wouldn't it be nice if C-Span had progressive speakers on everyday ...
I was especially impressed with Kim Gandy's speech ... and I loved Jackson's "we can't just cling to our own little patch" theme ... i was trying to talk about this exact thing yesterday in this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1522522&mesg_id=1522522here's an excerpt:
I think the answer to this lies at the heart of many flame wars within the Party ... "Corporatism", as a platform plank, never rises to the level of being a "central theme" ... it's always fought for on an issue by issue basis ... when the Party does take a stand, it seems it's fighting for each individual tree rather than arguing it's trying to protect the entire forest ... this "wonkiness" (wonkosity ??) is very ineffective ... and it's exactly why Democrats now find themselves as a minority party ...
to digress, the Party can no longer "follow the candidate's message" ... it's time to tell America exactly who we are and what we believe in ... instead of loudly coming out against Social Security "privatization", we need to first make it clear that any program that puts our elderly at risk is unacceptable ... when we talk about the hundreds of billions of dollars it's costing to fight in Iraq, we need to tie that back to the risks such spending imposes on our elderly and on other programs to help children and families ... we need consistent themes that reflect our values ... and every issue, every single issue, must tie together to tell the Democratic Party's "story" ... we don't do that now ... we pick candidates and then we support them ... it's backwards ... we should define who we are and select candidates to represent (with some flexibility) our central views ...