Democrats & Liberals: Archives

This piece borders on the edge of troll-bait but I think it is acceptable as it’s clearly the style of writing that was chosen to make the point.

The politicians in power have reasons for every one of their new policies and actions. I’m not saying that they are valid reasons, but they certainly are being creative in their explanations to the American public.

My biggest concern is that the Bush administration has successfully alienated the United States from the rest of the world. We’re not seeing the full negative effects of this yet but I’m certain we will in the future. By “going it alone” and telling the U.N. to F.U., the Bush administration has led us down a path of endless “war” in the Middle East that if not checked will lead the the United States into a world of national bankruptcy and another Great Depression.

Christ. It’s screeds like this which will only guarantee that the Republicans enjoy four more years in power.

I find the criticisms of the administration showing the dead bodies of the Hussein boys to be off base. The administration hesitated showing the pictures until the Iraqis said that they wanted proof of the butchers’ deaths.

You do have some real points, but they are drowned out by all the rhetoric of Bush = Mao = Hitler. It’s things like this that drive the great centrist blob in the middle to the right because those posting under the Democratic Party flag are so hopped up on their self righteousness that it drives the voters that matter away.

But anyways, keep this up if this bit of mental wanking makes you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. God knows if it’s accomplishing anything else.

Oh, and if you’re going to throw out insults, don’t be a pansy and resort to weak initials like you would in middle school. Fuck you too — you’re only alienating the voters who will make a difference in ‘04.

-Chris

thanks Chris,

I’m as radical liberal as they come (socialized health care, reduce military spending, peacenik draft dodger, publicly funded elections, etc) but I think those of us on the left would have learned some lessons from the sixites.

Don’t alienate, communicate.

When you systematically violate every one of your stated principles (as illustrated) the end result is you have none.

I ain’t no Jonathan Swift, but that’s the point. And it’s increasingly valid. Anyone wishing to argue the facts is welcome, but I am frankly tired of apologizing for the tone.

And any conservative who can defend Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and the rest, then think I’m “over the top,” is making the point for me.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about the present administration; they are in effect out of control.

I’m sure I agree with either Mr Blankenhorn or Ed Martin on the majority of issues, but strategically ,I think the left can be heard on the issues without whining, being vitriolic or hateful.

I believe that part of the reason the din from the right drowns out almost everything else is because anger and negativity always draw a crowd. The predominant culture awards extreme behavior with celebrity status. Since the predominant culture places a higher value on individual celebrity than selfless cooperation, those with the most outrageous speech and acts achieve celebrity status and their message is heard more loudly than those who seek quiet consensus and solution.

The frustration felt by those of us who have ideals of peace, justice, liberty and the connectedness of all living beings, can make us forget our ideals and resort to the same tactics of those who believe in personal gain at community expense.

The loud and outrageous right make their opponents the issue while they ignore the real issues that mean everything to everyday people. The right puts greater emphasis on the individual rather the collective nature of the nation. This divides us and makes us feel that the only way to be heard is to be loud and outrageous.

I understand that going negative works in politics, but that tactic is a loser in the long term. People tire of negativity and will always migrate to a positive view.

The rights preoccupation with the politics of intolerance, negativity and anger will only hurt them in the long term.

I am reminded of a cartoon by Tom Tomorrow in This Modern World (http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=14485) where he represents a liberal pointing out all the things ridiculous about the current White House resident to the point where our left-wing friend has a breakdown and passes out. I and many of my political cohorts identify with this characterization. So I understand where Dana is coming from.

However, one of the things that has always made liberal & progressive policies attractive to people was that, in the end, it is truly the politics of the optimists. We rarely (or at least rarely should) seek to gain off the suffering or failures of others. Instead, it was the dream of a strong, healthy, educated, charitable, visionary and egalitarian society that inspired people to back our causes.

The *radical* conservatives in the White House sadly represent the policies of “fear of the other,” cloaked many ways in jealousy, anger, unfettered machismo (self-doubt), and selfishness.

These drivers will most certainly fail eventually because societies wrapped in inclusiveness have always far out-paced those stuck in exclusiveness (Read: Middle East). It is our job to pull people out of their fear and get them to appreciate our vision, which has the inherent winning point; the opinion that the glass is half full.

But I understand Dana’s point of view. And prose like his (wink wink, nudge nudge) will certainly find a place to fire up supporters, much like the rants of James Carville. But in the end, we must try to resist letting those kinds of articles become our main message.

Afterall, what makes us better is that we do not have anyone of the clout or, let’s be honest, the evil lunacy of folks like Ann Coulter or Tom DeLay. The questions for us is: How do we combat them without stooping to their level?

(Sorry if this is too preachy; it’s only one man’s opinion, and it’s late and I just got back from a birthday party. :) )

While I agree with virtually every point Dana Blankenhorn made — and while I even find his tone and approach to be within the bounds of acceptable commentary — I worry that the Democrats need to strike a far more positive tone to carry the new day. We have a raft of stuff to which to be against. We need a bigger raft of stuff to favor.

BTW, Chris, I think you missed the point completely about showing war dead. Dana *may* have been talking about the Hussein brothers, but I had a sense he was really talking about much earlier in the war when we blatantly violated international law *and* moral principle by parading their war victims around and then screamed like wounded pigs when they did the same.

Dana: I’m glad that you feel the need to stick to your principles. However, if you are going to want to make a case for change with those who do not share all of your principles, you are going to have to compromise a bit. Face it, when 59% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing, equating him to Satan will not win these people to your cause. You must put forth a platform that is less anti-Bush and more about how Dems in the office would do things better than the current administration. I don’t know if this site is representative of Dems all over, but from a quick survey of the front page, I get the impression that the Democratic party is less concerned with puting forth a positive platform that will draw others into the fold than slandering Bush. Is Bush a dick? Sure. You don’t need to convince those who agree with you, and you will be unable to convince those who disagree with you about Bush being a dick. The only the Dems will gain any ground in ‘04 is if they put forth ideas about what to do about fixing education, promoting equality and liberty, and improving the national economy. The Dems already have the left — the idea is now to go after the middle (and disappointed Republicans).

Dan: Dana is the only one to say whether he was talking about the POWs in the war or the Husssein brothers. Given the phrasing above (“the faces of others’ war dead”) and the timing of the comment, I still think he was speaking of Qusay and Uday. If I’m guilty of missing Dana’s point above, so be it. However, a larger point must be made that bitching about these pictures and making a big issue out of it will win over much less of the electorate than something positive.

Anyways, that’s my $0.02.

-Chris

I want to thank Jeremy, Dan and Chris for their well-reasoned critiques.

Any effective campaign is going to combine “red meat” (like my piece) with far more reasoned, and nuanced arguments.

One big problem Democrats have had in confronting the right in recent years is their fear of red meat. We’ve become political vegetarians.

But our big success of the last two decades, 1992, was based in part on the Carville “war room” strategy.

This article seems to be an interesting case in point about Repub ideals:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/940725.asp?0cv=NA01

It is about a Rebub bill to give tax breaks to companies that buy so much American product. It was inspired by the rather large shrinkage in US manufacturing jobs recently.

But one of the prime goals of Repub philosophy is a free market, of which this seems to be the antithesis. I get the feeling that the Repubs have recognized a growing number of Labor voters among their ranks, and want to court them. But they don’t want to change the party philosophy. It feels like an unspoken message of ‘you labor folks are great, come on over, but just don’t even think about joining a union.’

It is an obvious ploy to grab votes. It doesn’t do much to change spoken and unspoken sentiment in the Repub platform that is decidely nuetral towards workers, or sometimes outright hostile. It may or, perhaps just as likely, may not do something to put a bandaid on the bleeding.

But I am left wondering, just what are Repub ideals? So while the language in this post is a bit over the top for me, I think the idea is quite important.

Dana, Normally I would chastise you for stooping to name-calling. But, we are in a political war and the left can’t survive the Republican onslaught by using standard goody-two-shoes (whatever the heck that means) behavior or by “setting the good example”. Just like in a real battlefield, you must fight at least as viciously as your enemy in order to win. The same goes for this war, because the neoconservatives have unilaterally thrown away the Emily Post maunal for the first time in history, and our lives and moral souls truly depend on our defeating this tiny, ultra-wealthy, authoritarian group of zealots. Come on, all you FU’s (Fighting Underdogs), it’s time to get nasty!

Again I want to thank everyone who has participated in this section — including those who have criticized the language of my original post.

Even most of those who criticized me, however, didn’t say I was wrong. I find that interesting.

It tells me America is far more divided than it ever has been before. The anger that built among Republicans during the Clinton era is now being matched, even exceeded, by anger among Democrats. (Obviously I’m among them.)

You need both an angry electorate and a happy candidate to win a Presidential election. I think Republicans had that advantage in 2000. I think Democrats had that advantage in 1992, and Republicans had it in 1980. (In 1988, Quayle was the happy camper, which is why that election was as close as it was.)

An angry base drives turnout. A happy candidate reassures the center.

What the hell part of 9-11 don’t you folks
understand You wanna sea pictures of American
dead or those rag tops LOL

But our big success of the last two decades, 1992, was based in part on the Carville “war room” strategy.
I think a third party fits in somewere i can’t
remember

I agree with Dana and others. We need to feel our outrage, not lie to ourselves about it. We need to let our anger turn into activism, not be bottled up until it festers into despair.

The far right has been both rampant and triumphant for my entire adult life. It’s high time we try to be something other than Republican Lite. As the saying goes, in a race between a Republican and a Republican, the Republican will win every time. For too long we’ve chased the center, moving right and then seeing that the center is halfway between us and them, and moving right again.

We need positions that are near the center of the old Democratic coalition, not the center of the new Republican hegemony. We need to be the party of fiscal responsibility, because you can’t have a good situation for people to find jobs in while the government is going full tilt toward default on the debt. Having our policy be the me-too Democratic tax cut that has us going for literally broke at 80 miles an hour instead of 85 is not an option. Having our policy be the me-too education policy that provides penalties and unfunded mandates for all, but no resources to make anything better, is not an option. Having our policy be to line up unquestioningly behind alienating every available ally while turning Iraq into a permanent war zone (kind of like what Afghanistan was when Al Qaeda set up shop there) is not an option. Having our policy be to play the politics of fear, for the pornographic thrill of fear — but then trying to make it a selling point that we’re not as good at it as the other guys — is not an option.

We must propose programs to help provide opportunity and a safety net that will let people take the risks that come with opportunities, and we must propose them on the honest basis that they will be paid for by taxes: “you can’t have social justice without fiscal responsibility”. We must reassert the American tradition (checkered though our record has been) of moral leadership in international affairs, not unilateralism and narrow self-interest. We must reassert the founding concepts of this country: the patriotic duty to dissent, the inalienable rights, the checks and balances, the accountability of our elected officials. We must stand up not only to terrorists, but also to terror: no one can terrorize you if you will not be terrorized; no one can make you renounce your liberty, for even though they kill you, you may choose to die free and unafraid. When the signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, it was no idle rhetoric. To the contrary, it was all too likely that they would be hanged as traitors. But they understood that liberty was more precious than life, and not to be traded away for security.

In the fight against terrorism, we well may be prudent to make some retreats, to let ourselves be afraid, to give up some liberty. But let us recognize that these are retreats, and let us say boldly that the current administration has lead us to retreat too far.

I agree. Democrats are (as of late) the me-too party. It seems that you are focusing on the wrong things when you attack Bush over something as peddy as this intelligence flap. Democrats need to find a voice instead of just criticizing the President. They also need to find out that the gun control debate is a dead end. Republicans won the election over that issue. Al Gore would have won his home state of Tennessee if he would have listened to his constituency. Ideological wrangling is a good thing but it must be tempered with the will to protect basic freedoms. Mr. Ashcroft are you listening? Dont be a John Ashcroft. Dont be a John Mccain (bitter and viscious), just find your inner socialist/Marxist and run with that. It worked in the past right?;)

Here is the deal. I don’t think voters are going to be alienated by Democrats making hard hitting attacks on Bush—even on the war. The real problem for the Dems in the upcoming election is people’s sense that they are just to namby-pamby to do what needs to be done. Trying to take some modulated weasly position just reinforces that image. What Clinton did really well was (1) be relentlessly optimistic; and (2) give as good as he got. As Bill Clinton said: “in times like these people prefer someone who is strong and wrong to someone who is weak and right.”