By Rebecca Boyle
rboyle@fortcollinsnow.com, (Bio) rboyle@fortcollinsnow.com
9:10 a.m. MT Mar 21, 2008

Few people nowadays have the political confidence to call elected Democrats “as weak as Canadian hot sauce” and Republicans “idiots” who don’t want the government to succeed.

But few people are like Jim Hightower.

A national radio commentator, author and public speaker, Hightower is one of those rare talking heads in American politics—someone who actually seems to care about the proverbial “little guy.”

Many might profess worries about middle-class workers or family farmers, but Hightower has been one of them, and has spent most of his career fighting for them, the people he calls “the powers that ought to be.”

His new book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow, was published March 10 and he embarked last week on a nationwide book tour to promote it. The tour includes a stop in Fort Collins next week to headline the county Democratic Party’s annual dinner and fundraiser, so Hightower took some time to speak with Fort Collins Now in advance of his visit.

Hightower’s career has been mostly spent advocating for progressive, populist politics—read grassroots Democrats—so his speech next week and his interviews are chock full of anti-Bush and anti-Republican sentiment.

Hightower has worked on both sides of the political playing field—in journalism and government. A graduate of the University of North Texas, he worked in Washington, D.C., as a legislative aide to Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas and later was editor of the Texas Observer, a spunky newspaper. He “then made the only downward career move you can make from journalism, which is to go into politics, and managed to get elected agriculture commissioner,” as Hightower puts it.

He ran a populist campaign and founded the Agribusiness Accountability Project, which focused on corporate power in the food economy.

Then he got off on his “big-mouth career,” delivering speeches, hosting a radio show and writing books, becoming known as one of the country’s foremost populists.

Like other homespun Western figures, in the spirit of Molly Ivins, John Wayne, even Roy Rogers, what Hightower says is often as notable as the way he says it.

With that in mind, Fort Collins Now had a lengthy interview with Hightower on which he touched on everything from George W. Bush to the new evangelical movement.

To see Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower is the keynote speaker at the Larimer County Democratic Party’s annual fundraiser and dinner, which also features a silent auction. Copies of his books will be available for signing. For more information about the event, including how to be a table captain and other details, visit the party’s annual dinner page at www.larimerdems.org/annualdinner.html. Admission: $85; Students and Active Military: $35 1. Mail in a check and registration form to the Larimer County Democratic Party, P.O. Box 1252, Fort Collins, CO 80522 2. Buy online (But you still have to fill out the registration form) 3. Buy online and fill out the registration form electronically. What: Larimer County Democrats’ annual dinner, featuring commentator Jim Hightower When: Saturday, March 29; Registration 5-7 p.m., Dinner 7-10 p.m. Where: Marriott Hotel, 350 Horsetooth Rd, Fort Collins Contacts: Ann Harroun, 461-9177, a.harroun@comcast.net or Nancy Tellez, 282-0492, ntellez@frii.com.

Fort Collins Now: You have observed Texas politics for a long time. What do you think of the emergence of progressive politics in the West, as evidenced by the footholds progressive politicians have made? What changed to turn this part of the country blue?

Jim Hightower: It has always been there, sort of a dormant giant, and has been unleashed in recent years because we’ve had good Democratic candidates that have been willing to stand up as actual Democrats. Texas, for example, it’s considered the reddest of the red states, yet the fact is that the people of Texas did not suddenly turn right-wing or much less Republican; rather they quit voting during the ’90s and early 2000 years. Because, for example, when George W. was re-elected governor in ’98—a victory that he hailed as his ability to score big electoral triumphs, arguing for his presidential candidacy—he produced the lowest voter turnout in the country. It was something like 26 percent of the people voted, which made him something like 14 percent the choice of the people of Texas.

What happened is, over the last several election cycles, Democrats had quit being Democrats in the state, preferring instead to be Republican-lite candidates and abandoning the party’s traditional grassroots campaign focus in favor of trying to raise money from rich people and throw that money at television and media streams. So if the Democrats were not waving the flag of “we’re the people of ... the little guy,” they didn’t go vote for candidates like Bush. They just said, “Well nobody seems to care about me, so I don’t care about them.”

In this election cycle, in the presidential campaign, with Obama and Clinton, there is genuine enthusiasm all across the country, and people see a potential for them to matter again. Not merely in the politics, but actually in the government. And you don’t need to be more than a barstool psychiatrist to kind of figure that one out. If you think you matter, you’re probably gonna participate.

Of course in Texas we get to vote twice—and it’s legal—(laughs) so I went to my caucus, which is in a Baptist church right across the street from a bar, of course, in Texas, so you can get baptized either way.

In 2004 ...16 people show up for the precinct caucus in that precinct (in Austin). This time there were over 400, and that was happening all across the state. ... It was so big in this precinct that the church was not big enough for all the people.

That’s just a measure of what happens when people matter. Now that kind of a turnout, that kind of enthusiasm, could actually turn Texas blue in the November election.

FCNow: You really think so?

JH: I think it’s possible. It’s not a done deal, in part because the Democrats can implode—they have shown an ability to do that.

FCNow: That would have been a pretty revolutionary statement even a year ago.

JH: Yeah, it would have been considered loony bin territory.

FCNow: Speaking of that turnout, what do you think is causing it? Was there some other sea change that made people feel like they can participate more than ever?

JH: Yes, there has been a sea change of Republican supporters saying, “Who are these people?” Meaning the Bush-ites. As Charles Barkley put it, the NBA player, “I was a Republican until they went crazy.”

I sat on the airplane last week, going to Philadelphia as part of this madhouse book tour thing, and I sat next to a guy who is a Republican. And he said he’s voting for Obama. He just thinks they’re idiots. It’s not a matter just of their extremism, they’re just idiots, they’re incompetent, they can’t run the government, probably don’t even want the government to succeed. And one thing he liked about Obama, Obama was willing to sit down and talk to the enemy. He liked that ... so that big change has taken place within the Republican electorate, so they’re left with that, whatever it is, 29 percent who actually approve of Bush’s presidency. You’re down at mad cow level when you get to those numbers. (laughs)

But at the same time, Democrats—not only presidentially but in state legislative races and down-ballot races—we’re fielding better candidates who have had more campaign training and more connection to the grassroots, and the message is becoming clearer that what I call “tinkle-down economics” has not been working, so let’s try a little percolate up from the grassroots. And then the Iraq war, and environmentalism, and whatever else. That message is what a large, sort of ignored constituency has been wanting to hear.

FCNow: Can you point to a moment when this happened, or started to happen? Was there a turning point?

JH: It came out of the 2004 election. People were ready then. And so we served up John Kerry. (laughs) And people said, “Ew, no thank you.”

I mean, he’s a perfectly competent guy and a bright guy and et cetera, but he could not connect with working people (if) you put him on the corner handing out free Budweisers and Slim Jims. Yet he might actually have won, despite all that, which is a measure of how desperate people were to vote Democrat in the presidential race. But he couldn’t pull it off. He was listening to the same advisers who told Al Gore to be “Al the stiff,” instead of “Al the real guy” who we are now discovering.

But another thing happened, which was (former Vermont Gov. Howard) Dean. His campaign energized a lot of new people in the Democratic Party who were overtly progressive and believed that that was the role of the party. And even though Dean lost, those people stayed active, including through his Democracy For America groups.

Those folks got involved and got elected to county Democratic chair positions, and began to revitalize the organization of the party at a grassroots level. So now their efforts, including their recruiting of legislative candidates and others, have begun to have its impact.

And his strategy of being active in all 50 states, I think has proven exactly the medicine that the party needed, though I know that people like (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee member) Charles Schumer and (House Democratic caucus chair) Rahm Emmanuel, the money bags of the Democratic party, bitterly disagree with that. But I think Dean has been proven correct.

And then, in the last election cycle, 2006, we put forward wonderful candidates. Just look at the Senate, John Tester in Montana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Bernie Sanders in Vermont—those are not just Democrats but progressive Democrats.

A lot of people got so energized by that election that they thought “Well, we succeeded.” And then of course they get disappointed, because the congressional leadership has been as weak as Canadian hot sauce. So they’ve caved in to Bush again and again and that’s appalled a lot of people.

But I say to those people, buck up. You don’t win in just one election cycle. Those good people whom you elected in 2006 are making the good fight on the inside, and we just have to add to their numbers.

I think the people rose up in 2006 and shouted at the establishment, “You are all horse hockey, and we want change.” By that they mean policy change ... change on the economic policy for sure.

It would be possible that since they were disappointed with the result of their shout for change for 2006, that they would have been dispirited and gone away. However, they’ve come back, shouting louder and more intensely and more insistently than ever before, saying “We really meant it.”

And I think particularly with the Obama campaign, it has enthused so many young people and people who have not been voting, there is a sense that we might have a messenger for that change. And Hillary Clinton has some of that too of course, but I think it’s Obama that has brought the new people into the process. But nonetheless, both of them have generated real grassroots enthusiasm, and it’s based on people who don’t merely want Bush replaced, they want a new direction for the country. I think it’s a historic moment.



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FCNow: If Obama does not win the nomination, will that turn some people off? Will they be disgusted with politics? Is it the party or the candidates who are getting people excited?

JH: It will turn off some people, particularly some of the younger people, but I don’t know that it will turn them off so much. I don’t think large numbers of them would refuse to vote, for instance.

It’s not the party that’s exciting them, it’s the candidates. I think they would say Hillary Clinton is good, and so we’ll go there. But they will continue to push, though, in the next election cycle, 2010, for better people.

And even for Obama, that’s my message—what excites me about the Obama phenomenon is not Obama but the phenomenon. The enthusiasm that people have for themselves.

Yes, he’s articulate, yes he’s attractive, yes he has good policies. But he’s not gonna be able to do it—the only way you can govern progressively is if you bring a constituency into the White House, because otherwise you are going into the White House with the same party operatives and the special interests. The people have to come into the White House themselves, in terms of support, legitimate grassroots support, and demand for change.

The most important moment is the day after the election. When a Democrat gets elected, then the ground forces have to move in there and say, “Look, now you’re in and we expect these things to happen.” Connecting that inside action to the outside, or to the outsiders, I guess, is essential.

I think we have a 1932 possibility here. With (Franklin) Roosevelt, we had a deteriorating economic situation, and other problems as well. And the country rejected Hoover. But Roosevelt did not campaign on the New Deal, because he did not have a New Deal. He did campaign on, “I’m gonna be on your side.” His 1932 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention talked about this movement to restore our country to its own people.

The New Deal people came after he was inside. People like Sidney Hillman, a number of labor intellectuals, had come up with the programs, and several states had pioneered some programs.

You see that now in Colorado, really a lot of the West, in environmental policies, health care, living wage ordinances, real grassroots reforms. Those are test labs that a president can move into the national level, and that’s what happened after Roosevelt was elected. But again, because the people were a part of it. He had a grassroots constituency, so when the special interests moved in, as they will, the only way you can reject that is to go to the people and say, look what they’re trying to do.



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FCNow: You are talking about traditional populism. How do you define modern populism? Is it catching on more now, or are candidates talking about it more than ever?

JH: Populism is a push to counter corporate power. Even today, it would be (fighting) corporate hegemony over almost every aspect of our lives, with Democratic initiatives and processes, decentralizing economic power.

FCNow: Are our modern candidates populists?

JH: I think a number of them are. Yeah, it’s now OK to talk about what Wal-Mart does to small communities and now cities and neighborhoods, and what Wal-Mart does to the middle-class wage, what Wal-Mart is doing to organic farming.

So it’s more than OK to talk about the offshoring, not merely of jobs but of middle class opportunities. The demise of the middle class is real and demonstrable and people know it because they know their own situation. Over the last 30 years, as we’ve had Democratic as well as Republican administrations, we’ve had 90 percent of the people lose income. It really is the top one-tenth of 1 percent that has made off with all the cookies.

FCNow: Talk a little bit about your new book. What inspired you to start writing books? When did you get involved in politics?

JH: It’s a fabulous book. (Laughs) It is a reflection of what I’ve been talking about with you, but also a reflection of the deep drive for change that now is expressing itself in presidential politics. This change has not only been called for over the last, well, for a long time, but certainly over the last eight years, but it also has been acted on.

It’s about people, just ordinary people, who are doing the most extraordinary things at the grassroots level. They are rejecting the conventional wisdom and the corporate ethos of your sole reason for existence is to make us wealth. And they are beginning to redefine themselves by their progressive values, in banking even, in religion.

Susan DeMarco, my co-author, and I have been lucky because we get to travel a lot. And we were finding a very different America out there than was being defined in the establishment media.

We tell 50 stories of folks who are out there making these changes and living these values, and we didn’t have to go do research to find them because we just came across them.

One is the Madison cab cooperative (Union Cab of Madison Co-Op, in Madison, Wisc.). I was taking a cab to the airport, and the cabbie turned around and said, “Do you know you are taking a union cab?”

He had been one of the founders in the 1970s of what began as a unionizing effort of a cab company, and then turned into the cabbies taking over the cab company and organizing it as a co-op. They have had their ups and downs over the years, but now have managed to make a very successful cab company and run it on democratic principles and allow them to have a middle-class life.

He told me that he was able to put two kids through college driving a cab. Not many people can do that, not many cabbies can do that.

So it just means that business is not a synonym for corporation. It’s just one way to run a business, but it’s not the only way.

ShoreBank is another example. They believe in having a triple bottom line. Not only making a profit but also being environmentally responsible and making environmental progress and making community development essential.

And then there’s Chris Johnson, the pharmacist in Texas, who was making $100,000 a year as a pharmacist at a chain drug store, and being sick to his stomach because people would come up with their prescriptions and not be able to afford them. As a corporate functionary, he had no authority to say, “Let’s work something out, you need this medicine.” So he spun out and created a store called MedSavers, targeted specifically to people who don’t have insurance, or whose insurance doesn’t cover prescriptions. He primarily sells generic drugs, so he doesn’t deal with insurance companies. You can’t buy a chain saw in his drug store, but because of that, he is able to reduce prices. A prescription that would cost $59, he can sell it for $16, because he knows the obscene profit levels that are built into the price by the pharmaceutical giants. So he is able to whack that down and have a personal relationship with his customers. And his store is (open from) 10 to 6, which means he can have breakfast with his sons and wife and be home in time for dinner. It’s a better life for him ... It’s a matter of aligning your work with your personal values.

The people we write about are not geniuses, they’re not rich, they’re not lucky, they’re people who said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ They tend to be problem-solvers and they tend to be people who have a spirit of fun as well, and that good old spirit of disobedience, which makes America great.

It’s about how you can organize and have fun. As they say up in Wisconsin at the Bob Fest, they can put the party back in politics, and make people want to come to political events.

They’re very uplifting stories. And including stories of Evangelical Christians, who have become a major force in the environmental movement, particularly in global warming, completely discombobulating James Dobson and that ilk, and are making a huge difference. They don’t call it environmentalism, because that is a negative word in politics. They call it creation care. Well, who the hell cares what they call it, it’s the same thing.

We also write about the chief lobbyist for the evangelicals, and he says flat out, “The Republican party hijacked our movement. We are not just gay marriage and abortion, we care about the whole of the gospel, a range of issues” ... and they are not going to be limited anymore. They’ve broken free of Karl Rove’s reservation.



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FCNow: How did you get involved in politics?

JH: I really grew up in it, in Denison, Texas, a little town due north of Dallas, a town of merchants and railroad workers and small farmers around and they were full of the populist spirit. My own father, he would have called himself a conservative, if the other choice was liberal. But if you talk to him about what the bank holding companies were doing to small businesses like him, or what the oil lobby was doing down in Austin or up in Washington, then he was a William Jennings Bryan, not a conservative at all ... so I think I had always been a populist. In college I learned what that was called. There had been a populist movement, it had actually begun in Texas.

I came of age in the Civil Rights movement, and anti-war movement, and I saw what grassroots people can do and how hard it is, but how tough people really are in the face of not just discomfort but death. In blood and death they were willing to take on the powers that be on behalf of the powers that ought to be, the ordinary working folks, and make a difference ... Now, the big D Democrats are regaining their connection to little D democracy, and that’s why we’re making gains.

We just have to do more of it.

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