In the mid-fifties, British psychiatrist, pediatrician, and researcher Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) stirred up the world of family psychology by saying that parenting styles fall along two ends of a spectrum. The endpoints of this line are marked by these poles: “authoritarian parenting” and “attachment parenting.”
“Authoritarian parenting” stresses the child’s unconditional conformity and obedience to the parent. It’s all about parental control, followed by the child’s acquiescence to it. Any sense of creative expression or challenge to the established norms is met with punishment. As a consequence, the child develops what Winnicott named a “False Self,” an identity geared and conformed to the parents’ desires, all in order to avoid severe discipline. The child’s own actual identity is forcibly suppressed, perhaps never to be discovered--even as the child grows into an adult.
At the other end, however, is “attachment parenting.” In this model, the primary objective is not unconditional conformity but unconditional love. The parent pays attention to the child’s personality and then encourages its growth, instead of repressing it, and instead of insisting that the child morph into the parent. The kid becomes the kid, not the parents’ imposed version of the kid.
Imposed parental expectations rarely go well for anybody.
So here’s my point, DSCC.
You are clearly unhappy with South Dakota’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Rick Weiland.
Even as late as July 31, 2013, Michael Bennet, chair of the DSCC, said, “We expect to spend money in all of these states, but I think it is fair to say that both sides have work to do to make the respective races competitive. Right now we are actively recruiting in West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota, and expect to have competitive candidates in each of these states.”
“Actively recruiting,” he says...even though our state already has Rick Weiland, a candidate with significant momentum behind him, Tom Daschle’s name behind him, and with no other candidates behind him, beside him, or in front of him.
Nevertheless, you are still meddling, manipulating, maneuvering, and mucking things up, all in hopes of getting the child to behave according to your “parental” will.
Now, make no mistake: Rick would welcome your financial support, not to mention your rhetorical support. It would benefit him, and our state’s cause, immensely.
But he is not willing to become a “False Self” to do it, false either to his own internal integrity or to the integrity of what the South Dakota Democratic Party is becoming.
You are plainly doing your best to create the South Dakota Democratic State Party in your own image, threatening fierce punishment by withholding any financial support if the candidate not conform to the DSCC’s rigid expectations of what obedience demands.
In this case, you are again upholding precisely what cost us the last election, namely the philosophy that unless a South Dakota Democratic candidate does not mirror values that any self-respecting Republican would, we won’t win.
Many South Dakota Democrats disagree with your obviously flawed strategy.
Far more South Dakota Democrats disagree with you than you expected.
For some time now, South Dakota Democrats have felt an obligation, an understandable obligation, to do things the way that you, the DSCC, wanted them done.
But those times are changing. We are already something other than you want us to be, despite your best efforts at clamping down.
What’s more, just as a young person may well have better insight into who he or she is than the parents do, it is clear that we here in SD understand ourselves better than you do.
WE know that Rick Weiland is the real deal. WE know that he’s been putting feet to pavement all across the state. WE know that he’s knowledgable and savvy and experienced. WE know that he is beholden to principles rather than someone else’s pocketbook. WE know that he believes what he says and says what he believes.
WE know he’s a Democrat.
A real Democrat, one who supports the Affordable Care Act, one who supports the minimum wage, one who supports voting rights and Indian rights and marriage equality, one who supports Medicare and a Medicaid expansion, and one who stands against Big Oil and Big Meat.
For starters.
That’s not a bad combination.
Meanwhile, our state’s Republicans are having a family feud of their own. We now have four candidates for their primary, four people happily throwing mud and money at each other, and, frankly, shouting loudly enough back and forth so that we Democratic neighbors can hear.
But we SD Dems have our house in order.
We’ve got ourselves a candidate.
And only one, in contrast to the Republicans.
Rick Weiland.
And he’s good.
He’s good, regardless of whether you like him or not for who he is and who our party is.
Really is.
Not who you want him to be.
Not who you want us to be.
But who Rick and we really are.
It’s not too late for the DSCC.
DSCC, let us be who we are.
In return, we’ll give you a candidate who will win, and we’ll make you proud.