Reply #34: A good thoughtful post [View All]

[bklyncowgirl]

One problem that I see is that the Democratic party is a collection of interest groups. I do political cartooning and when I did a drawing of typical Republicans its easy. Big money and Fundamentalists.

Democrats were more difficult. In the end I came up with a black woman looking ascance at a gay man who was looking nervously at a union hardhat who was none too thrilled with the environmentalist standing next to him who was glaring at the Wall Street type next to her. It's hard to develop a coherent platform without offending someone.

NAFTA is anathema to unionists but the Wall Street types who provide so much of the party's funding are inflexibly pro free trade.

Poor but socially conservative African-American and Hispanics are part of our base but so are gay activists and pro-choice groups.

The goal is how to pull all of these threads into a convincing message that speaks to people's every day lives without losing vital parts of or consistuency.