We've got to focus the party message on working class issues (a rant)

[Selatius]

People's religion is people's own private business. I don't see what people do in their personal lives or in their bedroom as any business of anyone, and I find it unattractive that elections would be decided by business in the bedroom.

The Democratic Party needs to refocus the message on issues that the vast majority of people need addressing. The incredible costs of health care, deteriorating public education, job security, environmental degradation, deteriorating labor standards, foreign trade policy, issues of war and peace--these are bread and butter issues that the progressive movement was built around.

Note I said "progressive movement" instead of "Democratic Party." The Democratic Party has been a vehicle of progressives in the 20th century, but make no mistake that the two are not the same thing.

It was people out in the streets who bled and died fighting their own companies for better working conditions (the Labor Movement). It was people who laid down their lives to ensure racial equality in America (the Civil Rights Movement), and it was people out there on the streets that brought an end to the Vietnam War (the Anti-War Movement). All of this was done by people in the streets, not the people sitting in office. All they did was play catch-up by passing laws after the fact.

The Democratic Party is growing far, far too corporate. It's doing so at the price of voters. It should be a no-brainer that Democratic leaders address HEAD-ON issues that affect ordinary working Americans, but for some reason, it has become political campaigns over marginal differences in "free trade" policy and what you should and should not do with your lives or in your bedroom.

It's not just the Democratic Party and its over-reliance on special interest money that's killing this Republic. It's the Republicans and their money-changers as well, and it's the corporate news media doing the bidding of the corporate overlords.

Dean played the wrong card and made a mistake. He decided to enter the arena that was framed by his opponents, and as a result, he came away looking like a man attacking people's religion the same way Republicans attack the ideas of liberals and homosexuals.

We all make mistakes, but the point I'm trying to make is that things have got to change before it's too late. If Dean wants to make a difference, then he ought to address issues that people in all states can understand no matter how conservative or liberal those states are, but this isn't a message I'd deliver just to Dean but to everyone who wants to represent the people.

The message to big business corrupting politics is this: Get out of politics. If you don't, then one day, the working folks of America will come and force you out.

If the Democratic Party wants to win again, it needs to stop playing the same game as the Republicans. It needs to listen to the voters, and for God's sake, it must address issues that affect the people's everyday lives. Their children's education, their medical bills, their jobs and the quality of those jobs--why is the message from the Democrats so weak on these issues? Why is it so muddled?

Why not talk about universal health care? What, is it because it comes too close to socialism? So what!? Why not increase spending for public education? Why not increase money for Pell Grants, for instance? Why not talk about the stupidity of sending off your kids to die 10,000 miles away for a lie? Why not talk about the stupidity of supporting trade policies that allow corporations to pit desperate third world workers against workers here in a race to the bottom? (Oh wait, a good number of you voted for those trade policies to begin with. You hear that, John Kerry?)

[Warpy]

1. The party has always changed from the grassroots up

and usually due to pressure from a third party, like the Socialists or the Anarchists. The only reason the party became progressive after 4 years of Hoover is that it feared losing its entire base to a true revolution, peaceful or otherwise. The leadership has always been a lot more comfortable at simply holding themselves in place, not rocking the boat, and watching their pensions accrue.

The GOP, on the other hand, functions from the leadership down, which is why they keep thinking they can destroy us by murdering a few of our leaders.

This is why I keep telling everyone who is healthy and within driving distance of a DFA meetup to get out and do it. This is the way we force change in the party. If we think the leadership is going to do it, just look at how much change losing all 3 branches of government has caused. They're not doing a damned thing. WE are the ones who have to do it.

[Ignoramus]

2. Totally dude

People need to switch their priorities to keep their eyes on the whole picture. The goal is social/environmental justice, not hoisting some organization up. Use the democratic party only as far as it intersects with the greater progressive movement.

It was really sad to see people just lapping it up when our fellow activists were put in Kerry's concentration camps in Boston. What a horrible shameful incident that was. The tendency of previously progressive people to come to accept war mongering as acceptable was unbelievable. And seeing fascism rearing it's ugly head on this forum before the election was hard to stomach.

The democratic party as a whole endorses a police state, a gestapo and military aggression, not to mention state terror and state sponsored discrimination based on race. That should make it crystal clear that working "for" the democratic party, is anti-progressive. Working with them, or say putting some effort into getting some democrat elected can be worthwhile, as long as you don't allow your self to be corrupted by their overall agenda.

[Selatius]

3. Those cages in Boston for protesters was appalling

It was incredibly sad they were put up to begin with. It was a tragedy for the fact that it was meant to shut up the protesters and push them far away from the convention center, and it made me incredibly angry at the party. I was more than expecting that with the Republicans but not the Democratic Party What's the point in freedom of speech when you're locked away so no one can hear you?