The Democrats' DaVinci Code (This guy gets it!)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

From the upcoming January issue of the American Prospect:


As the Democratic Party goes through its quadrennial self-flagellation process, the same tired old consultants and insiders are once again complaining that Democratic elected officials have no national agenda and no message.

Yet encrypted within the 2004 election map is a clear national economic platform to build a lasting majority. You don’t need Fibonacci’s sequence, a decoder ring, or 3-D glasses to see it. You just need to start asking the right questions.

Where, for instance, does a Democrat get off using a progressive message to become governor of Montana? How does an economic populist Democrat keep winning a congressional seat in what is arguably America’s most Republican district? Why do culturally conservative rural Wisconsin voters keep sending a Vietnam-era anti-war Democrat back to Congress? What does a self-described socialist do to win support from conservative working-class voters in northern New England?

The answers to these and other questions are the Democrats' very own Da Vinci Code -- a road map to political divinity. It is the path Karl Rove fears. He knows his GOP is vulnerable to Democrats who finally follow leaders who have translated a populist economic agenda into powerful cultural and values messages. It also threatens groups like the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which has pushed the Democratic Party to give up on its working-class roots and embrace big business' agenda. These New Democrats, backed by huge corporate contributions, say that the party must reduce corporate regulation and embrace a free-trade policy that is wiping out local economies throughout the heartland. They have the nerve to call this agenda “centrist” even though poll after poll shows it is far out of the mainstream. Yet these centrists get slaughtered at the ballot box, and their counterparts -- the progressive economic populists -- are racking up wins and relegating the DLC argument to the scrap heap.


http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8917

[Eloriel]

1. Boy, does he. Thanks. n/t

[tk2kewl]

2. Kick!

:kick:

[IrateCitizen]

3. Great article. Lots of excellent observations.

The question is, are any of the party bigwigs paying attention to this, or are they still so insulated and deluded by the Beltway that they'll advocate another round of "moving to the center (right) in order to woo voters", dragging us all down collectively like a giant albatross firmly attached to our necks?

[AirAmFan]

23. Forget about the party bigwigs. Dean and Trippi have shown how to

bypass them through direct funding appeals over the internet. Even if Dean doesn't take over leadership as Party Chair, from where he could accelerate slection and funding of progressive candidates, many other people will be able to do what he and Trippi did.

I'm almost glad Kerry had the election stolen from him. We'll be able to put dozens of people who haven't softpedaled "kitchen table" and "class warfare" issues into the White House, Congress, and State Houses. Had Kerry's votes all been counted, we would be in for more moves "to the center".

[rabid_nerd]

4. Nominated for homepage

:kick:

[tk2kewl]

5. how do you nominate? i forgot

:shrug:

[rabid_nerd]

6. should be a link by the alert link

...

[tk2kewl]

9. and if there isn't?

wassup with that? :shrug:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Thank you, R_N!

:-)

[tk2kewl]

10. never mind

:silly: me

[genieroze]

8. Kick

:kick:

[greenman3610]

11. I want to agree

but how do we explain Clinton's success in running toward the middle?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. The article goes into that

if you read the whole thing.

:-)

[genieroze]

13. He helped the middle class. eom

[IrateCitizen]

15. Because he campaigned as a populist, not a centrist.

In 1992, he drug Poppy Bush over the coals for pushing NAFTA, among other things. Clinton publicly said that he would only push NAFTA in the event that Mexico raised its labor and environmental standards, so that we would lift each other up rather than drag each other down.

Then, he was elected -- and pushed NAFTA without improvements in Mexico's labor and environmental standards, starting a long line of sellouts of core center-left values in favor of big business.

[bemildred]

17. Pee-rot and Gingrich had a lot to do with Clintoon's elections too.

Threats to the RNC have to be stopped just as much as threats to the DNC.

[amandabeech]

25. Pee-rot had a large dose of economic populism in his message.

Remember that "giant sucking sound" called NAFTA? The WTO wasn't even an issue then.

Even Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate for a couple of outings, is a strong economic populist, as well as a very, very strong social conservative.

[bemildred]

26. Yes, and Newtie had all those radical ideas about term limits and stuff.

They both had to be stopped, even if it meant letting an outsider like
Clintoon be President. Clintoon, distasteful though he was, was no
threat to the party leadership, he just wanted to belong too.

[AirAmFan]

27. Very astute observation

Gingrich did not really fit the picture Thomas Frank paints of Republican strategy over the last 25 years in "What's the Matter with Kansas". Apparently, Gingrich really BELIEVED the far-right mantras he spouted, rather than just mouthing them to rake in votes from millions of gullible fundies and tabloid-fantasyworld nutjobs. A Republican who actually believes the "social issues" propaganda could never really be trusted by the Wall Street wing of the party, which pays the bills and sets the REAL agenda of "defense" and "homeland security" swag, income and estate tax cuts for the wealthy, and FICA hikes for the middle class and poor.

[bemildred]

28. Right, and Dole was a Republican version of Mondale, born to lose. nt

[amandabeech]

29. Both paid their dues and stood in line for a long time.

Really, their candidacies were something of a gift for long service, since both were lost causes.

I liked Fritz Mondale, and surprisingly, did not find him dull, just very, very upper midwestern. I think that he would have done well in Lake Woebegone. Unfortunately, there are few Lake Woebegones around.

Fritz was right about taxes, too. We just are not adult enough as a nation to understand that we can't always have everything that we want all the time exactly when we want it. Quick-fix is us.

[bemildred]

34. Heck, I voted for him.

But he was a reliable party man, not the guy you put up there
if you want to kick some Republican ass, and he did not run an
ass-kicking campaign, and neither did Mr. Dole on the other side.
Which tells me they did not care about winning.

So if both parties do this, what does it tell you about their
true relationship to each other? Do they hate each other? Do
they fear each other? Or is it all a dog-and-pony show intended
to keep us rubes out here distracted?

[AirAmFan]

35. Democratic luck played a big role, too. Don't forget what a weak

and puny group of misfits the GOP were able to field against an incumbent Clinton in 1996:



Which candidates in this list, or who dropped out before the primaries, best represented the Gingrich wihg of the Republican Party in 1996?

This map comes from a remarkable memory-jogging site I just found through googling "1996 Republican primaries", at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/8088/ElectPandC.html

[bemildred]

36. LOL. A good point.

One can never be quite sure whether it was all a sinister plot
or just a bad year for candidates.

[amandabeech]

30. Excellent point.

All the Democrats in my little home town in western lower Michigan parted ways with the regular Democrats and went for some candidate whose movement was almost exclusively based on term limits.

These are not wealthy people by any strech of the imagination, but they had had enough of Guy Vanderjact's seeming lifetime appointment to Congress and knew what it was like to have a completely unresponsive representative.

The current Democrats adhere to the regular party and really got out the vote for Jennifer Granholm when she ran in the gubernatorial primary.

I wish that I could remember the guy's name. Where's 5thgendemocrat? He's old enough to remember this.

[Nite Owl]

14. Great article

if the DNC would understand this and ditch the DLCer's we could move on and start winning.

[Romberry]

16. Kick! nt*

Nice article. Thanks for posting!

[OneBlueSky]

18. amen! . . . great article, excellent observations . . .

when the Democrats once again become the party of the people and against the powerful corporate interests, that's when we'll start winning elections again . . .

[Kenneth ken]

19. terrific article - thanks for posting! n/t

[ooglymoogly]

20. a big jackboot kick in the butt for the dlc. eom

[Zorra]

21. Great quote by George Lakoff to go along with this editorial -

"Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party's progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.' It unconsciously locks in the notion that the other side's positions are worth moving toward, while your side's positions are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the right just moves further to the right." - George Lakoff

[AirAmFan]

22. Who pays the piper calls the tune. Dems may have needed DLC corporate

bagmen before the Internet became popular, but Dean and Kerry have shown it's no longer necessary to sell out the interests of the Democratic base just to get millions in corporate campaign funding.

Following the lead of Dean and Trippi, Kerry raised $71 million in individual contributions of $200 or less. THE PEOPLE now can support Democrats directly, rather than through buying corporate products and letting greedy anti-labor corporate lobbyists broker their political money.

I predict new internet-based funding groups will spring up to sidestep the DLC during the next 4 years, just the way Dean and Trippi did, to choose progressive candidates and fund their primary races. Progressive candidates will be able to pay their considerable campaign expenses without taking the DLC pledge to sidestep "class warfare" issues. "Class warfare" is the Dems bread and butter, and the Democratic base will eat all of it up.

See also the parallel discussion of Sirota's article in GD, at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1420912

[reprehensor]

24. This is the correct direction for the Democrats.

Democrats must run from the middle - Arianna Huffington

NO MORE MOORE The DLC joins the witch-hunt. - Matt Taibbi

The Democrats must move from the center, the DLC and the like. Kerry was the best the centrists had to offer.

Dean should be given the DNC Chair, and the centrists should realize that Republican Lite doesn't fly anymore.

It's time to seriously embrace and engage Progressives, low-to-middle class earners, and reject Corporatism, and Free Trade agreements that are lop-sided and destructive to the US economy.

[sadiesworld]

31. Damn near perfection.

:bounce:

[sadiesworld]

32. .

[many a good man]

33. The Seven Ways that Work

This is a fantastic article. The author describes the broad priciples that Democrats need to employ to regain majority status. Then he details specific examples of how blue is triumphing RIGHT NOW in the middle of the sea of red. Summary:


Fight the Class War

Champion Small Business Over Big Business

Protect Tom Joad

Turn the Hunters and the Exurbs Green

Become a Teddy Roosevelt Clone

Clean Up Government

Use the Values Prism

[UL_Approved]

37. You all need to take a trip out to Eastern Montana some day

The people out here are the most divers political group on the face of the earth. This is no joke or exaggeration. There is everybody out here from the Freeman to the Haight-Ashbury liberals in this portion of the state of Montana. The people out here are untied over some key issues, however. Economy and agriculture dominate over all other issues. The populist movement is coming about in Montana due to the horrendous failure of our state GOP. Even local representatives here are abandoning the GOP. And these are not moderates, they are stock conservatives. The fact that multi-national corporations are taking over rural Montana is becoming increasingly brought to light. This state has ALWAYS been at the hands of exploitive corporations. This is THE major selling point in politics. The anti-gay issue is the ultimate smoke-screen for the real problems. You have to hand it to the GOP for finding the perfect replacement for the nigger, Jew, and Communist. The homosexual community and the Middle East provide the continuity that these racist fucks need. But this is again the age-old cover for the true issues at hand: economy. There always was and always be one color in this nation: green. Once the Democrats wake up and re-take Washington, DC with real statesmen instead of corporate whores we will have out country back.

[eridani]

38. Another guy who gets it--

--the Conceptual Guerilla. Long, but good.

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/

Don't believe huge numbers of Americans are delusional? Consider the polling evidence on election eve. A majority of Americans polled believed the country was on "the wrong track." A majority of Americans polled believed the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. A majority of Americans polled favored some sort of universal health care. A majority of Americans polled favored Kerry on education, jobs, the economy, healthcare, taxes, the deficit and pretty much every other issue except "the war on terra."

As you develop mass market communication strategies, you will find the media to be an indispensable partner -- however unwilling they may be to serve in that capacity. First, you need to develop is "mass audience awareness." It's amazing to me how many "direct action" organizers fail to appreciate this. Apparently, they believe that the participants in their "direct action" are something more than the pitifully small crowd that they in fact are. Even the half a million people who protested the pending invasion of Iraq in the winter of 2003 -- a nice crowd to be sure -- was a miniscule portion of the total electorate. The effect of those protesters on Bush administration policy was zero, zilch, zip, nada. Why? Because the effect of those demonstrations on wider public opinion was zero, zilch, zip, nada. They did not create so much as a dip in public support for the invasion.

Remember your tactical doctrine. "No audience, no power." Those demonstrations failed to take away Dubya's audience. They didn't undermine support for the war, because they didn't undermine its justification. After the fact, the justification for the war has evaporated. But that isn't how things looked, back then. Even in light of the evaporation of the justification for the war, Dubya paid no price for his "mistake." Why? That failure of the justification has never been tied, in the public's mind, to any larger ideological issue. In fact, Dubya is a right-wing ideologue, the war was never about "terrorism" or "WMD's," or even eliminating our one-time "good friend" Saddam Hussein. It's about strategic control of oil reserves, as a part of the neo-conservative project for "military pre-eminence." No one outside of the progressive community understands that. Neither, has anyone within the progressive community offered a critique of that project on its own terms. After all, some ordinary citizens think "military pre-eminence" isn't such a bad idea. No one has bothered to explain that it is unachievable. Overwhelming power begets counterveiling power. Overwhelming military power may provoke non-military challenges -- such as say, pulling out of our bond market, or replacing the dollar with the euro as the international "reserve currency." China, for example, is a rather large customer for US T-bills. One thing you can count on. The rest of the world community will not passively sit still for "American world empire." Meanwhile, America under George W. Bush has created some serious weaknesses for itself, mostly in the economic realm.

[apple_ridge]

39. He did make the mistake of mentioning Mike Michaud

in his article as a liberal who has managed to use a better message to get elected in a conservative area. Michaud is definitely "repug lite" since he voted with them on the partial birth abortion ban among others. I would very much like to see him replaced with a real democrat. Also, his opponents have been seriously wacked out RWers who are so far to the right as to appear as lunatics. As soon as the repugs come up with a candidate who can at least appear to be reasonable, he's a goner.