed, we're guessing he has enough integrity that he'd rather lose an election than change these positions.

In other words, if homosexuality and abortion are trivial matters -- if Southerners shouldn't concern themselves so much with them -- then why do the Democrats cling to their positions on them so tightly?

But mark my words. Feingold is gassing up the van and taking it for a test drive. Watch for more golf vacations in the future.


(Crossposted at Darn Floor)