I understand why our candidates are unable to energize our own base.

[KlatooBNikto]

Except for Howard Dean. This is because our people think the fix is always in so our votes won't count no matter what.And they are right.


Look at the Iraq War Resolution. Even after knowing it was based on fraudulent evidence, we do not see any one who voted for that Resolution, condemning the basis for the War and calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

It is almost as though that even calling into question Bush's war has been turned into some kind of an unpatriotic thing to do.So is the case for investigation into 9/11.No one has seen fit to question any of the findings,no one has shown any support for the Widows of 9/11.

As far as our domestic politics and economics go, you would think there will be at least some Democrats who would have some spine.No, that is not the case.

Why do we need a party that seems to have been reduced to a mirror image ( and a fuzzy one at that) of the Republicans.

I think a lot of it has to do with the establishment Democrats like Kerry and Clinton swallowing the DLC line of BS. We need to purge these traitors to our principles before we become the Party of FDR, Harry Truman and John Kennedy once again.

[wyldwolf]

1. KlatooBNikto...

...define "base."

How was Howard Dean the only one who energized it?

He lost in the primaries.

Kerry got more votes than any Democrat in history.

I believe when you speak of "the base," you may actually mean the activists of the party.

Look at the Iraq War Resolution. Even after knowing it was based on fraudulent evidence, we do not see any one who voted for that Resolution, condemning the basis for the War and calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

John Kerry and John Edwards both condemned the basis of the war and called a timed and orderly withdrawal.

It is almost as though that even calling into question Bush's war has been turned into some kind of an unpatriotic thing to do.So is the case for investigation into 9/11.No one has seen fit to question any of the findings,no one has shown any support for the Widows of 9/11.

Many Democrats have called into question Bush's war.

As far as our domestic politics and economics go, you would think there will be at least some Democrats who would have some spine.No, that is not the case.

Which domestic policies? Economically, what would you have the Dems do while out of power?

I think a lot of it has to do with the establishment Democrats like Kerry and Clinton swallowing the DLC line of BS. We need to purge these traitors to our principles before we become the Party of FDR, Harry Truman and John Kennedy once again.

Traitors? Ann Coulter, is that you?

[m berst]

4. blue collar voters

Half or more of the Democratic base is voting Republican. The Democratic party is getting the votes of what used to be called moderate to liberal Republicans and African Americans.

I would like to see us trade the DLC and its adherents back to the Republicans in exchange for getting the "Reagan Democrats" back in the Democratic party - the party of the workers and the poor. Then we can all return to sanity. As it is now, I spend more time arguing down Republican viewpoints among Democrats than we once had to do with Republicans.

Nothing wrong with being a conservative, but it is making a mess of the Democratic party and leaving the Republican party in the hands of extremists. The Republican party has alienated a lot of people who should be moderate Republicans and driven them into the Democratic party. The Democratic party has alienated blue collar people and driven them over to the Republicans. That is why you can't get any agreement around here on traditional Democratic party positions.

If you leave out abortion, gays and guns, most Democrats would be Republicans and most Republicans would be Democrats. Those three issues were inserted by the religious right into the national political debate to pave the way for a type of theocratic fascism. The extremists have done such a good job, that many Democrats define the party, and right and left, mainly by their position on those three issues.

[wyldwolf]

5. stats?

I would like to see us trade the DLC and its adherents back to the Republicans

Back to the republicans? When were they there? Do you have a source showing trends of Moderate and DLC types migrating from the GOP?

Half or more of the Democratic base is voting Republican. The Democratic party is getting the votes of what used to be called moderate to liberal Republicans and African Americans.

I'd like to see some stats on that.

[m berst]

9. too slow

We probably should work up some stats on it. It has happened over 25 years so there isn't a migration that can be easily seen. The shift to the Republican party by blue collar voters is pretty well documented.

I am wondering - and I hope you won't take offense - would stats really interest you, or are you saying I am wrong and doing that by challenging me for stats?

[wyldwolf]

46. both

I am wondering - and I hope you won't take offense - would stats really interest you, or are you saying I am wrong and doing that by challenging me for stats?

Both

[cali]

7. Dean's loss in the primaries

in no way negates the excitement he generated within the party base. Acknowledging this does not negate the accomplishments of other dems, including Kerry. Dean changed the dynamic in the primaries and the election.
I've long admired JK, particularly for his environmental work and his investigatory work in the Senate. Having said that, he was dead wrong to vote for the IWR, and the the message that he delivered throughout the campaign was, at best, muddled.

[President Jesus]

68. yes, in fact it totally negates the core argument

The level of arrogance among Dean supporters is astonishing. How is it that they believe time and again that they alone are the true 'base.'

If there was one iota of truth to this argument, Dean simply would have done significantly better in the primaries. Hell, even McGovern won the primaries...Dean could only win one state: his own.

When will you people acknowledge this? Dean is the Pat Buchannan of the Democrats. His supporters too were convinced only he represented the base.

[Q]

11. Still pretending you don't know the 'base' of the party?

The fact is...the DLC doesn't give a shit about the base. They're like the Bushies not interested in counting civilian bodies in Iraq...they're just collatoral damage.

The base? You know who they are. Blacks. Workers. Women. Gays. Liberals. Progressives. Social Democrats. The DLC has no interest in these people....except for expecting their vote and giving little or nothing in return.

[sangh0]

18. If that's the base, then the base was energized

Thousands of "Blacks. Workers. Women. Gays. Liberals. Progressives. Social Democrats. " went to the swing states this year to campaign for the Democrat

[Q]

28. Agreed...

...but that's not the point anyway. The 'base' that turned out to VOTE AGAINST BUSH* will not so gladly fall into line once again when he is gone.

Corporate Candidates won't have such an easy time in 2008.

[sangh0]

32. Of course your being wrong is not the point

You said the base wasn't energized, and you were wrong. Then when I proved the base was energized, you don't admit you were wrong, and just say "that's not the point" when it WAS the point of your post.

The 'base' that turned out to VOTE AGAINST BUSH*

Nadir didn't get many votes, but tens of millions voted FOR Kerry.

[DireStrike]

61. The only way to vote against Bush is to vote for kerry

Everyone knew that this time.

And before you play semantics, "everyone" means "most people".

[mandyky]

39. Energized for ABB,

I knew this would happen. Kerry did not energize the base, he was too busy playing to swing voters. The base was energized to get rid of Bush, and were persuaded Kerry had the right resume.

I voted for Kerry but I will not support him now, he lost and then he conceded without a fight. Hopefully, we can find a better candidate next time, and hopefully the GOP runs someone who doesn't have a Karl Rove on their campaign.

[AP]

44. The base is a selfish lot if they need to have their egos stroked. And...

...fact is, they aren't. The base came out like mad. And outside of DU, I've heard nobody blame Kerry. The base (black women, labor, many of the identity politics groups) stepped back and let Kerry go for the swing sates (many of them went to the swing states to help, ignoring their own races and issues at home).

The base was cool this year.

What was crazy -- and we all need to shoulder this blame for this: falling for ABB. ABB was stupid. ABB is not a compelling reason to vote Democratic. And if you wonder why Democrats didn't do well in local races, it's partly a coattails problem with the Kerry campaign not running a national campaign, but it's also because ABB didn't work at all beyond the presidential race. ABB doesn't give a moderate SD'an a reason to vote for Daschle. It doesn't give a moderate SC'ian a reason to vote for Inez T.

We should have been running on principles and not against Bush. Kerry tried to run on principles. The rank and file -- including DU'ers -- wanted to run against Bush. They were suckers for what the media was selling them, if you ask me.

[AP]

33. White suburban women didn't vote D -- got scared by missing explosives

and OBL on the loose, and ABB wasn't enough of an argument to convince them Kerry was going to make their lives better.

The rest of the base came out and voted D.

[sangh0]

34. I"m sure I could find several sub-groups that didn't vote D

the fact still remains that thousands of women volunteered to work in the swing states. True, bush* was able to pick some off, but that doesn't invalidate the general accuracy of my claim.

[AP]

35. No, no. I agree with you.

Bush won by a very narrow margin, and the biggest gain for him was among a very narrow group of woman who were especially susceptible to fear mongering.

The problem wasn't that people weren't energized.

The problem was more like they were energized unproductively (too much ABB,) and that Bush had a very sophisticated strategy (which fascists have used for the last 60 years: fear) and the media was very helpful in implementing it. Furthermore, Democrats (rank and file -- people like us) weren't clever enough to decipher the strategy. DU'ers were PROUDLY ABB and perfectly content to limit the discussion to very narrow analysis of war that wasn't even interested in putting it in the bigger picture of why we were even having a war.

[sangh0]

36. That is spot on

Unlike the DU conventional wisdom, I don't think the problem was so much that the dems did such a poor job over all, or that "the base" wasn't energized, or any of the other myriad excuses people give to avoid considering the possibility that *WE* also screwed up.

And by "we", I'm not referring to any politician

[LeftHander]

41. SPOT ON!!! You hit on the head....

That is why this board and all the other Democrat activist boards are nearly a futile waste fo time....


How does one go about getting rid of the rotten head leadership in the Democratic party..???


It is impossible!

[SheilaT]

2. What needs to be done

is to take back the Democratic Party, starting at the grass roots. Become a precinct committee chair person -- chances are there is no chair in your precinct and the position is yours for the asking.

find out if your local Democratic Party has any kind of regular meetings at a local, county, or Congressional District level. If so, attend. If not, start such a meeting.

Think now about the next cycle of elections. You may have local -- city council, mayor -- elections in 2005. Perhaps our state legislature will be re-elected in two years. There are school boards, water boards, county commissioners. Not to mention various Governors. And of course, the entire House and one third of the Senate is up in just under two years. Start NOW to think about who should run for all of those seats. Start NOW thinking about how a campaign can be run for a specific seat. Start NOW raising money.

It's going to take a few election cycles, but we must re-take the Democratic Party -- real Democrats need to be in office.

[wyldwolf]

3. ah, someone here actually gets it...

Regardless of their politics, most people would rather sit and complain, make empty threats, and pump their fists in the air than actually go out and do something.

Sound advice from SheilaT!

[sangh0]

20. I agree

bitching is just too easy

[AP]

6. I think it's the media. The media told us to get excited about Dean...

...because he was anti-war. The media told us that the only reason we liked Kerry was because we were all ABB. The media told us not to think about anyone else.

[cali]

13. Utter baloney.

Dean started out as the longest of long shots. The excitement he generated was due in large part to the open way he rand his candidacy. People felt needed and involved.

[AP]

14. Among my crowd, enthusiasm for him grew when Mara Liason started

painting him as the anti-war candidate on NPR.

You see, most of my liberal friends have their opinins formed by NPR (sadly) and NPR really pushed Dean as an anti-war candidate, and really played him up as the opposite of Bush when there were plenty of other candidates in the race.

[KlatooBNikto]

15. Dean excited Democrats because he stood up to the Republicans

and was unafraid to question them and made no apologies for being a Democrat.That was the refreshing change our base was looking for instead of the wimpy Metooism of Kerry.Just the fact he was a different breed of Democrat from what we have come to expect from the usual suspects is all it took to generate the excitement.

[AP]

17. Right. That was the way he was presented on NPR.

What wins elections is being good on the issues, and convincing people that your positions are better than the other side's.

When you define yourself by what you're against, rather than what you're for, you loose elections.

Nixon actively cultivated anger directed at him because he knew that so long as Democrats were just attacking him then they weren't telling voters what they stood for. He was right. Bush used the same strategy, and the media played Dean up and defined him in exactly the way that helped with that strategy.

The media knew there was a lot of democratic hatred for Bush, but they also knew that Bush was terrible on the issues. They knew his tax code was indefensible, as was his record on jobs, and that you merely needed to scratch the surface of his drug plan to realize that Republicans were only interested in protecting the profits of the most profitable industry in the history of the world.

They knew that if voters ever realized that, then Republicans would lose. What to do? Well, they also knew that voters feel safer with Republicans than Democrats, so they got voters to think only about the war, and they tried to lure Democrats into nominating the candidate who spent the most time attacking Bush on the issue of the war so that people wouldn't think about the Democrat's strenghts (their policies on jobs, economy and health care).

That's what Mara Liason was doing on NPR.

[KlatooBNikto]

38. In fact, Dean did not let the Republicans define him.He was very

passionate about his basic Democratic beliefs, he was willing to defend them and he also took the war of ideas to the Republicans. He was the only one who could energize our base and I think Kerry was the ultimate beneficiary of Dean's selflessness.If it wasn't for Dean's campaigning for the Democratic ticket, I doubt if Kerry could have seen the kind of turnout he benefited from.

Additionally, a larger turnout of our base would have been possible if it wasn't for the DLC's Metooism and Kerry's Play Safe Strategy that finally did our team in. Kerry was seen as a tool for the DLC wing of our party and many supporters of Dean, Dennis and Al simply stayed away from the polling booths because the candidate did not reach out to them in order to meet the DLC's criteria.

[AP]

43. Dean said he regretted letting the media (not Rs) define him.

I think a lot of the energy that was behind Dean was really energy people had about hating Bush (which is not productive energy in a politcal campaign, if you ask me).

I think that's great that a lot of people got motivated to vote by hating Bush. But I think Democrats would have had those Democrats anyway and that if moderates and Republians heard more messages about why Democrats (and Kerry) were better than Republicans (rather than messages about why Bush was such a nasty piece of work) we might have gotten some more Republicans and moderate votes. When we went around bragging that we were ABB, how do you think that motivates a Republican?

If I were a Republican it would make me more likely to vote a Republicans. Now, if we went around saying that a progressive tax code creates more wealth and jobs and prosperity, that middle class opportunity and education is what keeps the nations savf, and that too much power flowing to too few people is dangerous (and that John Kerry believes in all of that) -- well, those are the sorts of things that get people to vote Democratic regardless of your party registration.

BTW, notice how their turnout was really high too? That's what you get when you run a campaign on attacking the other side personally. It just makes them defensive.

You say the DLC hurt Kerry? But all the Democrats who could have come out did come out and voted. You may not like Kerry's campaign because it didn't attack Bush the way Dean attacked Bush and said nasty things, but you and everyone like you was going to vote Kerry no matter what (what did the Greens and Nader get? .5% of the vote=?).

I'm not saying that Kerry should have been nice to bush. He should have had people like us talking about how good our policies were and not about how bad Bush was. That would have been the hardest attack on Bush. And it would have gotten more Republican votes for Kerry (or would have kept more Republican voters at home).

[KlatooBNikto]

49. That one instance was about the socalled scream.Nothing else.

On substantive matters, our media is so clueless, I don't think they could have touched Dean.

[AP]

52. It's in the archives here. Dean said that the media made him the anti-war

candidate. He wanted to be the health care candidate. Not only could the media touch him, they totally controlled his persona. The media told you who Dean was while Dean really wanted to be something else originally. When being the anti-war candidate kept getting him more and more publicity and donations, he went along for the ride (in my opinion). He ended up regretting that.

[cali]

16. Your friends are not

neccessarily representative of dems excited by Dean's candidacy. Why folks believe they can extrapolate greater truths about the electorate from the opinions of their friends or relatives, remains an enduring mystery to me.

[AP]

19. I actually found them more representative of the mood of the electorate

than DU'ers who picked their candidates before the media started spinning them.

I was literally listening to the same media as my friends in the morning, and then in the afternoon I could hear the way they were filtering and collating the information and forming attitudes about the issues and the candidates as result.

It was fascinating.

One thing I learned is that NPR listeners are very malleable, and they don't even realize it.

[erpowers]

23. Not True

The media did not influence most of the Dean supporters. I for one was not influenced by the media. I supported Dean because of his stances. In addition, the media never supported Dean. Most of the media always claimed that Dean was a quirky hothead. Most of the time that the media did a write up about Dean it mentioned the fact that he seemed to be angry. Even in Newsweek, there was the quote "Dean seems like the guy who would take your beer from you". The media never promoted Dean. His supporters did not support him because of the media.

[AP]

24. Didn't influence the core supporters like you who care enough about

politics to post on DU.

Incidentally, the media played up the "anger as a good thing" angle. They knew people were mad at Bush and knew that anger was probably the least productive emotion in that circumstance -- anger is great for armed revolutions, but not so good for winning elections. Portraying Dean as angry so long as it was coupled with a certain kind of Bush story (a "Bush probably made mistakes, but it's really someone else's fault" kind of story) in the media helped Dean and hurt Democrat's GE chances.

Incidentally, Mediatenor.org had media surveys showing that in the last half of 2003 (IIRC) Dean had more media coverage than all the other candidates combined, and that's where he was in the polling too.

In the last half of 2003 there really was no reason that Dean should have gotten such a disproportionate % of the media coverage, but he did. And I have no doubt that he was leading in the polls because of the severely unequal media coverage that was also very uniform in terms of what they were portraying --- an anti-war candidate not afraid to relentlessly criticize Bush. Those were two elements, in my mind, which guaranteed failure in the general election, and two elements which Dean said were not what he set out to be. Dean said in an interview after the election that he wanted to run as the candidate who was for health care, not the candidate who was against the war. He said the media made him that candidate.

So, it's time to put the pieces together. Why did the media cast Dean as the rabid anti-Bush, anti-war candidate? What was Liason doing on NPR?

I say the media knew exactly what kind of itch Democrats needed scratching, and they knew that getting them to scratch that itch was going to cause scabbing, and maybe an infection, and would lose them the general election. They were cultivating the least productive of mindsets among Democrats. They got Democrats to put their eyes on Bush and not on the real prize (which is getting your own set of policies enacted so that you can save America).

Welll, people didn't vote for Dean in the primaries, so Plan A didn't work. So it was on to Plan B which was to convince everyone that they really wanted a candidate like Dean (primaries notwithstanding) and that Kerry was just the ABB candidate, and that war and fear were the most important issues still...

[SheilaT]

27. The media did not tell us

to get excited about Dean. We got excited about him because he was telling the truth, making sense, and (most important) he opposed the war. It's STILL the Dean People who are the ones getting active, who ran for office this year (like me), who are continuing to work at the grass roots level.

The media invented the "electiblity" bullshit about Kerry, which some of us anyway knew from the beginning was total nonsense. But after the supposed meltdown of Dean the night of the Iowa primary, when they played a totally misleading clip (those who were there only three feet from him could not hear him because the noise was so great) over and over, the received wisdom became Dean is a loose cannon and cannot be trusted, and that Kerry was the guy to beat Bush. Those who supported Kerry from the beginning did not need to be told what to think about him. Nor the Kucinich, Clark, or any other candidate's supporters.

The problem with ABB was that you then weren't allowed to question the anointed candidate, especially once Kerry had things sewn up.

What all of us need to do is ignore the so-called mainstream media, think for ourselves, and remain true to the progressive/liberal cause.

[AP]

30. "Electability" wasn't what the media was pushing. It was what Kerry

was arguing. And voters agreed. That was the retail level argument that changed people's minds about Dean and the rest of the candidates.

The problem with ABB was everything: it was the wrong focus (the focus should have been on Kerry and not on Bush) and it was the wrong argument (the argument should have been that Kerry was better because of X, Y and Z, and not Bush is worse because of X and Y).

[SheilaT]

47. The focus, in my opinion

should have just as much been on Bush's many failures as the good qualities of any of the candidates, not just Kerry's once he was the nominee. Among the reasons Kerry did not win by a landslide was that he didn't do the relentless attacks of Bush and his policies as he should have.

Of course, once Kerry said even knowing what he knows now (that there were no WMDs, that the whole reason to go to war was a lie) he would still have voted for war, he lost many of those who might have otherwise voted for him. And he certainly lost the enthusiasm of many who were his reluctant supporters.

You are right, that ABB was totally the wrong strategy, but it was almost impossible to make a coherent argument here on DU about that, or you'd be accused of being a Freeper. Or worse, somehow. It's just that ABB meant we weren't allowed to question Kerry's rightness as the nominee, once he was anointed. We weren't allowed to suggest he was campaigning badly.

I'm still angry over this election, and I won't get over it.

[AP]

51. What makes you think that Kerry lost votes because of the WMD statement?

The word is that he lost the votes of white women in the last ten days because they got scared because of the OBL and missing explosives stories. Saying that he would have voted against the IWR under ANY circumstance probably wouldn't have kept them voting Dem (and might have done the opposite).

And he got all the anti-war votes.

[SheilaT]

54. Because he no longer

was an anti-war candidate. For those who weren't already committed to him -- the infamous undecided voters -- who truly didn't see much of a difference between the two candidates, once Kerry came out for the war, there was no longer any reason to vote for him. And a lot of people automatically accord a great deal of respect in the man who sits in the Oval Office, and their default vote is going to be for the incumbent. And so, enough of those people voted for the incumbent.

In the end, he was not an anti-war candidate. I can tell you that I am now angry I bothered to vote for him. I live in Kansas, and so I knew my vote for a Democrat wasn't going to count anyway. He sucked money and volunteers from Kansas over to Missouri and then stopped campaigning there. Meanwhile, local Democratic candidates for office (and I was one) didn't have the the money and volunteers they needed.

He has spent twenty years as a largely ineffectual senator, and my only consolation is that with Bush remaining in office, people will eventually understand how truly despicable W is.

[AP]

56. He energized people so little they traveled from KA to MO to campaign for

him?

OK.

Look, people were energized. His IWR vote almost certainly didn't lose him any votes he needed. In fact, in the last 10 days he lost votes because people thought he wasn't a big enough war monger.

In my opinion, the only thing that would have helped is people cared more about the economy than war, and that problem had little to do with the IWR vote nor with how energized people were.

I wish people had used their energies to make arguments about about how what Bush was doing to the economy was a bigger threat to democracy than what he was doing in Iraq.

[SheilaT]

65. I don't know to what extent anyone was energized

(and it's KS, not KA for Kansas) but my point is that Democrats in Kansas could have used the money and the volunteers that went over to Missouri. I don't know of a single volunteer from Missouri who bothered to go to Kansas to help out. It was a one way street.

And yes, I agree that the issue should absolutely have been Bush all along. Not whether Howard Dean screamed, or Dennis Kucinich was goofy looking or Wesley Clark wasn't really a good Democrat or what Kerry really did in Vietnam a quarter century ago. It should have been Bush from the beginning.

A lot of us here on DU understood, even though there were many partisan supporters of the different candidates.

[AP]

66. See, your evidence contradicts your claim. You say that Kerry energized

people right out of Kansas and got them into Missouri.

If he haden't energized people, you would have had enough for your campaign. (And I think your real problem here was that Kerry didn't run a 50 or even 40 state campaign.)


As for aiming at Bush, I think there's enough evidence here that the problem with that is that it doesn't give people an argument for why they should vote for the Democrat. You can criticze Bush all day long, but until you give people something for which to vote, they aren't going to vote for you.

And again, this wasn't a problem with Kerry's campaign. It was a problem with Democrats who took the bait. Rove and the media dangled out Bush and Iraq in a way that encouraged Democrats to take their eyes off the price and to flail wildly just at Bush. We were so lured in by that that WE started BRAGGING OUT LOUD that we were ABB. Dumb.

[LiberalFighter]

8. My senator.. Evan Bayh (Dem) still believes there are WMD

[KlatooBNikto]

10. Evan Bayh is the type of DLC democrat we need to purge from the party.

[LiberalFighter]

22. Unfortunately, he is the only Democrat that would win in this state

as a U.S. Senator

We just need to keep him from running as President. That shouldn't be too difficult to do because Bayh does NOT have any personality. He is sooooooo BLAND.

He has won for several reasons:
His Lt Governor was Frank O'Bannon
His father was Senator Birch Bayh
His wife is great looking and bubbly
His twin boys

[President Jesus]

69. Evan Bayh IS vp Bob Russell on the "West Wing"

those two are one and the same.

Bob Kerrey, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Tom Vilsack will eat that chump for breakfast.

Nightmare ticket: Edwards, Bayh. bonfire of the zeroes.

[CoffeeAnnan]

70. We can then call our Presidential elections the War of the Empty Suits.

[JNelson6563]

12. You are correct

Our "leadership" has failed us dismally. Very few have the guts to stand up and say what's wrong with things today. Many of the Dems are cowed. I still have "I stand shoulder to shoulder with pResident Bush" ringing in my ears and it makes me ill.

The media assured us only Kerry was "electable" and the masses bought into it hook, line and sinker. Then, figure in how the Dem congress-critters formed a little cabal to stop Dean so we could run a candidate who couldn't beat trained chimp.

I like to fantasize about the notion of the K/E campaign being as vicious with the dim son as they were with Dean. Yet he was a class act, being a team player. Helped the lame K/E campaign as well as Dems across the country. No other candidate did nearly what he did and what he did manage to do far outweighs what the impotent DNC&DLC achieved.

We need to take the party back and quick. Get involved locally and on the state level. Gain influence so that we the people call the shots and not the milque-toast assholes who have no clue like Brazille and From. Ignore the mamby-pamby calls for complacency and declare war on the neo-cons.

If the leadership doens't get with the program they will soon lose the real workers. Sure the armchair quarterbacks will gladly heed the call to play nice and keep taking it in the ass from the neo-cons but those of us who can move mountains will do so on behalf of those who stand up and fight. Those who tuck tail and run will find their "base" are the useless whiners who think demanding capitulation to the Rethugs on DBs constitutes activism.

Julie

[sangh0]

21. Gephardt called it "a miserable failure"

Look at the Iraq War Resolution. Even after knowing it was based on fraudulent evidence, we do not see any one who voted for that Resolution, condemning the basis for the War and calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

[Q]

29. Wow...impressive! He called it a 'miserable failure'...

...a lessor man would have just called it a 'failure'.

That'll show em.

[sangh0]

31. Funny you didn't mention how

it's refutes the claims the OP makes.

That'll show em.

As compared to what you did, right? You really stopped that war, right?

[JaneQPublic]

64. Actually, Gep called Bush a failure, not the Iraq War.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/04/politics/main571595.shtml

Gephardt drew applause from some in the audience when he stated simply, "This president is a miserable failure."

[Stinky The Clown]

25. I'm not sure we need to purge anyone from the party

But we absolutely need to "purge" them from the leadership. The leadership is the problem. Just as the GOP has been hijaked by dark forces from the fringes, our party has been taken over by forces from .... the middle? Whatever ..... it is the leadership that is the problem.

We want the party as big as it can be. We just want the direction to change.

There is not one single person in the country who's vote I **don't** want. A vote for us is a vote for us.

[ArkDem]

26. There was fraud involved in the Iraq War Resolution.

The Senate vote was really against it. Diebold was covertly involved.

[chaska]

37. All this talk about the base is missing a very important point.

The base turned out. The problem is that the base has eroded. Some group is not part of the base anymore. Blue collar workers who *** ARE THE REASON THIS PARTY EXISTS *** have left for the Republicans. WE MUST GET THEM BACK.

Dean gets this. Even during the campaign he talked about people voting against there own interests. He did a fairly clumsy job of it, but I give him my respect for recognizing the problem. He will be hammering away on this in the next four years and we should get behind him.

We don't need to purge anyone, but we do need to change our leadership to some real Democrats. Let the Republicans in our party take their sweet time figuring out that they're no longer in the right party. Look how long it took for the South to change from Dems to Republicans.

It won't be quick getting the working class back but we have to do it. But perhaps we would prefer instead to be a party of the elite, marginalized forever. And make no mistake about it, we are a party of the elite. I intend to do something about that.

Caps intended for emphasis, not shouting.

[LeftHander]

40. Democrats are good "snipe hunters"

From my blog...

Post election 2004, Bush is still in the White House, the war in Iraq still rages. The Democrats are calling for progressives to be pushed from the party and to bring the country together to work with the Republicans.

Moderate and centrist Democrats failed America again. The GOP tricked them into being the bag man in a life and death snipe hunt. They have proven to be very good snipe hunters. The GOP has convinced them to play time and time again and still the moderate democrats are left holding the bag wondering what happened.

They offered up, voted and nominated a candidate that went along with the administration at a time when the entire world wasn't buying the threat Iraq posed. People all over the world were in the streets protesting the trumped up justification for invasion that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair were promoting and yet John Kerry ascended to the nomination over the anti-war voices of Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. Kerry rather than acknowledge that the party was made up of anti-war voters tapped another war voter, John Edwards. The combination of pro-war, workable democrats from the north and south seemed like just the thing to appeal to the most number of voters and defeat George W. Bush. The problem was this was exactly the ticket the GOP wanted. A ticket that was predictable and incapable of attacking them on them on the war because they essentially voted for it.

The Democrats tried to play the Bush administration as a fool and opened the door for him to launch a war. The media didn't play along with this and continued to the flag waving and fear mongering that was really good for ratings. The naive Democrats on capital hill but for the exception of the few that voted down the granting of Bush authorization to invade pressed the hopes of a 2004 victory on domestic issues, ignoring the 400 pound gorilla in the room. They stupidly thought that the war would come back to haunt the Republicans. The progressives predicted it would be a quagmire. They predicted that Iraq was not a threat. Yet still out of a slim chance that Bush might be right, the Democratic leadership played "cya" and granted Bush the power.

So moderate democrats voted against their conscience, allowed Bush authority to wage war and then suddenly realized that they are the "bag holder" in a political snipe hunt. What is left, but to say with conviction that going to war was the right thing to do? Dumb democrats caught holding the bag just as the election cycle ramps into full gear. The single biggest reason millions of people voted against Bush was no longer on the table. How stupid could the Democratic leadership of been? It also points to what a disservice playing politics is to the world. The democrats seem to fail the simple test of: If it looks and smells bad, then it is bad. Don't eat it.

The GOP played the moderate Democrats like a cheap fiddle. Using outright lies and trickery that were so transparent to even the most casual observer, how it was ignored by the majority Democrats in Washington is mind boggeling. Here you have a bunch of blow-hardliner zealots with just enough intelligence to be dangerous and a group of over confident rich, intellectual, liberals who underestimated the will and devious nature of the conservative mind.

The result is a populist party that has been fractured beyond repair and the leaders of the party standing around blaming the only members with any values left. Nobody likes a unwilling fool and the Democrats have proven themselves to be very large fools indeed.

There is a new movement afoot. The Democrats are finished as any force in America politics. The moderates will cling in vain to the great hope of a popular centrist politician to emerge and rescue America from division. The hope is gone and they are in denial. A simple tool does not need to recognize what it's purpose is. It just predictably performs. The democratic party leadership again predictably performed. They avoided the real issues of war and lies and marched happily to another narrow defeat. A very costly defeat because millions of progressives who signed onto to help defeat Bush had to vote outside of their values and the result was still a loss. Progressives and left Democrats are quickly finding that if we are going to lose anyway why not lose and still retain your integrity and thus the Democrats have just lost their base.

The progressives are mobilizing again and they are attacking where it will hurt most, the corporate American bottom line. The pain of relinquishing values to vote to defeat a particularly heinous blaggard of a President has left progressives feeling the shame and disgust of hypocrisy. So they now are paying the price for the damage that has been caused by sacrificing integrity. They are sacrificing the opulent American right wing lifestyle of consumption and greed. They are refusing to patronize right wing supporting corporations. They are turning their backs on the media in droves. Televisions are being turned off, radios banned from talk and commercial blathering. They are refusing to poison themselves with the chemicals of petrochemical based agriculture. They are "just saying no" to the machine that forged the corporate backed political machine called American democracy.

The real irony for the Democrats is that is was all wrong. Democrats with ultra liberal track records and consistent displays of character by standing up to the Patriot Act and to Bush's war are returned to Washington. It should be a wake up call to the leadership of the Democratic party. But sadly it is not. They are more concerned now with Michael Moore, Hollywood and "working" with Republicans to bring America together into some kind of quasi-fascist state. Yet another snipe hunt organized by the neo-cons.

Are we eating our own...when progressives separate themselves from Democrats? Hardly, it is more like they are washing away the filth and stench in a cool shower of truth.


http://wherearetheweapons.blogspot.com

[KlatooBNikto]

42. Very well said.I agree wholeheartedly.In another post, I have said

that we must be willing to risk defeat like Goldwater did forty odd years ago for our beliefs, not for the kind of metooism that now rules the roost. That means the Party of Dean, Kucinich and Sharpton.Not Kerry, Al From and his fellow travelers at the DLC. Like another poster M.Berst has said we need to get the rightwingers out of our party so that true progressives can state their true beliefs loudly and clearly without the corporate shills trying to intimidate us.

With the economic disaster impending as Paul Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, our party's willingness to stand up for the small man will be the one act that will attract our blue collar base back.If we stand for nothing etc.

[AP]

45. Goldwater didn't have to lose for Reagan to win.

It's not like Goldwater made a sacrifice which drew his party to the right.

It's more likely that either of these scenarios are more accurate:

(1) Goldwater was ahead of an inevitable demographic and money shift -- had a Rockefeller-Republican won that race, it wasn't going to change the fact that America was going to elect Reagan pretty soon after that; or

(2) Goldwater could have won had he been smarter and better organized.

I don't know where people get this idea that you have to ever lose to win. Losers don't make policy. And winners, as Bush has shown, can do things to America that make it harder for demographic shifts to make them irrelevant.

[KlatooBNikto]

48. The demographic shift you allude to did not occur in a vacuum.

Goldwater's bold statement of his beliefs could very well have caused that shift.You and I can debate all the hypotheticals all day long but
ultimately it is the man who passionately believes in what he says and is willing to stand up and say it loudly that can make things happen for our party.May be Dean may not be the right person, but in oredr for our party to win we must get rid of the DLC gang that control our message right now and their message is antithetical to our party's basic beliefs.Even the antiwar opposition in our party was not allowed to have its say clearly and unequivocally because of that traitorous group.

[AP]

50. I really don't think it occured because Goldwater lost either.

It had to do with demographics, people moving to the south and west, the growth of suburbs, attitudes about race, Vietnam, and concentrated wealth and power in the hands of large corporations.

The Democrats don't have to lose in order to arrive at the kind of Democrat who can win.

The DLC is already on the way out. Kerry is not a typical DLC'er and not the kind of whore for big business and neoliberalism and bank and insurance company profitability that the DLC really likes these days (furthermore, they don't even invite Edwards to any of their events, and the biggest Democratic winner of the year -- Obama -- totally renounced them).

I don't know why so many DU'ers are so fixated on them. I really see their power waning and I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats who are getting nominated and who are winning races see the solution to America's problems as things that are contrary to what the DLC represents.

In short, the DLC is NOT controling the message right now.

[CoffeeAnnan]

57. Many of the demographic changes you have touched upon would

have actually benefited our Party.Goldwater's message was that he was going to stand up to what he saw as the erosion of our liberties and he struck a chord among Americans who saw their power in the age of equal opportunity waning.Some, who voted Democratic for generations listened, especially in the South, and the subtext of keeping the
n----- ers down had special appeal.These were the trends that Nixon exploited.Kevin Phillips has provided a detailed account of this transformation.

[CoffeeAnnan]

58. Many of the demographic changes you have touched upon would

have actually benefited our Party.Goldwater's message was that he was going to stand up to what he saw as the erosion of our liberties and he struck a chord among Americans who saw their power in the age of equal opportunity waning.Some, who voted Democratic for generations listened, especially in the South, and the subtext of keeping the
n----- ers down had special appeal.These were the trends that Nixon exploited.Kevin Phillips has provided a detailed account of this transformation.

[biglake]

53. Right on. The people were for Dean!

I agree. The problem is the DLC. Who are they anyway? Know it all corporate lackeys who stand for... as Sanchez said tonight, "opportunity"? Worse than repubs. I don't recognize them as democrats. Think back. They have disenfranchised our base. Gutted us on our issues which are strong and important for our lives.

We will not forgive 2000 AND CAN'T FORGET. Hope for democracy seems to be in the Ukraine, not here. We are a joke. Why is anyone surprised now? We didn't fight then (at the Civil Rights Commission hearings on the 2000 rip-off.) Feel that they wiped out Dean (instead of the red party) with underhanded maneuvers and that was where the real populist energy was.

I watched the democrats strategizing on C-span a night ago and was totally turned off. Donna Brazille talking and talking....2008. What the **** happened to 2000 and 2004? I always end up wondering what the immoral repubs had/have on so and so ...Clinton...his private sex life.....to do in insurance reform, the FCC airwave giveaway, bancruptcy reforms and single mother welfare reform (not corporate welfare reform), the illegal war in Iraq, the Medicare pill, Kyoto? What a damn shame....shame on them. Shame on us consumer sheep. We are dying democrats now. Not enough truth telling.

Dean has his head screwed on straight.

[Pepperbelly]

55. baloney ... Clinton energized the base in a big way.

Yet for the sake of your thesis, you must pretend that he did not. Otherwise, your assertion is logically bankrupt. That tells an observer with any acumen to suspect that perhaps the theory is an inaccurate reflection of reality if contrary FACTS have to be ignored.

[Cat Atomic]

59. You're exactly right. That's also why few care about voter fraud.

It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic. Here you've got DLC-style Democrats pushing the same pro-corporate bullshit that the Republicans push, refusing to even consider a populist stance. And then they're shocked when the populace doesn't come out in force for them.

If the Democrats wanted to energize their base, they could do it no time. Talk about the Fairness Doctrine. Talk about getting rid of the Taft-Hartley Act and truly strengthening labor. Talk like a trustbuster. Talk about real National Healthcare.

The truth is that the power structure of the Democratic Party thinks it's more profitable to serve corporate interests than populist ones. They've left their real constituency out in the cold for years, and now it really shows.

[CoffeeAnnan]

60. Our people came out loyally in this latest election, despite being

screwed over by the DLC types because of appeals for unity by Dean, Kucinich and Sharpton.They are now being screwed over by these ungrateful wretches who will drag us down again if we don't fight for our people and our principles.

[Cat Atomic]

62. The base came out- but there are far more people that just don't care.

They don't care because they feel like it doesn't matter. A real populist would have the Democratic base + millions of people that are now apolitical. A populist would bring in new voters. Lots of them.

[RealLiberal4U]

63. Our Base Was Energized n/t

[President Jesus]

67. Kerry: 47 states. Dean: 1. Your thesis: 0