What I think has to happen before we start winning for real....

[bobweaver]

Here is how I see it. The reality, at this point anyway, is that the R's have huge numbers of people voting for their candidates. These people have stuck with the R's for the last few election cycles. Even though the policies of the R's actually stab in the back most of these people, the R's have been able to hang onto this huge voting bloc. This is really the source of the R's power, the huge numbers of people who actually vote for them, for whatever reason.

For the Democrats to start winning elections - and winning them decisively, not just by razor-thin margins - the massive voting bloc that the R's now enjoy must shrink. What will make it shrink is for people who now vote for the R's to become disillusioned with the R's. They must turn away from the R's and look for another party to vote for. Of course they are going to look at the D's first because that is the only other large party.

I thought that this might have happened in 2004, and that both the Iraq war and the record deficits would be enough to disillusion these people and turn them against from the R's. But obviously it wasn't enough, and these people, for the most part, stuck with the R's. So, what will it take for people who are voting for R's to become disillusioned with the R's? The Republican party has to "break down" in some way so that a large number of people are dissatisfied - and dissatisfied enough that they will actually stop voting for them.

The ongoing debacle called the "Bush administration" offers a cornucopia of reasons for people to turn away from the R's, but I don't see it happening, even after 4 years of Bush/Cheney lunacy. What is it that will finally disillusion enough people and cause them to break away from the R voting habits? And if this can be identified, what can we do to inflame that and hopefully make it happen sooner?

[Warpy]

1. DFA meetups

People are sick to death of having two coporatist, globalist, antilabor and anti American parties. They're starting to get off their couches and out to meet other people who are as fed up as they are.

This is the way a grassroots groundswell starts, folks. There are no short cuts. There is only continued growth of groups all over the country until there are enough to start mounting organized resistance, boycotts and strikes.

It's the only thing that has ever worked in the past. It's the only thing that will work. We can take it back, but we have to GRAB it back.

[Goldeneye]

2. the pubs can do anything...

war...good to go
ruin education system...sure, why not?
destroy the environment...go for it.
lying....we forgive you:D
give our money to corporations...i don't know...oh, ok, you convinced me
tax cuts for the rich...that'll spur the economy
torture...im good with it, as long as no christians were hurt


ss is next and probably a draft...its possible that they will figure it out, but if they don't I think we've got to face the facts...these people are hopeless.

[Osamasux]

3. There already is a Draft.

A Back-door-Draft, as Kerry properly pointed out, but a Draft nonetheless. When they are calling up 47 year old vets who have been out of the service for 15 years, and keeping kids in Iraq a year longer than their obligations, there is no other word for it but Draft.

[Goldeneye]

4. True enough.

What the heck is wrong with them?

[Lexingtonian]

5. Hey, stop making sense!

Don't you realize that today is all about feeling sorry for ourselves and righteous about hanging onto miniscule bits of power? :D Sadly, today on DU demonstrated everything about our present situation.

1a) There is the problem of what Democrats "stand for", an inarticulacy about the central problem that the present partisan divide represents and what the comprehensive Democratic thinking (if any) is about the historical situation and the conceptualization that grasps it, must grasp it fully and completely and clearly. There's an inability to see the forest for all the individual trees. There's an inability to simplify it properly, to formulate it as the reductive Constitutional problem, principles, and language that cuts through the clutter of detail.

1b) Democrats cling to power despite their apparent incoherence and unwillingness to lead or be led. Being Not-Republicans is not (or, since 1994 no longer) enough to attract a coherent bloc of votes and mandate of a meaningful kind. This is reason for contempt of the Party as a whole. Of course, every political party's aim is power, but that's not the objection- it's the paradox inherent in wanting to represent the society and wield its power, yet be full of unwillingness to adopt an adequately defined historical role or identity. It's like demanding policy changes of a church which you attend and critique but evade the core commitments of membership, and membership itself, of.

2&3) Democrats have easy majorities in just about all matters of domestic policy- the majority/better positions in domestic social policy, the majority/better positions in domestic economic policy, and probably the somewhat more credible leaders in things domestic governance. Republicans, however, retain dominance by majorities in matters of credibility in waging foreign policy- the military as well as the diplomacy aspect, and toa a lesser degree the individual 'leadership' aspect. As looking at the November 2 exit polling shows, there are plenty of moderate Republicans (~10 million voters, beyond the 2 million who went to Kerry) near shearing out of their party once those obstacles are removed. It simply isn't the party of careful, stingy but circumspect money-centric people they remember from the Seventies and early Eighties anymore.

Democrats have to deal with their internal selfdefinition/integrity problem. In good part this involves letting go of power in the name of principle, including letting go of the excuses and accepting minority status with dignity. And they have to join a leader- it's going to be Kerry- and combine to exploit the Republican crashout of the Iraq/Wo'T'/Afghanistan muddle that is essentially inevitable in '05/'06.

[Cobalt Violet]

6. self delete

[Clarkie1]

7. What will disillusion enough? Iraq is a looming possiblity n/t

[zmdem]

8. How about

a Democratic party that isn't hemmed in by all kinds of special interest groups, e.g., abortion, guns, teacher's unions etc. Also, how about a Democratic party that has some credibility on national defense issues.

Maybe it would be OK to buck the ACLU on such trivial issues as the pledge of allegiance. Might also be a good thing to stop trying to subvert the popular will via recourse to the federal courts on things like homosexual marriage. If MA wants such things, let them have it; if WY doesn't let them have it their way in their state.

[tjdee]

9. They DO NOT have a massive voting bloc--there are 193 million adult citize

ns.
Our side doesn't vote.


Most of the country doesn't vote. They don't give a shit. If you want to solve something, that's where you start.

If you believe the Nov. vote totals, they have what, 59 million?

There are over 290 million people in this country. There are 193 million voting aged citizens in this country.

Please, please do not give them more than they actually have.