A call for a discussion of **Reality**

[Stinky The Clown]

2000 ..... 2002 ....... 2004 ....... only brave Senator - a woman - one stands to be counted.

It seems the Democratic Party is dead in the water. Or is it?

Where do you **realistically** stand? There are some declaring they no longer support the party. There are those who see us as out of power, but not out of the game.

My reality is that we are out of power in a way unprecedented in the nation's history. My reality holds little hope for 2008 ..... unless we can make some serious gains in the upcoming midterms and in state and local elections.

I also hold what I feel is the realistic hope that the pendulum will swing our way, and maybe sooner than we think. The economy will tank while the bodies will pile up in Iraq. The country will become disenchanted with the powers now in charge.

Without emotion and without vitriol, what is your **reality** and what are your **realistic** hopes?

[DireStrike]

1. I think the only way we can gain power ever again

Is a bottom-up move for election reform. I believe the election was stolen - you will say there's no proof. Of course there's no proof. The means to steal the election and leave behind no evidence at all was there. I say it happened. The only hope we have, it should be our first priority, to get black, machine counted vote systems out. All the votes, everywhere, have to be counted by a person, in daylight, with bipartisan and non-partisan witnesses.

Additionally, we have to take back the media. Television and radio are absolutely ROTTEN with bias and hate. We need fair and open discussion across the country.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

2. Not really unprecedented. Repubs were out of power like this during FDR

FDR was the closest we came to a one party state prior to this period..the only difference was he could be trusted with power. What makes this period so scary is the manner in which Dems are gerrymandered out of power on a statewide basis in so many states until '10..and by then our very system of government could be dismantled.

[bowens43]

3. My hope is this.....

I certainly didn't expect the election itself to be contested today. Anyone who looks at the situation realistically can see that that wouldn't happen. The decision on whether or not to to keep the Ohio electors was completely in the hands of the Republican majority. There would be no reversal of election. I looked at this as a way to force the vote reform issue. We know that if the election had been fair and free Kerry would be president. We now have had representatives and senators on the floor state that they tried to pass vote reform legislation and the republicans would not even allow it to come up for a vote. The pressure is now on the republicans to fix this. My hope is that it gets fixed and in 2006 and beyond we have fair elections

[Stinky The Clown]

4. I don't see any move for election reform in the near term

This is my reality on election reform:

What motivation is there for the Republicans to move toward election (voting) reform? The current system keeps them in power since they count the votes. While I hold some hope for gains in 2006, they will only come from Democrat victories that are of sufficient margins as to make election cheating laughably obvious.

Once we have some numbers in at least one house of Congress and/or in Secretary of State slots in the swing states, then maybe - maybe - election reform might happen.

But until then all the wishing in the world is not going to change things.

[bowens43]

5. I disagree.

After what happened today they will be under a LOT of pressure to get this fixed. There are bills in the works right now, bills that they will no longer be able to avoid bringing up for a vote.

[jdj]

10. I don't want to fight for them. They didn't fight for us.

That's how I feel.

Kerry's got 500 million, his life won't change one way or the other.

[complain jane]

6. But why would it be fixed, if the current situation is to their advantage?

[cheezus]

7. work hard locally

and the rest will fall into place

[annabanana]

8. for starters....it's 2006, not 2008 that is our job right now....sheesh

We the progressives, we the online community, we the money raisers, WE are not "out of power". We are just coming into it.

What we have to do now is integrate our 'online' and 'on the street' lives. Take the knowlege and connections and energy gained here down to the local Democratic Club with a couple of friends and just start working.

[Lady Sonelle]

9. My **Reality**? The Poor and Disabled have

Mark My Words, we are dying. During the Reagan gubernatorial administration in California, thousdands of mentally impaired persons were cast out of hospitals to be cared for in "community settings"... which never materialised. They became the first wave of the homeless.

As the public became inured to the homeless crisis, the people just vanished into the background... where they died.

Now that the government is dismantling Welfare, Social Security, other social programs... the poor will slip off the edges, as did the mental patients in California... and we will die.

We will die on the streets, we will die in back bedrooms, we will die by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands... and no one will notice.

As the dollar plummets, any "fixed income" dependents will see their food and rent prices triple, quintuple... and they will have no choice. As health care becomes impossible to obtain, they will see no choice. As jobs dry up, they will see their lives dry up.

Partners who have been together for decades, who face old age with no certainties will have the mercy to deliver each other and they will die together... Those who can, will suicide before being cast out to die. I will be in that number.

AmeriKKKa doesn't need the cripples, the deformed, the insane, the blind, the non-white, the liberal, the misfits, the impoverished, the homosexual, the... The dead.

We are the dead. I am the dead. In less than four years I will be dead and thousands with me.

No hope. No future. No mercy.

Lady Sonelle

[Lexingtonian]

11. nah, it's just in an embarrassing transitional phase

Kinda like an octopus that has accidently gotten its tentacles into a knot, or a dog that caught its tail and gave it a good hard chomp.

There are a lot of people who are tired of the fighting, burned out/wounded or taken to their inner limits of tolerance or limits of their personal goodwill and liberalism. A lot of people here are literal political and power junkies, and not having their toys to play with makes them unbearably anxious and shrill. Any excuse will do for them to bail out for the rear, which is a little sad. But if they need that more than anything else, it's best to have them go there. DfA seems a good place to send them....

Well, Democrats have some problems. One is about uniting around a central, defining, principle. The political corollary is to stop doing what has been done for several years- making a claim on power absent even hints of such a principle. For The People to see the Democratic Party as renewed, it has to prove the earnest of such a principle and its integrity, its breaking from the incoherent and ideawise semi-corrupt recent past. That involves putting such a principle higher than any claims on power for some instant or period of time. Denial, abstention, dignity in the public eye- and then an earnest, unambiguous, consequent, pursuit of power in the name of that principle. That makes the Democratic a morally defined entity, legitimates it as a social movement and organization. I have my ideas on this, but I'll let everyone work out what it is (there is only one solution that fits) for themselves. (Okay, if you beg I'll tell you my guess.)

Secondly, Republican power is basically contingent on their percieved superiority- slight, and stupidly so regarded- in foreign policy. In military determination, in diplomatic toughness, in individual 'leadership' (sic). They have a situation of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East they've wanted to impose on falling apart on them- trivial successes, massive failures. Democrats of necessity have to join a leader and take the mantle from the Administration in that realm in each of its discrete parts. Basically, this amounts to Kerry- and if you watch his moves recently, that's where his game is headed. Kerry is strategically light years ahead of all the simpletons raging in the Elections 2004- he's a professional, he knows what really matters in taking the present Republican power apart once and for all.