BlogWood: MT Archives

See, Norwood, this is exactly the problem: Our party is made up of so many diverse constituencies. And each group expects - or demands, really - that our party's nominee for President explicitly address that group's key concerns on the campaign trail.

Unfortunately, some of those concerns don't play well with mainstream voters who aren't really all that political. They're just looking for someone with a common-sense approach to things, and not one who (they think) will cater to all those "liberal fringe elements," like gays and black people and poor folks.

(Please note that my description of those groups as liberal fringe elements is intended solely as sarcasm.)

Contrast that to the Republicans, who are able to stick to their script of simple solutions for complex problems with much less difficulty. Why? Because the pseudo-Christians don't force the GOP candidate to declare his fealty to them in public. They know how much that would alienate that mushy middle group of voters. Instead, they help him behind the scenes, and if he doesn't deliver for them once he's in office, they cut him loose the next time out.

I'm not saying that any Democratic constituency should just shut up, vote Democratic and be thankful that there's any alternative to the Republicans. Not at all. What I am saying is that these groups should realize that a lot of people out there don't share their beliefs, values or priorities, and will vote against any candidate who does (or at least, does so publicly).

Want a candidate who'll work for liberal issues? So do I - but we have to go about it the right way. We'd need to get him to promise - privately, if possible - to support our agenda in exchange for something tangible, like a massive GOTV effort on election day.

But Dennis Kucinich is unelectable on a national level. That's a cold, hard, unpleasant fact, but there it is. Most Americans don't understand why someone would go vegan, and we cannot force them to understand it or even accept it. I personally think Howard Dean could have won, but frankly, he's not as progressive as John Kerry is anyway.

By offering simple, if unrealistic, solutions to complex problems, Bush was able to portray himself as the common-sense candidate, and win over a lot of voters who are in reality going to be hurt by a second Bush administration. We're actually offering those same people a better way, but they just won't vote for us.

Anyway, I know this post was kind of rambly. I'm just still too pissed to write coherently, I think.

Actually, you're less rambly than I.

Yeah, Dean wasn't the best example. Can we bring Welstone back?

So, when is that secret promise gonna be made? Can I get in on it? The Dems have taken huge blocs of progressives for granted for a long time - assuming that we'd tag along, since there wasn't a better option.

I say run on traditional progressive principals - help for those in need, free, high quality healthcare and education, worker's rights, personal freedoms, etc. Don’t cringe from these values. It's been shown twice now that simply running to the center is a losing proposition.

I won't argue that running to the center is a nonstarter. The only reason Clinton made it work was Ross Perot.

If a candidate ran on those issues you listed, I think he'd do well. I think most Americans would respond to that. But what I'm talking about are the individuals who belong to these Democratic constituencies who bellyache when they don't feel like they're being pandered to in a vigorous enough manner.

For some on our side, having a candidate who will take the country in the direction you want to go isn't enough. They want him to grovel before them, to validate their importance in the political world.

What we need to do, see, is develop some kind of secret code language like the Republicans have - so they can say "Dred Scott" in a debate, and the far right knows he's really talking about Roe v. Wade. Then whoever we run in 2008 can say those words, the liberal wing of our party can be satisfied that their issues are understood and will be addressed, and we won't lose Middle America in the process.

But who am I kidding? We Democrats are a splintered and fractious lot . . .

A secret code sounds like fun.

I think it all boils down to organization and communication. The wingers are better organized - they can and do make sure that their people know what Dred Scott means. Shit, it took the blogs a day or two to catch up to that reference, but it was apparently mainstream wingerese already.

Unofficially, I have this sense that while we had lots of boots on the ground, thousands of eager volunteers, people traveling from all over the country to help out in battleground states like mine, the organization needed to harness all of this raw energy just was not up to the task.

I volunteered for MoveOn Pac, Election Protection, and other new entities, and the glaring weakness everywhere was a lack of organization - they are just too new to this game to be competitive with the established players like the highly organized right wing religious groups and other GOP friends.

Don't get me wrong - everyone was working their asses off, but efficiency was sorely lacking. Next time, lessons will have been learned and things will run a little more smoothly, I'm sure.

Then there's the Arianna Huffington piece I
just posted - she says Kerry shoulda kept screaming about Iraq, in plain English, as loud as he possibly could. She's right, and that alone may have been enough to tip things in his favor. It’s all the same central theme - Kerry had no theme. Any progressive strategy that made him stand out would’ve been better than the

“timid, spineless, walking-on-eggshells strategy — with no central theme or moral vision”.