Let's run a tough, fiery, hope-based campaign this year...and include ALL who fight the Right.

[Ken Burch]

We need to have a campaign that calls out the Teabaggers on ALL the wrongs they've done...including their fight to make this country crueler, more unequal, and more soulless than it's ever been.

We need to reach out to ALL who've been kicked and kicked and kicked again by these sadists...and we need to give them some reason to think that voting for us will lead to them NOT being kicked any more.

We need to stand for the idea that this is a country where ALL of us matter, where we all deserve respect and the right to be treated with dignity, where we're all given a voice and the chance to be the best we can be.

And we need to say to those who've felt(justly)that this party had let them down "we didn't do all you had the right to expect us to do in the past, and we may not be able to do it all in the short term, but we will NEVER stop fighting for the life you deserve and the world we need".

If we run THAT kind of campaign, we can stop the ugliness from getting worse and we can set the stage for making life much less ugly in the days and years to come.

Let's run that campaign...let's include everyone who we SHOULD include...and let's WIN, dammit!!

We've faced worse in the past...and others have fought on from worse places than the one we're in now...so let's stoke up the flames and let's FIGHT for the people.

Everybody here with me on this?

[BeyondGeography]

1. The Ryan budget is the only reminder anyone should need

$5 trillion in cuts to Medicare, food stamps, student loans; real increases in defense spending; and more tax giveaways to the unproductive, rapacious rich. Gotta give them credit for one thing; they put it right out there in the sunlight for everyone to see. No one can say they weren't warned.

K&R

[Ken Burch]

6. We have to KEEP it out there, though...people forget if not constantly reminded.

And keeping it out there ONLY works if our party makes it clear that it won't do ANY of the things the Boehnerites are doing.
There is no "center"...there are only those who are cheering them on, and those being crushed by them. We have to mobilize the crushed and give them reason to think we'll be different.

And that means actually DEFENDING the idea that it progressive change is a GOOD thing, and believing that a majority FOR change, not just against bad change(or just limiting the badness)can be built and brought to the polls.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Damn right I'm with you on this.

Very well said.

Now, if we can just get our leaders to work this meme.

[grasswire]

3. we can overcome poor leadership, Peg

The people, united, cannot be divided. This isn't about politics, it is about policy. We demand policy that honors Democratic values and principles, and doing that creates an attractive, fresh alternative to all the old rhetoric.

[RobertEarl]

4. Lead the leaders, then

They love to follow. We give them the ideas like the OP so greatly lays out, they will have no choice but to get with us.

This, to use a football analogy, is the two minutes left on the clock action on the field. No one in the huddle complains about how they are hurting, no one questions the plays. They just give it their best and hope for the win.

We really need to win this year, and win big. It has never been more important that we win and take back our government.

All we need to do is remember the government that was in office during Katrina and 9/11, to know who sits in office makes all the difference in the world.

[NYC_SKP]

5. I'm with you, and I'm sick of the infighting and egos that suck up so much of the oxygen here.

There are plenty of great candidates in races big and small who can benefit from our energy, and that's where we need to plant ourselves.

I'm going down to Fresno tomorrow to help out, and again on Friday to a different district.

We win back congress one step at a time.

K/R

[cer7711]

7. Amen, Brother!

Totally with you on this.

Exactly the right--I mean left/correct--attitude we need to start that pendulum swinging back the other way . . .

[we can do it]

8. i'm in.