Our Party MUST Change

[Scairp]

That is the only way we will ever regain some measure of control over where this country is headed. It would seem that our candidates and the leaders of the Democratic party have no desire to go for the jugular the way the other side does. You cannot pussyfoot around, and proceed with the idea that if you play it clean and straight the good guys (meaning us) win out. Bullshit. We did that and look what happened. If the leaders of our party can take a page from the Repuke book, we will win back our country. Until a fundamental change comes over the party, we will never win anything again. We will become a one-party country, and if you think that's too far out to even be considered, just take a gander at what what happened in the House and Senate races. We need a new game plan, a completely new philosophy, new leadership both nationally and locally, within the party, and then perhaps we can take back what is rightfully ours, the right to make at least half of the decisions about where our country going, because the other side isn't going to work with us. They don't have to, they have a majority in Congress, they have the White House. They will tell Democratic members of Congress to go Cheney themselves and there isn't fuckall we can do about it. And that's my rant for tonight.

[rpannier]

1. Agreed 100%

No more wimps for president. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry wereal weak because they had no stomach for going for the throat. Clinton won precisely because he played by their rules.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Yes, I agree.

But I suspect that changes are already in the works. After a suitably tasteful period, in the interest of saving some face.

[IrishBloodEngHeart]

3. What moderate dems won last night (or those running as moderates)

Answer: None but incumbents.

You can't take power being a moderate. You have to have an alternate vision and policy. You can't just say "me, too, but I'll do it smarter"

[Scairp]

7. No you can't take power being moderate Democrat

You also can't take power being good and honest. That's the fundamental problem within our party. Heads need to roll within the party leadership, and a completely new Democratic platform should be created. Although I myself am loathe to take a public role within local Democratic party politics, I am going to start doing so. It's clear that those who do run the party are incompetent and desperately in need of fresh blood and I personally have decided to become morally challenged, so far as politics go. They lie, they cheat, they steal elections by buggering around with the voting machines, I have no problem responding in kind.

[grumpy old fart]

4. the majority is getting what they want

The majority are just getting what they want. They want to be spoon fed lies in very short sentences. We are mired in a culture that just can't take depth beyond that of a kiddie pool. This is the decline of empire, and there's just no way around. Face it, over 50% of this country is dumb as a rock, and just doesn't care to think any deeper than what's on T.V. tonight, who's going left the fastest in this week's NASCAR race, or who's fucking whom in Hollywood. The country is getting what the majority want and deserve....to win, we need someone who can fool the stupid bastards like the repukes do. Trouble is, we have a concious about such things. They don't.

[Scairp]

9. Do you understand why this is happening?

It's because the people who are suppose to counter the lies of the right with the truth and the facts are not up to the job. In fact, they suck miserably at getting our side out to the public. They send out spokespersons who get eaten for lunch by the right-wing pundits who lie, and don't have the first clue as to how to counter the crap they spew 24/7. Most people get their news from television, and we need to take back at least half of the airwaves or we will never win again.

[grumpy old fart]

11. Got a point

One of the best moments I've seen on T.V. in a while was Lawrence O'Donnell calling that Swift Boat asshole O'Neil a "liar" over and over on Scarborough a week or two back, and backing it up. Hell, if we're gonna lose, at least call the bastards on the lies they spew.

[Scairp]

13. Sorry, I disagree about O'Donnell

He only succeeded making that Liar O'Neill look sympathetic, and I didn't think that was even possbile. Besides, four years ago O'Donnell was on t.v. calling Al Gore a liar. He is not our friend.

[grumpy old fart]

14. What was Gore lying about?

[Scairp]

16. Gore wasn't lying

That's the point. The media almost entirely had labeled Al Gore a big fibber, just like Bill Clinton. Whether is was "invented the Internet" (he never said it), being the model for the "Love Story" characters, "farm chores" or the price of dog pills, the media, with the New York Times leading the charge, hammered Gore for nearly 2 years with these phony stories that he was a liar. They all participated in it. And it seemed no one from the party was equipped to go out and fight back against these scurrilous stories. I guess they learned absolutely nothing from 2000.

[demokatgurrl]

28. Scairp, you are 100% correct. Our pary, though its heart

is in the right place, is run and offices are held by spineless weenies. We need someone who can get down in the dirt and fight with those bastards on their turf, by their rules, and be better than them. The question is... do we even HAVE any of those people? Maybe some of the young'uns.

[llmart]

21. You have summed up the truth in your post.

Let's not get bogged down in "what we need to change to win." We are exactly as grumpy old fart says. The majority of people in this country are uneducated. We are dumbed down immensely. I, for one, know I'm not in the mainstream - never have been - and it's very difficult to be surrounded by these fools, but you have to stick with your own kind and get comfort from that. I get lots of comfort from DU'ers and organizations I'm involved in. I am 55 and no longer have the time or energy to waste on these dumbed down idiots.

[slackmaster]

26. I think you are making a fundamental mistake, gof

I don't have a problem with you saying half the population is dumb as a rock, but frankly most of the other half isn't above the intellectual level of a sack of hammers.

...just doesn't care to think any deeper than what's on T.V. tonight, who's going left the fastest in this week's NASCAR race, or who's fucking whom in Hollywood.

This is where I think you've gotten off track. Even the dumbest people care a lot about their families, their homes, their jobs, their communities, their childrens' prospects for the future. Their ideas of how best to protect those interests are just different than ours. Maybe you can make a case that they are short-sighted, but their positions are by and large valid and internally consistent from their perspective.

Trouble is, we have a concious about such things. They don't.

Here you have gone beyond off track and driven right off a cliff. Once you start accusing the opposition of having no social conscience you're off into argumentum ad hominem and your line of reasoning will not produce any useful suggestion for improvement of our prospects. Please go ahead and vent if you need to, but one of these days someone in this party is going to have to start trying to actually understand what other people are thinking. Writing them off as stupid, evil, or immoral as a group is a cop-out.

[grumpy old fart]

30. Just venting, but

Yeah, I was just venting, but I'm not kidding about the stupid part. We need someone who speaks in very short sentences and gives stupendously simple answers to questions that cannot possibly be honestly answered in such a manner. It's obvious from this election that that is what it will take. There was not one area where this president didn't fail the little guy, spectacularly, and yet they come back licking at his boots. It's truly frightening. Guess I'm still venting. It's hard to get over this one......grrrrrr.

[BlueJazz]

5. Sounds nice But (yeah..there's always a But)

..it seems to me that from the people I've spoken to in the past year
(I'm a Network Engineer who See's many folks)...are just not "Our" type: They are for strong anti-abortion laws, love cooperations ...wal-mart and such...are for heavy Tax cuts, don't care for Blacks, Mexicans and "Those People" ...Hate Queers (Their words).....think School Prayer is a "Given"... love Fox News and in short are nothing...Absolutly NOTHING like the fine Brothers and Sisters on DU.

I just don't think that we'll ever be able to pull them to our side...in short..sadly..there's just too many of the Bastards....(MY words)

[grumpy old fart]

6. Yep. See above.

[slackmaster]

24. IMO you're half right

You've described a stereotype of neocon/fundamentalist/right-wing/rural attitudes. All those issues play into it but you're making way too big of a package out of them; a melange that describes a small minority of the population. "Our" type is the mirror-image, another valid stereotype.

I think most voters have a mixture of attitudes but don't take it to such extremes: They don't hate but are uncomfortable with uncloseted homosexuals. They grew up around mostly white people and are suspicious of brown and black ones, especially ones who speak a language other than English. I've heard people here in Southern California who don't understand Spanish or Vietnamese express concern that those who do are deliberately trying to conceal what they're saying, or are making fun of the English-only speakers. (I've understood and spoken Spanish for almost 40 years and I am quite sure that kind of thing is very rare.)

Most Americans have advanced to the point where they can accept that gay men and women exist, are more common than they'd previously understood, and that you can't completely avoid them in the workplace, schools, churches, etc. What we as a party have failed to grasp IMO is that when you push people too hard they retreat into their shells. I've been aware of gay people since I was about 12, and had lost my fear of them by 16.

To me the idea of "gay marriage" or whatever term you wish to apply to the formal recognition of an intimate, committed relationship between two people of the same gender, doesn't bother me at all. But to a generally moderate, tolerant person out in red country the concept may be too much to bear now. The 11 states that have pre-emptively banned gay marriage (and don't forget that California did that in 2000), are a classic retreat by people who are being pushed to change faster than they are able to. California politics provide a condensed version of another big misunderstanding we tend to make: That groups like Hispanics all vote the same way. They're as diverse in thought as the population at large, and the ruined political careers of Gray Davis and Cruz Bustamante testify to that fact. Their attempts to pander on a couple of issues to too diverse of a group failed.

You can't push people too hard. We have to settle on a philosophy that respects and allows for differences of attitude about many things. Just as you, Radicalliberal, have gone too far in characterizing the opposition, we need to consider that maybe we have tried to push too comprehensive of an agenda on them.

[JJ]

8. We need the donkey back.

in lieu of the jellyfish that the Party has as its current mascot.
They need to stand up and call the liars liars right on Fox news.
Though they'd not let that air.
Rupert Murdoch now rules the world.
God help us all.

[Cats Against Frist]

10. Think on this one, kids

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/151749/966

And for now, don't get too "sensitive." Like the GOP teaches us -- win at all costs.

[gort]

12. Here is why we must change

Go to this web-site and read their hit list.

Daschle is gone. Senator Clinton is next. These bastards are brutal. Republicans dont want be bi-partisan. Why be bi-partisan when you can be the only party in power? The Republicans are not for America, they are for America only for themselves. The rest of us can all go to hell.

Read what they are up to next:

http://www.nrsc.org/nrscweb/stop_hillary/article71.shtml

excerpt:


Clinton Money Haul Tops ‘06 List
Excerpted from the Roll Call; August 16, 2004
Preparing for a potentially serious re-election challenge next cycle, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) raised $1.8 million from April 1 to June 30 — more than double the take of any of the other 31 Senators up for re-election in 2006.

Since the start of 2001, Clinton has raised nearly $9 million through her Friends of Hillary campaign committee, a total that has been eclipsed only by the roughly $10 million raised by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) as she attempts to retire a massive personal debt.

At last month’s Democratic convention in Boston, Clinton told The Associated Press she “would raise whatever money I need to raise.”
End excerpt

Patton claimed he beat the far superior Rommel by reading his book.
The only way to beat these bastards is to read their book and write a new ending.

The Republicans must be stopped. The only way to piss them off is to stop letting them divide us. They have made us the enemy. Make them regret ever following the Rovian tactic of turning Americans against each other.

[Java]

15. Revitalizing the Democratic Party

Friends, we can use this election to our advantage. We need to have an honest look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves how we managed to transform a Party that had a clear majority into a party of minority status in the past 40 years.

Over the years we have Lost the South and America's Heartland and in doing so we have lost control.

I think we need to realize the following things:
(1.) Americans are NOT Europeans, they do NOT want democratic socialism.

(2.) Americans do NOT want higher taxes: they want LOWER taxes and LESS Government.

(3.) Americans are for the most part conservative in their outlook. Don't beleive me? Go to the middle of one of the Red States, and start to talk to its residents.

(4.) A large portion of Americans are religious and they are Protestant.

(5.) Americans for the most part do NOT want Gun Control.

(6.) Americans feel threatened by issues such as Gay Marriage.

Look, I know that we are all hurting from this election. And I am sorry that this sort of thing has come to pass. But in all honesty, we can't tailor our Party's platform to the desires of people who live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City, and ignore the rest.

We need to return to the same issues that our party had when Truman, or Kennedy was president. And that means being less "liberal". And taking into consideration the views of white blue collar Americans who live in the Red States. When we do that, then we will regain the center, and it will only be then that we will get America back.

[TankLV]

17. No thankyou. If I wanted to be a repuke, I'd have become one.

We don't need to become like them - ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE ALL WRONG!

It is better to fight the good fight and lose than to try to become like that which you abhor and STILL LOSE!

PRO-CHOICE
PRO-GAY
PRO-PROGRESSIVE TAXATION
PRO-KEEP YOUR RELIGION OUT OF MY GOVERNMENT
PRO GUN CONTROL
PRO CORPORATION CONTROL

ANTI BIGOTRY
ANTI RACISM
ANTI CORPORTISM
ANTI REPUKE

and

PRO SOCIALISM!

You don't even know what you're talking about.

But thanx for the repuke talking points!

I am sick and tired of compromising social justice.

[Amanda]

19. How much more LESS Liberal can we be?

I mean, honestly. The Dems have done nothing over the last 20 years but allow themselves to be pushed further and further to the right to remain competitive with the Repubs. Clinton wasn't liberal by any stretch of the imagination, and Kerry bent over on issues of gay marriage because of the right pushing the issue.

If anything, we need to be fighting to bring this country back to the middle. If the backwater states aren't willing to agree to gay rights and legal abortion while trying to shove their fundamentalism down our throats, why should be back down on liberal values like social programs, healthcare, workers rights, etc.?

What needs to happen is that the emphasis needs to be taken off of religion and wedge issues rather than forcing our party to yet again transform itself to fit in with the consensus of one group of people. This is not their country alone, despite what this administration and the media have told them. The rest of this country needs to be represented as well, and that's what the Dems need to step up and do.

Stop pandering to the Bible Belt. Let them turn to state's rights if the need be. On a national level we need moderation desperately, and that's what our party needs to be focused on for '06 and '08. Bringing the "middle" back from the far right.

[davepc]

20. FDR

was a democratic socialist, one of the 1st, and one of the most successful.

[demokatgurrl]

29. That looks a lot like the DNC platform.

But maybe you're right that it's what most of this country wants/believes and I may just have to move to Europe. I will NOT change to become like them, never.
Anyway I'm Jewish- I barely fit in.

[JerseygirlCT]

34. I disagree

this isn't about ceding our beliefs in order to assume their positions. This is about educating those "red state" voters about why OUR positions are better: for the country, and for them.

We don't hold the positions we hold only because we're so high-minded and intelligent. We hold them because they benefit the majority of people in this country. Civil rights do not just benefit those in the minority -- just as separation of church and state benefits the religious as well as the non-religious.

I think we need to find a way to show a great majority of people why we believe as we do. We need to "sell" ourselves better, to put it bluntly.

Show most people that their taxes are being put to work for THEM and suddenly they're happier about paying taxes. Expose the give-aways to large corporations that happens on the GOP watch and they won't like it so much. This also means our guys have to stop pandering to monied interests as well. We need people willing to speak the truth, and the consequences be damned. People will trust a person like that even when they disagree. (How many people here think well of McCain? Or did before the Bush pandering...)

Explain why a good education system needs to be a priority. Not for the kids in the next town, but for their own kids and grandkids. Appeal to the ingenuity of American inventiveness when talking about scientific advancement and stem-cell research, and about the desperately needed advances in lessening our dependence on oil. Make it a challenge and I think the American people will rise to it.

I heard this morning some pundit say that Clinton had urged Kerry to agree with some of the anti-gay marriage proposals in order to win some conservative voters his way. It probably would have worked -- but I would have been sorely disappointed in the integrity of a man who could so easily put aside right and wrong to win votes.

I refuse to believe we need to do that.

[Yupster]

36. If you're right, then

can't we work on changing people's opinions?

Doesn't seem much point in making the Democratic Party turn Republican. Just save effort and vote Republican then.

Let's take a few years to respectfully explain ourselves and start to change opinions of those people who have those opinions you list. They can't be mostly lost causes. There must be millions of educable reddies out there.

[Cinletharwi]

18. The only way to have a voice during a tyranny of the majority:

Hit them where it truly hurts: their pocketbooks

[oddtext]

22. we need to be as fundamentalist

as they are -- but not with the bible, with the bill of rights, the XIV amendment. we need to get fundamental with our view of america -- the best thing i've seen in a while was Obama's speech at teh DNC. that's the way. we need fundamentalist with our history and identify the principles upon which this country was founded, quote Jefferson and Franklin more often. we must RE-educate 'Murka. Make this DAMN party the party of Patriotism, repeal the Patriot act, beat back tax injustice and tyrrany. WE'RE THE PARTY OF FREEDOM AND JUSTICE! DAMN!

but to do that, we have to rid ourselves of this corporate DLC scum. We can't be beholden to powerful corporate interests and be fearful that we'll enrage important doners and whatnot. hell, we get beat up often enough in the press. it doesn't matter. WE NEED TO DO THIS.

this is what's been on my mind this a.m. if we get this started, i'm going to work on 2008 right now. i'm showing up to GOTV in '08. otherwise, the republicans are the institutionalized party of power for the foreseeable future.

[tngledwebb]

23. Some repairs, improvements, okay, plenty of ways to do better.

But DIEBOLD is really to blame, not the voters, not the Dems.

[Blue Wally]

32. Take off the tinfoil hat

Admit WE lost and decide how do WE change so that the American people will trust us to run the country.

[robbedvoter]

25. Blah, blah, blah - take a look at this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=11874&mesg_id=17986&page=

[dansolo]

27. Harry Reid is going to be our new Minority Leader

Don't expect any change any time soon.

[robbedvoter]

31. HELOOOOO! Anyone home? We won! They stole it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=11874&mesg_id=17986&page=

[JHB]

33. Here's the Gameplan:

1) Divert some of that TV & polling money to putting people on the ground across the country, to diners and churches and veterans halls and bars, everywhere people get together, to both put a face on the party that isn't a cheap stereotype ("limosine liberals", etc.) and to listen and figure out how to get our message across to people after 30 years of demonization;

2) No more surrenders. Find a nice pasture for Lee Hamilton and park him there permanently. Part of the reason things are now in this state is because Democratic "leaders" either failed to vigorously pursue Republican abuses of power or failed to support those who did.
That "tactic" may have once made some sort of sense when the Dems controlled Congress, since by the nature of the scandals the wrongdoinf wasn't purely along party lines, so some Democrats would also have been caught up in them. Well, not anymore. The Republicans have controlled too much for too long: the scandals are theirs lock, stock and barrel now, the sides are drawn, and as the REAL Churchill said, we fight them on the beaches, in the fields, in the streets and on the hills, and we shall never surrender.

[g5jamz]

35. Promote Evan Bayh...and not Hillary Clinton

We want to win? Better start with candidates that can bring a solid red state and can easily be sold as a moderate with a record to back it up.

Ask yourself this. If the republicans nominated John McCain in 2008...would we even have a chance. If not...why not.