Democratic (Party) Direction

and also worth remembering that our culture -- as opposed to our politics -- is still largely trending liberal. the culture is globalizing and multiculturizing a lot faster than our politics. politics will catch up.

ideologically, yes. attitudinally, no.

So how can Democrats compete with a powerful top-down structure like the church? Without unions how can Democrats organize supporters and potential supporters in a social situation that meets regularly? Can MoveOn and Dean-style internet "activism" really mature into effective replacements for genuine grassroots organizations that meet in the flesh?

Without unions how can Democrats organize supporters and potential supporters in a social situation that meets regularly?

what would be the purpose of meeting regularly?

The Christian Coalition may be a "top-down organization," but you have to understand that the power of the church comes from the fact that people actually get together and meet. In many non-urban places in America, the Church is THE place for social and family life -- it's the only game in town.

they're an essential part of the chicken. their reach is very much real.

The thing about the Goldwater 'hinge' is that it would likely never have resulted in a conservative revolution if a genial front man like Reagan hadn't emerged. To win the presidency, the Dems need someone who can recast their attitude/ideology/wotdafuck in positive terms, and who doesn't sound like inauthentic and grating with every breath like Gore and Kerry.

RWR was inaugurated 25 years ago today. To update the smartest thing I've heard Michael Moore say, we're entering the second quarter-century of the Reagan Administration.

Well, even if all he manages to do is to get two conservative justices on the Supreme Court (thereby shifting the swing vote to the right) who will likely be there for the next 30 years, he's already been quite effective from the right's perspective.

http://www.ourtenwords.com/about

About OurTenWords
The idea for OurTenWords.com came from a post by Michael Faris on the community blog at HeartlandPac.org.

Michael asked, "What ten words should Democrats use to define their message?"

Tom Vilsack responded with his own ten words, and challenged others to submit their own ten words.

Since then over 500 people have responded to the challenge, making it one of the most active discussions at HeartlandPac.org.

Tom Vilsack found the discussion so promising that he asked the project to be expanded.

His idea was to get as many people as possible to submit their ten words and to discuss them with others. To accomplish this goal Heartland PAC has launched OurTenWords.com to encourage more discussion and ten words from many different Americans.

OurTenWords.com

This site is designed to start a discussion about the Democratic Party’s message by obtaining as many ideas as possible. This is a conversation that everyone needs to participate in -- it must not be limited to certain members of the party, whether they be the grassroots, elected officials, or policy experts. This effort matters so much that we cannot afford to leave anyone out of the process...

Tom's initial suggestion: "Here is my first effort at meeting the challenge and over time I expect my words may change: meaningful opportunity, personal security, individual responsibility, sustainable communities, progressive alliances."

That's the point: people attend church anyway for a multitude of reasons and have strong ties to their religion that can date back into childhood. On the other hand a person's connection to a strictly political organization like MoveOn is much more casual and fleeting. People come and go around election time or when they feel a small victory has been won but apart from a small number of dedicated activists, most people don't shape their entire social life around these groups.

Unions used to be a similar constant presence in people's work lives in the way that the church shapes their private lives but this traditional Democratic base is vanishing with nothing similar to take its place.

and little if any of what I'd consider political organizing - at least of the electoral sort - goes on there.

Perhaps not political organizing in a direct sense but politicians certainly use the church as an ideologically organizing force to rally voters around issues like abortion, gay marriage and other "values." In other words they may not neccessarily be "organizing" in the sense of registering voters or canvassing but they use the church as a way to conceptually organize a group of issues and ideas around an existing group of potential voters.

In fact, if it did go on there, they'd be in danger of losing their non-profit status.

Um...

Midway through the meal, I innocently asked how the "Big Brother is listening" issue would play in November. Judging from his pained reaction, I might as well have announced that Barack Obama was resigning from the Senate to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. With exasperation dripping from his voice, my companion said, "The whole thing plays to the Republican caricature of Democrats -- that we're weak on defense and weak on security." To underscore his concerns about shrill attacks on Bush, the Democratic operative forwarded to me later that afternoon an e-mail petition from MoveOn.org, which had been inspired by Al Gore's fire-breathing Martin Luther King Day speech excoriating the president's contempt for legal procedures...

Fire the consultants, I say!

The problem with a consultant-driven overreliance on polling data is that it is predicated on the assumption that nothing will happen to jar public opinion out of its current grooves. As Elaine Kamarck, a top advisor in the Clinton-Gore White House and a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, argued, "These guys [the consultants] just don't get it. They don't understand that in politics strength is better than weakness. And a political party that is always the namby-pamby 'me too' party is a party that isn't going to get anyplace."

Kamarck also shrewdly pointed out that if leading Democrats follow the consultants and abdicate the field on the NSA spying issue (Hillary Clinton, please call your office), "They're going to leave the critique open to the far left. And that will exacerbate two problems the Democrats have: one, that they look too far out of the mainstream, and the other, that they don't believe in anything."

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

The key word there is "consider". Yes, why shouldn't Congress at least consider it? No one except die-hard Republicans would probably disagree with that. But that's still a ways from saying, yes, he should be impeached.

Kamarck's analysis is self-contradictory. How could the Dems simultaneously be "too far out of the mainstream" and not "believe in anything"?

Just like last year -

Carville went on to point out that on the day the U.S. Census Bureau announced an increase in poverty and millions more Americans lacking health care, what did Kerry do? "The event they did," said Carville, "was credit-card debt . . . because someone in a focus group must have said something."

because different people can dislike the Dems for different reasons? I don't see anything contradictory in that statement - she isn't saying people simultaneously hold both positions (altho, that too is possible - people pass contradictory judgments all the time). The public is obviously not monolothic in its thinking.

It seems that Kamarck's basic argument is that the moderate Dems shouldn't be afraid of embracing issues that seem "lefty" because if they don't then the leftists will embrace them, make a lot of noise about it, and basically be seen as the voice of the party, which will reinforce the perception that the Dems are out of the mainstream. And meanwhile, the moderates will stand around looking weak and conflicted as they hem and haw and beat around the bush, which will reinforce the perception that they don't stand for anything.

Unfortunately, this scenario is not implausible. A lot of the blame for this should lie with the news media, which tends to prefer confrontation and controversy over subtlety and nuance - but the Dems still need to figure out how to deal with it. But I don't think the Dems should give up the ability to pick their battles. If they let the GOP and the news media dictate the playing field, then they've already lost. I think the Dems need to identify the issues that they want to stake their campaigns on and force the media to acknowledge those issues. If they don't think that wiretap spying is the right issue, then I think they need to figure out how to change the topic of conversation.

This is exactly right. You guys need to stop talking about "ideas" and platforms and the like as if they mattered! As I said upthread you need an amiable demon of boundless charisma – a Nixon, Clinton, a Reagan – who can look citizens in the eye, convince them that their mother was a man, and lock their votes for the next election.

This is exactly right. You guys need to stop talking about "ideas" and platforms and the like as if they mattered! As I said upthread you need an amiable demon of boundless charisma

Wrong! Once again, this is kicking the can down the road. Yes, the charismatic demon is very important, but you can't conjure him out of thin air. Ideas and platforms don't matter, attitudes do. Demons are charismatic, because they have the right attitudes or know how to simulate them. It's very important to find candidates who come as close as possible to fitting the bill, but the attitude also has to be expressed in the party's language and programs and supporters as well. When the right succeeds at taking down candidates by comparing them to their less attitude-appropriate fellow-travelers (which the GOP is currently trying to do to everyone prominent in the party), you have a problem that even a charismatic devil may not be able to solve.

"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world," Rove told Republican activists. "That doesn’t make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

from http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10946712/

I don't think that nitpicking the Republicans on specifics of the "War on Terror" is a winning strategy for the Dems. The wiretap spying issue would fall into this category. Yes, Congress has an obligation to investigate the legal justification of this, but I don't think that Dem candidates should seize on it as their road to victory in November.

or say that the current group in charge has made us far weaker as a nation, has betrayed our trust, etc.

no! that just sounds weak. it's asking someone else to take care of the problem (message: because we can't on our own). also, as above, you need to let people draw conclusions, not hand them over asking that they be accepted.

and where is your fucking memory, Kerry VOTED FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ, that's what screwed him (among other things, but in the War on Terror(tm) that was his real achilles heel). He didn't say he wouldn't have invaded Iraq, he said he would've invaded it BETTER. Duh.

when has this ever worked? When has one side putting out info and letting folks decide worked better than the other side deliberately and/or disingeniously pushing the other side of it with an explicit conclusion? i think this is way too simple and expects way too much of most folks who can't be bothered to pay attention to any of this stuff.

it does not. One of Kerry's problems is that he WOULDN'T say this. He wouldn't come out & say the obvious, and ran against a guy and an entire set-up which had no problem is repeatedly reinforcing their version of it. It is not a sign of weakness to say that we've been fucked over for a while now, we're worse off than we were before, and new people need to get in there to fix the damage.

It's a hell of a lot more compelling to make your complete case, conclusions included.