Unfucking the Donkey - Advice for weary, wandering Democrats (Vllg Voice)

[swag]

http://villagevoice.com/news/0531,perlstein,66378,2.html

Rick Pearlstein

excerpt . . .

As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are unfuckwithable.

It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."

Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.

Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."


. . . more

[mattclearing]

1. Good post, will read the article.

You are dead-on with the last bit. They were screwed in 1999. It is unimaginable that we are where we are today.

From the stolen election to the terrorist attacks to quasi-police state in 5 short years.

[swag]

2. Thank you - Pearlstein's entire article is worth a read.

Pass it on if you find it as invigorating and provocative as I do.

[mattclearing]

8. after reading it, I have to wonder...

...if he got laughed out of the room by the DLC people. :D

[ihaveaquestion]

3. Good article!

The one message that will get Democrats the votes and put Republicans in the dog house for a long time...

"Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All."

Simple - and guaranteed to work!

Recommended! :thumbsup:

[swag]

4. About the author - Rick Pearlstein

Here's the Powell's page on his book

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0976147505-0

The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party
by Rick Perlstein

A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more government intervention to reduce the gap between high- and lower-income citizens, and less than one-third consider high taxes to be a problem. Yet conservative Republicanism currently controls the political discourse. Why?

Rick Perlstein probes this central paradox of today's political scene in his penetrating pamphlet. Perlstein explains how the Democrats' obsessive short-term focus on winning "swing voters," instead of cultivating loyal party-liners, has relegated Democrats to political stagnation. Perlstein offers a vigorous critique and far-reaching vision that is a thirty-year plan for Democratic victory.

[ananda]

5. Nothing will change..

.. until voting is free and fair, everyone gets to vote, and every vote is counted as cast.

The business party, however, will not allow this to happen.

Democracy, then, is a force of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Until people change and take action, nothing new will happen.

Sue

[swag]

6. Learned helplessness is always appreciated.

I always enjoy such expressions.

[Puzzler]

7. "Universal Health Care Coverage For All"

No more pussy-fooring around this uber-important issue. ALL democrats need to come our strongly in favor of 100% health care coverage for ALL Americans.

(so sayeth this Canadian :) )

-P

[swag]

9. One more supplement - Interview with Rick Perlstein

(I apologize for spelling his name incorrectly in previous posts)

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/newsletter/the_stock_ticker_and_the_superjumbo_americas_racist_prisons/

excerpt:

Okay, but if our superjumbo is “Big Government,” many Democrats say that plane won’t fly anymore. The project is intellectually bankrupt, we need a new one. What do you say to that?

Well, first of all, I’m a historian and the only time Democrats have been able to pull together a new majority and to grow was when they laid down these markers, pledges to ordinary Americans that the government would protect their economic interests.

The other thing is, there’s a story about economic history of the recent past that historians will find us strange for not speaking about more often, and that’s the stagnation of incomes for ordinary Americans. What could be more contemporary? What could be more timely than programs that address that crying need? Between WWII and the ’70s the real incomes of Americans doubled. People who used to have outhouses were able to afford vacation cottages. Well, that’s dropped off a cliff. If it makes me an old Democrat to try and restore what the Democrats of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s accomplished, which was running the country, sue me. I’m an old Democrat.

The most common analysis of why Democrats have strayed from this project—as one New Deal congressman whom you quote says “Freedom Plus Groceries”—points to corporate money. Today’s Dems are feeding at the same trough and they can no longer take on the insurance companies, etc. But in the latter half of the book, you provide a fascinating psychological account of why the Democrats strayed from this project, which was sort of born out of the conflict of the ’60s.

Yeah. The trauma of the generation of people who are running the Democratic Party was being blindsided by the political failures of left-of-center boldness. If you look at a lot of the most resonant and stalwart centrists and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) Democrats, for a lot of them, their political coming-of-age was being blindsided by conservatism. For Bill Clinton, it was losing the governorship in 1980. For Joe Lieberman, it was losing a congressional race in 1980. For Evan Bayh, the chair of the DLC, it was seeing his dad lose his Senate seat to Dan Quayle in 1980. But the formative traumas of my generation of Democrats—and I’m 35—have been the failures of left-of-center timidity. So there really is a structural generational battle among Democrats. People of a certain age are terrified that the electorate is going to associate them with the excesses of the ’60s, but most voters are too young to remember that stuff. The Republicans keep trying to paint the Democrats as the party of the hippies and punks who burn the flag.

. . . more

and Perlstein's notions dovetail nicely with what this DU poster had to say this morning:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1967313

[DinahMoeHum]

10. "Everybody Does Better When Everybody Does Better". . .

'nuff said.

:kick:

[Jack Rabbit]

11. Excellent piece

There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.

Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."

I have been arguing for a long time that Democrats can make inroads into the evangelical vote simply because many evangelical Christians who don't like abortion and gay rights are also WalMart employees who are getting screwed by Bush's top-friendly economic policies. Where anybody would get the idea that Democrats or anybody else would force young people to perform homosexual acts in public schools is beyond me. It shouldn't be too hard to just tell the truth and say, "We're not going to do any such thing."

Nevertheless, even if the Democrats can drive that message home over the GOP noise machine, it won't do them any good as long as they behave like Republicans on issues that effect America's working poor. The discomfort these people feel about Democrats on cultural issues will carry the day for the Republicans until then.

If this is class warfare, let us make the most of it.

[swag]

12. Thanks for highlighting the freeper graphs. Quite funny and sad.

And thanks for the link to your own excellent article.