How NOT to Win an Election

[GiovanniC]

As we continue to hand-wring and agonize over electoral losses (voter fraud charges notwithstanding), there has been a consistant chorus of strategists, pundits, and Monday morning quarterbacks who have said that the Democratic party is "too liberal" and that it must move more to the center if it ever wants to win another election.

BULLSHIT.

"Moving to the center" is code which translates to, "become more anti-choice, pro-war, anti-gay/lesbian, anti-civil liberties, anti-first amendment, anti-labor, and a litany of other things".

In other words, "moving to the center" all too often means becoming "more insanely right-wing". But there is a problem with that logic.

Republicans are not good at running the education system in this country. They aren't good at operating an economy, or adding jobs for Americans who want to work. They suck at post-war planning, exit plans, "winning the peace", and nation-building. They are absolutely dreadful caretakers of the land, water, and skies.

We liberals can beat them on education, the economy, poverty, employment, diplomacy, civil liberties, national security, the environment, and more. But there is one area we cannot beat them in.



We cannot out-Nazi the Nazis.
We cannot out-Klan the Klan.
We cannot out-fascist the fascists.
We cannot out-evil the devil himself.

They have an insurmountable advantage in that respect. If we try to be better jack-booted brown-shirted thugs than they are, we will only become cheap imitations of them. We cannot beat them that way. They have a head start, they have experience, and they're wired better for it.

If we want to beat them, becoming bad impressions of them is not the answer. The answer is to fight louder, more tenaciously, more forcefully for the ideals that we know are right.

[GiovanniC]

1. Kick

[Shopaholic]

2. I'll second that.

The problem with the Democratic Party is that we have rolled over on our collective bellies like a bunch of beaten dogs. We've kissed the collective butts of Repugs and where has it gotten us? Defeated. Twice. We've allowed the Repugs to frame the national debate, to "own" issues that should be ours to own.

And we will never win this country back if we continue down the same path we've been on for the past few years. We've got to stand up and fight, fight for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights. We've got to make the public see that religious extremism is a danger no matter what country it occurs in. We've got to make the people of this country see that Liberal is not a four-letter word.

But instead we've got party leaders who think the way to win is to remake our candidates into Republicans-Lite. And it has NOT worked. We haven't been aggressive enough. We haven't been hard-hitting enough and most importantly, we haven't been self-reflective enough to realize what the damned problem was or we would never have repeated the mistakes of 2000 in 2004.

It is so clear to me that we need to house-clean in the upper ranks of the Democratic Party Leadership. The "inside-the-beltway" folks are not getting the job done. They are woefully out of touch with the American People and the Democratic Base.

We know that the problem isn't money-we were able to keep pace with the Republicans this year on that score. The problem is the lack of direction. I will give the Repugs every bit of props that they rightfully deserve for being able to stay on message and for organizing an attack machine that is able to get their messages against us out there and to keep the heat on. Our forces are scattered-theirs aren't.

Yes, they have the media on their side, but why aren't we playing hardball with them the way the Repugs do? All it took was one threat from the Repugs to barr guests from his show and Chris Matthews was back on the Republican train, shilling away. Why don't we threaten the talking heads like that and put the fear of God into them?

The Repugs count on us to be passive, they count on us not to fight back. And so far, our party leadership hasn't let them down. It's high time that they learn to fight for us, and for this country. And if they don't, then we are doomed, and so is this country.

[goclark]

3. Correct!

[DireStrike]

4. Indeed.

[RevCheesehead]

5. Absolutely.

"We cannot out-Nazi the Nazis.
We cannot out-Klan the Klan.
We cannot out-fascist the fascists.
We cannot out-evil the devil himself."

Nor should we try.

I will NEVER compromise my values for any reason. And even if we never win another election, my conscience will be clear.

It's about INTEGRITY and GOODNESS.

Intergrity over divisive social values
Good over evil
The poor and oppressed over the wealthy and powerful