We lost because we tried to be to much like them . n/t

[truthpusher]

[freetobegay]

1. That is probably the most honest & true post I have seen today.

Thank you.

[smirkymonkey]

7. I second that!

Inauthenticity reeks of desperation, and the wolves can smell it.

We need to stand FOR something and stop trying to be "more Republican" and all that crap. I am convinced that when the good people of this country are confronted with the real deal, a great force will carry us through.

[DireStrike]

2. True. Don't stop saying it.

[Maat]

32. I agree.

Don't stop saying it.

Maybe we should form an org called, 'the Progressive Wing' of the Democratic Party.

[Cobalt Violet]

3. They stole it with the black boxes!

we are nothing like them.

[truthpusher]

5. We were so busy trying to appear electable that we let them get away...

...with the black boxes. it is our fault, we could have stopped them.

[UCLA Dem]

4. I don't agree.

We lost because we refused to be like them. We refused to condone the bigotry, intolerance and discrimination against lesbian and gay Americans.

[truthpusher]

6. Didn't Kerry say he wasn't for legalizing Gay marriage? What was the...

...official party platform on Gay Marriage?

[fujiyama]

8. So if Kerry

decided to endorse gay marriage he would have won.

:eyes:

[truthpusher]

12. If * can get up there and say that he talks to God...

...then I think Kerry supporting Gay marriage is only slightly less radical then what Bush proposes/supposes. My point here is that it isn't the content so much as it is the conviction. I know that Kerry would legalize Gay marriage if he had the chance. But he didn't say that. Instead he said something that everybody knew he was lying about.

[UCLA Dem]

9. no. I believe he was for civil unions (thats even too radical

for those mid-western "populists" as skinner calls them).

[AndyTiedye]

27. Civil Unions, Yes.

Which is the right way to do it. Separation of church and state
may require separate legal language when addressing something where
both typically have a role. "Civil union" refers to the legal
rights and obligations of wedlock, totally distinct from any
involvement by a religious institution.

One of the specious arguments they made was that their churches
would be forced to perform gay weddings. The separation of terms
should make it clear that this is not the case -- aside from the
fact that nobody would want to get married in a church that
hated them.

[Ms. Toad]

28. Do you really

have no clue how many tens if not hundreds, of thousands of laws, both statutory and common law, would need to be changed in order to implement this strategy?

There are over 1000 statutory laws in the federal government that are specific to marriage, not civil unions (once the server is back up, you can find a link to about 1079 documented federal statutory benefits expressly related to marriage at NoOnOne.puppycharm.com). Each state also has its own set of statutes, and both federal and the state governments have a body of common law (court developed) as well. In order to make the change you suggest, each one would need to be changed by legislatures or by individuals (paying their own legal fees) through the courts.

Marriage, in a legal sense, until the last two years, has been primarily a secular entity which has a express exception in most states to permit recognition of sacramental marriages performed by churches without imposing the statutory secular ceremonial requirements.

The law has never imposed its view of marriage on churches - other than by the statutory requirement that it will not recognize sacramental marriages between people the state considers NOT eligible for marriage, and by its refusal to recognize some religious marriages that did not conform to traditional secular standards (Quakers are not married by a minister, for example). The suggestion that it is doing so is an invention designed to frame the issue in a way we cannot win.

When I had only a sacramental marriage, members of the left fighting DOMA demanded that I not call it a marriage because marriage was (to them) solely a secular entity and mine was not recognized at law therefore it was not a marriage. Now, two short years after that, when I am both religiously and legally married, I am being told that marriage is only a religious entity.

That is BS. It is not reality, and we should not bend our thinking to match the their framing of the issues. The two marriages overlap, and aside from the struggles Quakers, among others, went through to have their sacramental marriages legally recognized, the imperfect overlap has not been a problem for the 200+ years the two have coexisted.

If we accept the framing of the religious right, we will forever be stuck answering the question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" No way I can answer that question and win.

[kitkatrose]

29. Thank you for that.

:hug: :toast: Someone gets it, and you explained it better than I did.

[truthpusher]

35. Perfectly stated - this is the best argument I have heard so far.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

11. Why is that such an issue in most of America?

I live in Texas, in a rural county. My County had a straight Republican ticket. (I know it makes me sick, too) Based on that you would think they would be anti-gay, but they're not. One of the towns in my County has a lesbian mayor. She is very out and has a long time life-mate. No one cares here. I know that most people here (my area) are just not homophobs.

[Maat]

33. Really well-said.

It's both.

We lost because Kerry tried to move to the Center on some things.

And yet he stood by his principles on others.

Maybe losing isn't so bad if you still have your integrity.

[BevHarris]

10. What makes you think you lost?

Evidence is pouring in. Fraud.

You might want to withold judgement on what "we" should change(or "you" since I am an independent, progressive certainly, but not wedded to a party, may the best candidate win...) --

You can say the "F" word. Fraud.

Get used to saying it.

It's okay.

Bev Harris
Black Box Voting (.ORG)
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[Bluebear]

13. I'm so glad to see your name finally

Something tells me you been verrrry busy

[truthpusher]

14. Of course it was stolen. We let it happen. It's kind of our fault.

[Carolab]

18. C'MON

That's not true. There were tons of valiant attempts to stop the black boxes. Good God.

IT WAS FRAUD. And now we have to STOP IT!

[truthpusher]

22. How are we going to stop it now when we couldn't do it before the...

...election. It's a little late. We'll be lucky if our vote will ever count again.

I am as guilty as anybody out there. What I have done for the last four years is talk, talk, talk. I, like many other liberals, feel like I have tapped into a stream of consciousness only reserved for the high minded. Other belief systems are stunted and trivial. I have to admit that I do not understand the conservative mindset, I just don't get it? I have no idea that I sometimes come off arrogant and condescending to others.

My point is, we not only blew it by allowing the fraud; but we also blew it by holding back and not letting the voters see who our candidates and their supporters really were.

By the way, no disrespect to all of the people working on the BBV issue. They will expose the fraud.

I want to get to the bottom of the situation, I want to break it down to it's core. I worked hard for the campaign and I put my heart into this election - we lost. It doesn't matter how, the fact is we lost.

[Must_B_Free]

15. It Felt like fraud to me

you have some "senses" as a uman being - a gut feeling, you know?

It just felt fishy, as usual, as predicted. This is the third major election cycle where the same magical anomalies in the data reverse the poll trends and exit polling the end of the voting day.

The media excuses felt very hollow. It seems the story is to try to find some plausible reason why the dems "lost".

In light of everything that's going on how do we continue ourselves to deny the couse we are clearly on. We have our own form of Bushie brainwashed people in our own camp - people who believe that it can't possibly be going on. They're like Bush lite believers.

[JohnnyCougar]

16. No.

We lost because we don't have a channel to get our message out. Period.

[truthpusher]

23. That's a huge part of it. But I am sorry to say this is also our fault...

...how can we blame the Republican/conservative media when all along we could have done the same. The democrats, progressives and liberals decided to go other routes. The media could have been ours. We lost it. We are finally making a good start with AAR. I think AAR is here to stay and it works. What I am hoping now, is that CBS starts thier own news network. That would be a good start. Or maybe we can buy an outlet. Here in Denver, a conservative bought the Post and they ended up endorsing a Republican for the first time. There are a lot of loaded liberals out there, why can't we do the same?

[LSK]

17. we lost because of DIEBOLD

WAKE UP

[Carolab]

19. Yes! People: Use the F word

FRAUD. USE IT OVER AND OVER and IN PUBLIC.

FRAUD. FRAUD. FRAUD.

[BevHarris]

20. ES&S and Sequoia and Hart helped.

So did cheating with provisional ballots, altering poll books, throwing away absentee ballots, and losing voter registrations.

So did printing bullshit ballots, like optical scan ballots with the timing marks off so the read heads can't line up, and optical scan ballots missing the bubbles you're supposed to mark.

And there was help from certain public officials, who may end up in orange jumpsuits yet.

Bev

[stevietheman]

21. Simplistic analysis... try again n/t

[truthpusher]

24. Have you noticed that most of the people posting on this thread...

...are going off on Diebold & Fraud. What I said had nothing to do with this! This is a major issue I have with all of these good people. There is a sense of avoiding the real fault at hand. Our guy gave his concession speech the other day. Let's not complicate it. I thought about this long and hard and I can only break it down to, 'we lost because we tried to be to much like them'. If I am wrong here, tell me, I could be, but it feels like I may have stumbled on some truth here.

[arikara]

25. They lied and cheated and stole

And committed fraud. We are not like them.

[truthpusher]

26. I know were not. However, we enabled them. Everybody knows...

...they lied and cheated and stole. The world is just waiting to see what we are going to do about it. The world wants to see us do something strong and honest. Remember when Jesus went to the temple and started trashing the place because he didn't like the corruption that was going on. We need to do something like that.

If we just find more proof that they lied, cheated and stole; is that going to change anything? haven't we shown the world enough all ready? It's time to take action. Enough evidence gathering. It's time to stop parroting what the Republicans are doing. It's time to start looking deep and figure out what 'we' should be doing. What is the move that 'we' would make if there were nobody else but us?

[Kahuna]

30. We got a record number of voters to support us. So that does not compute.

Nice try though. ;)

[bigtree]

31. We lost because we haven't insisted that they count all the votes

[unfrigginreal]

34. There's much truth to that statement

until we learn to contrast ourselves we'll always lose. Too many will take that to mean that we need to jerk to the left but I'm not saying that at all. I don't think we can win by running a far left candidate unless they know how to speak in a language that doesn't give them away as such. It's all about how we promote the Democratic message. The biggest anchor around our necks is that we are seen as the party of special interests. Sure, we're proud to be the to stand up for minorities but we hurt all classes of minorities more than we help them by appearing to put them on a pedestal.

We need to become the party of equal rights for all, period. Passing laws to specifically uplift certain groups really turns off the suffering class of the majority. Many of them wonder, who the hell is looking out for me? And for the yo-yo's that don't believe there is any suffering by underprivileged white people, get a fucking clue. Those are people that should be rabidly anti-GOP but in too large numbers vote against their own interests or feel as though there's no reason to vote.

Would it be so bad to have equal pay for all, equal employment for all, civil rights for all with the laws containing the language that does in fact offer the protections for minorities and the underprivileged that we are striving for.

I believe that we are losing on semantics not the issues.

[truthpusher]

36. I agree. Voters like candidates who have conviction...

...even if that conviction is not always square with there beliefs. I am sure that everybody out there has at least one friend or associate, whom you admire, that is a Republican. I am sure that the reason for that admiration is their conviction and or honesty. That is the common thread....honesty, truth and conviction.