McGovern Democrats on the Prairie

Way out on a family farm about 20 miles north of Lemmon, South Dakota, across the railroad tracks and technically in North Dakota, I meet for the first time my wife's aunt and uncle and her 93-year-old grandmother. Astonishingly, they are all dyed-in-wool Democrats, and not just DLC centrist Clintonites, but super-liberal, left-wing George McGovern Democrats.

We immediately commenced in a Great Plains version of what Fox News likes to call "Bush bashing," which culminated in the 93-year-old daughter of the original couple who homesteaded these 160 acres back in 1907 asking me why hasn't anyone assassinated George W. Bush yet. Hearing this sentiment from a rural mid-western great-grandmother of eight, who later also expressed her hope that aliens from another planet might abduct Bush, sent me into a fit of laughter. I also thought that I better immediately notify Homeland Security and the Secret Service because this elderly farmwoman clearly constituted a viable threat to our national security and could be a senior operative of that feared terrorist group, "Al Qaeda on the Prairie."

(The Bush supporters I spoke with on my trip to the Mountain States and the Midwest expressed their fear of terrorism, saying that 9-11 "changed everything." It seemed that those who are least likely ever to be victims of a terrorist attack were the ones who feared it the most and see the occupation of Iraq as somehow protecting them.)

If you stand still in silence outside the two little houses on the farm you can hear the rustling of the grasslands. The wind hums in your ears as if it traveled across a continent unimpeded. The ear cilia seem to vibrate at the same frequency as the prairie grass. The tractor sits idly by waiting to be set free on the land, and spools of hay dot the landscape receding into the distance playing an optical trick worthy of M.C. Escher. With no moon the plains are an empty blackness at night, vacant, the cones and rods of your eyes don't know what to do, and your retinas snap shut blocking light from tickling your occipital lobe. Now I know what agoraphobia feels like.

My new uncle knows every millimeter of his family's land. He knows when the hay is too wet with dew to bale, and what nutrients the soil needs to grow the wheat. He gets small checks from both the federal and state governments, which keep the little family farm afloat. Now in his mid-60s, he's the eldest son who holds down the farm. He and his wife care for his 93-year-old mother who lives in a little house the family built in the 1920s. She has lived on the farm all her life. The astounding artifacts stuffed inside the attic and the basement of that old farmhouse should be commissioned to a museum. His grandfather homesteaded this land, and his three boys have all left the state. There is nobody who will keep it going after he can no longer do so.

The nearest town, Lemmon, South Dakota, with a population of just over 1,300 was preparing for its centennial celebration as well as an "all-school" class reunion. My wife's parents, aunts and uncles all graduated from Lemmon High School and are returning to attend the reunions of the classes of 1957 and 1962. Downtown Lemmon hasn't seen this kind of excitement in decades and a large circus tent has been erected in preparation for the 100th anniversary festivities. A locally produced video in honor of the town, which was founded by the Texan, "Dad" Lemmon, in 1907 features interviews with dozens of residents. Watching it with my in-laws it is clear that they know every single person who appears in the two-hour video. At the end there is a montage with music and photographs from past yearbooks of Lemmon High School. The youthful images of my new family members flutter across the screen of grandma's television set. Then we tune in to Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert.

The McGovern Democrats in these parts are severely outnumbered by the Bush lovers, but the fact that they've hung on to their New Deal values shows that Karl Rove's brand of "politics" has its limitations even in the remote heartland of America.