Some of us have their heads in the sand (or somewhere else)

[Perky]

To be a majority party in either house of Congress you have to have some moderate to conservative Dems. If nothing else it is a geopolitical reality. You can not define the party based solely on social issues. The Reagan coalition brought together social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and those who want a huge defense department.

Just like the Repukes have to hold their noses and have a Lincoln Chaffe,as a Party we have to have some pro-life elements (Casey). some fiscal conservatives (Ford) and some folks who are pro-war on terror (Lieberman)

It is the nature of coalition politics.

I would take these three and Leahy as head of Judiciary and Levin leading Armed Forces any day, any time.

You might not like an individual politics but the party can not allow itself to be defined solely on the basis of social policy issues.

BEING THE MAJORITY PARTY IS EVERYTHING.

[onehandle]

1. Yep. nt

[Perky]

3. Yep. nt

[izzie]

2. Always wait for the day after the vote

I am still not so sure we will win. I would like to see the Dem. in power but things usually change slow and things are set up for the GOP to keep the power. It is a bite here and their that counts over years.

[DemonFighterLives]

4. Diversity is great

but anyone that has supported this regime should go as is the case with Lieberman.
Why is it that the Dems. are always the ones that need to bend and reach for the middle ground. You will not see the repukes ever do this except for some isolated cases.

I say the dems. should give em hell and get some diplomacy going around the world.
:dem:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. So nobody who ever voted for Bush should vote for us?

That's really what you're saying? That we should limit ourselves to GOTV efforts with our base, and not even bother trying to pull votes from anybody who voted for the Republicans last time around?

[DemonFighterLives]

14. I was talking about big regime supporters like Lieberman, etc

If they now see the light and disown dubya, then welcome to the party.
My point is that people have to see the light by themselves and not have someone kiss their ass to lure them to the left.

The elusive middle is a figment of the imagination and hoping to draw away fervent righties is a pipe dream as well. The democrats would do well to play to the needs of the general populace which includes their own disgruntled base and many others lost in independent land. Nothing against Independents btw or Libertarians.

The compassionate conservatives are neither.

[Q]

5. I've heard this a thousand times over the last couple decades...

...that we must act like Republicans in order to 'win'.

We must have had SOMETHING the people liked as social democrats...because we held boh houses for over four decades. It wasn't until some Dems became more conservative (in the 80s/90s) that we started losing seats and power.

Voters who want 'conservative' politics and perpetual war know where to go: the GOP. Those who want social justice will vote Democratic...at least that's what held power for the Democrats for so many years.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. I'd like you to read my post #6...

...and let me know what you think of it. My take is that people who think folks aren't voting for Democrats because of their policy positions are badly mistaken, but not necessarily for the reasons most people here think they're mistaken.

[Perky]

8. That is absurd

We started losing conservative seats in the SOuth with the Reagan era. Ever hear of the "solid south" Sam Ervin, Herman Talmadge, Richard Russell, et al? George Wallace? San Nunn?

[MuseRider]

11. Welcome back Q.

I am happy to see you again. :hi:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. I addressed this issue in a post a while back...

...but I think it's worth making the point again:

The fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that not enough people are voting for its candidates.

We need to get more people voting for us. I think we can all agree on at least that much. Obviously the contention within the party is about the reason or reasons that this problem exists. I don't really want to get into a discussion about the ideological direction of the party right now, but I do want to look at the reality of where votes actually come from.

Almost everybody who votes for a Democrat in November must, by definition, come from one of three distinct groups:

1) People who voted for Democrats in the last election.
2) People who voted for Republicans in the last election.
3) New voters (either newly registered young'uns, or people who have historically been non-voters.)

I think it's pretty safe to say that nearly everyone from group 1 who would actually bother to vote in mid-term elections is going to vote for us. We can maybe increase this number with GOTV efforts, and efforts to energize the party. Those will be marginal, incremental gains - not the large reorientation of the electorate that is required to keep and hold the majority.

Now let's look at group two for a second. This is the most important group. It consists of a wide variety of people who could loosely be described as the "Republican Coalition" that has kept Bush and the Republicans in power lo these many years. I have seen some extremely disturbing attitudes towards these people on DU. A few weeks ago, an ex-republican (a very recent ex-republican - he voted for Bush on '04) posted on DU to tell everyone that he'd had enough, and had come over to the dems. Some of his positions were much more conservative than your average DUer, but some of them were pretty well in line with a lot of people here. He didn't come to the party because of his, or our, ideology. He came to the party because of shared values, and a sense that the Republicans no longer shared his values. (This is an important point. For most middle-of-the-road voters, values are much more important than ideology.) In any case, he was excited about being part of the Democratic party, and voting for democrats.

Now don't get me wrong, there were a lot of positive responses to this guy. But I was astonished by the number of juvenile "Fuck off, you are impure," posts I saw. And I have to wonder what the hell is the matter with those people. I have to wonder how old they are, or if they've ever read any political history. If you consider every voter from group two (the ex-Repubs) to be unwelcome in the party, then yes, we are doomed to fail. We will be stuck forever with whatever factions we can eke from groups one and three.

We are going to be in this morass until people around here realize that pulling voters from group two doesn't require turning the party into a lukewarm version of the Republicans. You can appeal to the values of many of the voters in group two, without having to mirror their ideology. How many "Reagan Democrats" actually agreed with his positions on social issues? People will vote for candidates who don't share their ideology, as long as they think they share their values. This might not be true for groups like the fundies, but it's certainly true of a lot of suburban moderates, economic conservatives, etc. Look at the Republican party over the past ten years. They've pulled tons of votes from moderates even as they were moving their party to the ideological right. Does anybody think this ideological shift is why the moderates voted for them?

This whole argument about whether to shift the party to the right or the left is ludicrous. People haven't been voting for the Republicans because they hate our ideology. If we can't even be grown up enough to look rationally at the reasons people vote for Republicans, then we are toast. Grow up. They're not all freepers. They're not all evil. And a lot of them will vote for us, but not if we treat them lke shit, which is what a lot of the ideological purists here are proposing we do.

[mmonk]

10. Define moderate.

The MCA is not moderate. Pre-emptive war is not moderate. That's rightwing.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. Well...

I wouldn't consider either of those things to be core values of what the OP was referring to as "moderates." On the contrary, they don't seem to like the war at all. And I doubt many of them even know about the MCA.

[mmonk]

16. Moderate has been redefined.

Moderate now means voting with the other party on things that might not be middle of the road issues. Moderate used to be a political position of middle of the road or non-ideological. But some of the things some elected dems have voted for such as the MCA are extreme ideological rightwing positions. So that's what I meant by asking to define "moderate".

[calico1]

13. I think the main problem is that with the

Republicans having been in power for so long they control most of the media and control the committees, etc. They are in control of the agenda. And in control for the most part of what the average person hears about what is going on. The Democrats need to get back in control and turn this around. I agree that control is the main priority and that in a Southern state like Mississippi for example, you aren't going to have a chance in hell of winning elections with a very Liberal candidate. But again, its largely because we do not control the information. Or even have fair access to disseminating our message. So I see it kind of as a catch-22 situation. Voters in the South would benefit from more Liberal policies but they will not vote today for a Liberal candidate. But on the other hand, it waters down our message for Conservative Democrats to run in these states because it doesn't advance our cause and it keeps things status quo in those areas. I think we need to be in the majority and build our strength in disseminating our message. Most people in American want progressive policies. They just don't know it.

[AZBlue]

15. Well-said! Thank you!!

eom

[boolean]

17. BULL. SHIT.

The Dems have tried that for the last 20 years. It hasn't worked. People who vote GOP won't vote for GOP lite.

[Cleita]

18. That has worked so well in the past.

Really stop this moderate crap. We have had six years to prove that it's wrong.