The Democrats need a whole new strategy

[Nancy Waterman]

They are always playing catch up. Bush moves so fast and so radically, the Dems are always on the defense and look weak. They need a whole new plan. I see three points that they should hammer:

1. Global warming. We need a massive multi-pronged effort to get it under control. We need to talk about it with lots of graphs and scientific statements to back it up. It is completely under the radar of most of the country and Bush doesn't even believe it exists. It is like a masive iceberg we are about to hit and we aren't even looking at it.

2. Alternative fuels. We don't need a War on Terror but a war on oil dependence. Let the War on Terror become more about intelligence and pin point strikes. Get rid of its cause which is our obsession to control the parts of the world that have the resources we need. That will drain out a lot of the hatred that feeds the terrorists if we get out of the business of raping, pillaging, and plundering the planet and start to make an effort to be independent, especially of energy resources.

3. Get control of this deficit, which includes no new radical programs like this Social Security nonsense that will add huge amounts to the deficit. This is another iceberg we are about to hit and Captain Bush is looking the other way. This is the chief reason to harp on about how bad his Social Security is, but the issue is even bigger. The Dems need to point out how dangerous things right now are, how the dollar is sinking and people are pulling their money out of dollars. We need to close tax loopholes and lighten up Bush's tax cuts and move to strengthen our economic position and lighten our deficit or there will be hell to pay. Bush is great at scaring the population with fantasy. It is time to scare it with the reality Bush has created.

And we need to use language like "hitting an iceberg", "dangerous policies that are leading to disaster". America needs to wake up to what is happening.

I think the Dems should focus on these things and stop trying to play catch up with Bush, stop letting him run the national dialogue. They need to go on the offense with the truth and with a plan.

[indigonation]

1. Exactly - was thinking very same thing this morning

Why are we always on the defense when we have so much to throw at them? We need to get really mean - offense offense offense.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. We need to talk tough too!

How about this:

"The GOP is RAPING our wallets"

[Liberal Veteran]

3. They also need to get over the notion that compromise with repubs..

...is possible or that they open to be reasoned with.

I haven't seen the slightest evidence that repubs are reasonable or willing to meet the opposition halfway and the sooner we take that lesson to heart the sooner we will stop being viewed as weak.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

4. #1 and #2 will get us NO WHERE.

The corporations and the rednecks do NOT GIVE A FUCK about the environment and the middle east. They think it's funny that we're destroying them both. You're not going to convert any non-liberals using that agenda.

#3 on the other hand does tap into a lot of fiscally conservative fears.

And your language is still too nice. We need to employ a list similar to the one that Gingrich used to marginalize the word "liberal".

[oscar111]

5. Jobs For All: Guaranteed House value{to reduce fear of ethnic blockbsting}

both will get bluecollar dems to come back to voting dem... those who have been voting GOP out of racist fear of

1. job competition from ethnics

2. fear of ethnic blockbusting , which cuts down house value.

www.njfac.org

has jobs for all.. via share the work, wpa etc, and advised by Clinton SOL robt Reich and Galbraith of harvard.

grarantee of house value.. a new agency needed like FannyMae.. or ..? anyone have ideas?

[Nancy Waterman]

7. They will care about global warming if they understand it

It will cause massive problems world wide with energy shortages, food shortages, and wars. People need to be educated. There are a lot of people with asthma. Why so many now and so few when we all grew up? Why so many more in the inner cities? It is the air pollution. No one, not even rednecks and fundies, want these things for their children.

And they may not care about the Middle East, but they may not want to be in a permanet war with it either, or lose their kids to a permanent war. The only people who aren't reachable are the fundies waiting around for Armageddon who think the environment doesn't matter and the future will be saved when Jesus comes back, so why bother.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

9. How will they understand it when the GOP hires scientists

and puts out their own reports saying that global warming is overrated? Check out this book by the Cato Institute:

The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming
By Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.
http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&pid=144919&method=search&t=Gases&a=&k=&aeid=&adv=&pg=

Global warming is vastly overrated as an environmental threat, argue leading climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling, Jr. Former Vice President Gore staked much of his career on a largely mythical problem, they write.

The Satanic Gases marshals an impressive array of scientific data, studies, and analyses that argue, cogently and consistently, that the initial forecasts of rapid global warming were simply wrong. But, perhaps more important, the book points out that attempts to "fix" the forecast by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are even more misguided than the original projections.

The authors argue that the jury is already in on global warming, and the verdict is a modest heating over the 21st century -- very similar to what occurred during the last third of the 20th century. The vast majority of warming will take place in the winter, and within that season, the coldest, deadliest air masses will show the greatest change. The final third of the last century saw the greatest improvements in food supply, wealth, and longevity of life ever experienced. Some improvements actually resulted from changes in the earth’s natural greenhouse effect and others were totally insensitive to temperature. The authors argue that it is virtually impossible to reverse all of that progress with only a continued slow warming of the planet.

Unlike every other book on global warming, The Satanic Gases places the issue in its proper social and scientific context. Citing the pioneering work of historian of science Thomas Kuhn and economist James Buchanan, Michaels and Balling demonstrate that it was inevitable that global warming would be distorted by the political sphere and that most scientists would either stand mute or actually assist in that process. But, the authors argue, such distortions in science are always temporary, and inevitably the scientific community will concede that earlier forecasts dramatically exaggerated the threat of global warming.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. You should be

telling the Republicans that they need a whole new strategy, if they are ever again to win an election without recourse to nationwide fraud. Why are you posting on a Democratic site?

[Nancy Waterman]

8. In case you haven't noticed, their strategy is working

They keep winning elections and we can't seem to get enough support to even stop the fraud much less create any sound policies in any direction.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. You surely don't

need to be a brain surgeon to realise that the answer you should have put forward is, not that the Democrats should change any of their policies, but that they should get a means to counter the neocons' fraud - which, of course is easier said than done; and is occupies most of the column inches on this board.

If a company or a bank defrauds you, you don't question your own business or economic practices; you seek redress against the fraud, and a better understanding of how to avoid it in future!!!! It wasn't allegedly poor policies of the Democrats that caused the fraud; there could scarcely be a more naive non-sequitur.

[sweetheart]

10. "Equality and justice" - chavez is right

The democratic party has abandoned individual equality and social
justice for vichy opportunism, and undermined its own base as well.
A universal platform standing for equal rights for ALLLLLL americans
and equality of opportunity stands a much greater chance of success.

I don't accept that global warming or alternative fuels are effective
mechanisms to win... your number 3, is a conservative (small "c") issue
and if we combine it with other small "c" issues, we can take the
increasinly dissolutioned true-conservative movement and combine it
with an equally dissolusioned democrats-sick-of-vichy-war-consensus to
win back the nation from the criminal felons.

Outside of that, plan "B" must be the second amendment. It has come
to that.

[tom_paine]

11. No, the Democrats simply need to live in a Free Country again

Unfortunately, that is somethign Imperial Amerika will likely NEVER be again.

Caeser has crossed the Rubicon, the System is to atrophied and afire to save, I think.

Free Press: Dead

Checks and balances: Intensive Care Unit

Judiciary: Dying, condition critical with no prognoisis in sight

Voting Systems: Stalinist, uninspectable, unverifiable, as open to tampering as any Third World Nation.

And on and on.

It's well past too late for any maneuvering that might have worked in Free America to oppose the Imperials.

that might have worked before the Old Republic died.

Now: an excercise in laughable futulity.

Don't get me wrong, the Democrats and the wretched remnants of the Old Republic are streching out the twilight, giving us just a little more time before the Totalitarian Darkness finishes falling.

Just my two cents. Don't shoot the messenger because reality is what it is.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

13. Tom, I've always loved how you've told it like it is.

We need you to keep fighting with us though. It sounds most like you've just given up completely. I know you've got more fight in you than that.

[tom_paine]

14. I have not given up completely, regardless of how I feel

because there is always the chance I am wrong.

I'm with you, pal. And when Crunch Time comes I will be right next to you...

Having said that, I have no illusions about where we are going and what we face.

Maybe it could be reversed and Free America could live again the way the Roman Republic never did.

But I have no illusions about what the Busheviks are, what they are doing, and what they intend. I worked and donated my ass off in Campaign 2004 for multiple candidtaes, even knowing it was likely to be "bringing boxing gloves to a gunfight". I may well do the same in '06 and '08, though it will be even more laughbaly rigged on all levels from media to hacked spreadsheets then.

I have to admit, it is difficult when the Standard Bearers of the Resistance are the mostly gutless weenies in the Democratic Party who seem to have forgotten what the fuck they are there for, calculating and playing games as if they lived in a Strong and Healthy Democratic Republic, when at best they live in one of Life Support with Karl Rove standing nearby with a needle full of air for the IV.

I believe Bartcop is right about that one.

Down but not out. Like Old Free America. Not giving up yet.