Memo to L. Pitts Jr. - "Shove It!"

[NanceGreggs]

(In response to: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/nov/06/democrats_should_accept_victory_humbly/

Mr. Pitts:

Re your column of November 6, 2006: "Democrats Should Accept Victory Humbly"

In view of the fact that you have addressed this as a letter to the Democrats, I, as a Democrat, will happily respond. While I do not speak officially on behalf of my party, I can assure you that my reaction to your missive is reflective of the thoughts of many of us.

“… if you (Democrats) win power here, please don’t assume it validates anything you’ve done. If you win, it’s because of Mark Foley and Theresa Schiavo and Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush and Jack Abramoff and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Dick Cheney and Hurricane Katrina and 2,800 dead soldiers …”

If we win, sir, it very much validates what we have done. We have been a constant voice of reason in a country controlled by the people who allowed Mark Foley to be protected, despite his crimes, because of political expediency.

We have pointed repeatedly to the climate of corruption that exists, and continues to exist, within the Republican party, a climate which served as a breeding ground for the likes of Cunningham and Abramoff.

We have decried the stay-the-course mentality that led to those 2,800 dead soldiers, to no avail.

As has been proven time and again, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld epitomize incompetent governance and an innate inability to focus their attention on matters of true national significance; their handling of Katrina and the Schiavo case were ample evidence of both.

As for Limbaugh and Coulter, they are irrelevant. The people who buy their wares are too easily led and ill-informed to be of any consequence.

The elected Republican representatives currently in office had choices; they could have stood up for their party’s traditional ideals of small government and fiscal responsibility. Instead, they chose to serve as enablers for one of the most inept and corrupt administrations the country has ever been afflicted with.

In short, it was their decision to present themselves as spineless and self-serving. This is now their platform, and if that stance causes them a massive loss of support, it was their choice to make.

”More to the point, you don’t win because of you. Heck, I don’t even know who you are. Ever since Bill Clinton left town, you have been inept at defining yourself, communicating your ideals with all the clarity of, well, John Kerry trying to tell a joke.”

To the point, sir, we DO win because of “us”, because of who we are, what we stand for, and our desire to bring the country back to what it was before this president, with the assistance of his rubber-stamping GOP representatives, plunged it into two unwinnable wars, unfathomable debt, a ruined economy, and made our once-proud country the subject of ridicule and derision around the world. And when it comes to eroding the very rights and freedoms our democracy was founded upon, this administration knows no peer.

We, as Democrats, did not invite nor encourage this behaviour; in fact, we have fought against it at every turn. That is why we will win, Mr. Pitts – not only because we represent everything this administration is not, but because we represent a desirable alternative to the agenda the present powers-that-be have so vigorously pursued.

“I don’t know what you believe, what you plan, where you want to take the country. I daresay most people don’t. A victory here just means that you were the only other game in town.”

We are not the only game in town. The Republican party is the other “game”; we cannot be faulted for the fact that the majority of American citizens just no longer want to play by their self-proclaimed rules – especially when the country inevitably loses as a result.

If you don’t know what we believe, what we plan, or where we want to take the country, I can only assume you haven’t bothered to listen. Or perhaps you, like too many, can only understand vision and purpose when it is handed out in small, meaningless soundbytes – the kind the GOP have been throwing around for years – things like “Stay the course”, or “We’ve gotta fight ‘em over there,” or, “Just trust us”.

“I suspect I speak for many when I say I’m tired of wedge politics. I’m tired of stupid, I’m tired of greed, I’m tired of polarization, I’m tired of red and blue mattering more than red, white and blue.”

In that regard, you do speak for many. And the Democrats have been saying exactly those things for years. Unfortunately, until now, they went unheard. I guess the volume of being called allies of the terrorists, non-patriots, and haters of America drowned them out.

“Now, if the prognostications are correct, here comes you, taking power in a nation desperate for change. Which brings me to my plea. By all means, enjoy the champagne and confetti. But once the bottles are empty and the floor is swept and it’s time to go to work I wish you would, for me, for all of us, remember to do one thing with this victory. Earn it.”

Once the votes are tallied, Mr. Pitts – and it is a sad state of affairs that we have to hope rather than assume those votes will be counted accurately and in their entirety – the victory HAS been earned. It will be the culmination of years of hard work – on the part of candidates who will assume the responsibilities they have proven their ability to fulfill, on the part of hard-working supporters who have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of our party’s ideals and goals, and on the part of American citizens who went to the polls to make their voices heard.

For the first time in too many years, our nation’s citizenry need not fear a political agenda based on divisiveness, greed, cronyism, and vengeance to be wreaked on the opposition. We, the Democrats, have the best interests of our fellow Americans, and the good of our nation as a whole, at heart.

That has always been our platform, sir. And had you bothered to hear that message, you would have known that long before now.

Yours Very Truly,
Nancy Greggs
Exceptionally Proud Democrat

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. That's tellin' him.

(Indeed, Coulter and Limbaugh are truly irrelevant. They are such old news, they're on the ragged edge of being unemployed.)

[NanceGreggs]

2. Hmmm ...

... wonder if Coulter knows which precinct she's supposed to file for Unemployment Benefits in.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

3. yeah, she'll find it . . .

. . . just like Limpballs found the ACLU when he needed them.

pardon me while I :puke:

[solara]

4. Bravo!

Well said.. beautifully written.. most excellent and yeah, I think you speak for most of us.

[NanceGreggs]

5. Welcome to the DU family, solara!

:hi:

[solara]

6. Thanks! I love it here!

:hi: I had nearly lost hope.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Hey, Nance

:applause:

[JeffR]

8. A new Congressional Democratic majority has a lot of work to do, but

with luck, somewhere on the agenda will be the suggestion of hunting this little ferret down and giving him a great big kick in his tiny little balls.

Way to tell the little asshole off, Nance.

[Peace Patriot]

9. I knew it! The minute the Dems show some power, corporate whores like

Leonard Pitts start talking about playing nice.

I hope the Democrats don't. I hope they take this regime, and the party that brought us this regime, and their corporate puppetmasters and put them all right through the shredder of the Peoples' Righteous Anger. A total dismantling of the G.O.P. and the bad actor corporations behind them--the oil giants, the media giants, the war profiteers and the electronic voting corporations--is in order.

Even if the Democrats take 40 seats in the House and gain control of the Senate, it still does not adequately reflect the size of the great progressive American majority that has been violated and suppressed by this regime. I hope the Democratic Party realizes this, despite the "poison pills" lurking in their ranks--like the Democrats who voted for torture and the suspension of habeas corpus the other week. Diebold/ES&S control the primary as well as general elections, and they and the filthy campaign contribution/corporate lobbying system have too often denied Democratic and progressive voters a choice that truly reflects their views. Thus, even a large Democratic majority in Congress will be controlled by a block of "Bushite Democrats" as the swing voters whose role will likely be to prevent impeachment, limit investigations, and blockade any real reform. But I am talking about the REAL Democrats. I hope they realize that their mandate far exceeds their numbers--even if the party win big tomorrow--since so much of the progressive vote has been artificially suppressed by dirty and criminal means.

I've been yelling about this here at DU for three years. FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed Bush's war way back before the invasion, in Feb. '03. SIXTY-THREE PERCENT of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). The Dems blew the Bushites away in new voter registration in 2004, by nearly 60/40. The stats go on and on like this. Progressive views have been artificially and CRIMINALLY suppressed in the composition of Congress, over the last several elections, and a small, weird, fascist MINORITY was installed in Congress with majority power, and furthermore has been given a Big Trumpet in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies way out of proportion to their numbers. The Democrats in Congress in the recent past--the REAL Democrats--have had to represent the vast majority of Americans with only minority power, minimized even further by the brutal power-grabbing tactics of the Bush "pod people" illegitimately running Congress. We've got to realize what the real Democrats have been up against, and have some compassion for them--and we probably don't know the half of what they've faced (spying, blackmail, threats on their lives, God only knows)--but we've also got to push them now to stand firm in the interests of the American people now, and take no prisoners in the counterattack. The Corporate propaganda laid out by Pitts lecturing Democrats on "humility," and soon to be pontificating about "bi-partisanship," is exactly the political climate that installed a psychopath in the office of the President of the United States and a wrecking crew in the Pentagon, who have slaughtered 600,000 innocent people and run up a $10 trillion debt.

It's not time for nice. It's time for the Sword of Damocles!

[PATRICK]

10. As one who has

lived through the Nixon era when all those things Nixon did, did not necessarily translate into the polls
automatically, I can tell you that even relying on a working media and enemy mistakes is not enough. We had one election where too many volunteers sat it out which is the REAL mistake of the committed not continued pressure for change. tens of thousands of soldiers died before Nixon- not Democrats, not elections- managed to self-destruct. The "hope" of Watergate is now revealed at the victory of the few and synergy of the passive IF the system is not too far gone. Now we know something better of what democracy is all about. Our victory for democracy is not about return to quiet delegation in a system that works. It is in restoring if not creating for the first time a public dynamic for progressive reform
and is only beginning.

The new Congress is notably fashioned- by party leadership in their own image- of as many or more not so progressive Dems as otherwise. Let the building of civil government take its course in getting weaned away from insane RW extremist dominance, but there is no Yin and Yang pendulum swing that will settle down again to a self-congratulatory fattened calf establishment. there is growth in democracy and progressive populist thinking or there is massive party failure in the future and a subsequent new danger for democracy itself- still wounded, still in danger, still badly functioning and ill informed.

If the establishment of old party leadership or new centrists can't comprehend the people who will back and enable them against people and events that would sweep them away into a new surrender to fascism, they will not be purged, but they will not be submitted to passively.

On edit. Total removal of corporate and PAC financing of elections is one reform that most Americans support. If we were to take things, humbly, realistically, by popular consent, one step at a time the so-called "troublemakers" would be very content to start with that. Or fair media. Or take your pick.