Email from moveon member: agree or disagree?

[Nevernose]

The following is an email I just recieved from a moveOn volunteer I don't even know (I've worked, fo free, for MO, ACT, and especially my local party office). Pay attention to the seond paragraph, as it has implications for those who were not MoveOn team leaders. I think I may just agree with him, or at least agree that his perceptions resonate with a lot of people.

Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 00:15:04 UT
From: xxxxxx
To: xxxxxx
Subject: review

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Some thoughts on the Moveon LNVB—It would be more efficient if 571 I think he means here either the 527 groups, or the 571 MoveOn groups in Southern Nevada groups could coordinate efforts. As a first effort by Moveon, there were bugs in the system. There was a revolution in the leaders to start with. Then there was micromanagement without explanation of the reasons for the actions. Example-- We met to get trained and acted out the Rap. We were not told why Moveon wanted to know all this stuff. Also volunteers—for us? For others? There was also no clear idea of what the end play was for Nov. 2. We should have known that from the beginning. Then the WAC didn’t work right. Then there was no timely update on the county records of who have voted early. In spite of the problems, I think we did a good job of getting out the vote.


I believe that the reason Bush won was not the suppression of votes we feared or the failure of the truth to be told. First, John Kerry was another east coast Democrat who was not charismatic. He couldn’t even pause for applause in his speeches. Second, he was not aggressive enough with fighting back and speaking the truth in bold terms. He had the Iraq war as a gift. He should have said Bush lied to the Congress about the threat of Saddam and so I voted war powers. Second, he could have said exactly how he would get out of Iraq. Kerry could have given a more liberal response to the issue of jobs. Why is being a liberal such a feared thing among his handlers? The main reason we lost though is the union of fundamentalist in with the Republican Party. 70% believed that Iraq was involved in 9/11. These people believe that special creation should be taught in biology class and social Darwinism taught in our economics classes. They live in fear that if one of their beliefs be threatened that their whole universe will come crashing down around them.


Where to go from here? We need to get charismatic candidates for the Democrats. We need to fight issues as they come up and appeal to the moderate Republicans. We need to become involved in congressional races too. My association with you people gives me hope.