I'm sick of being offered a choice between two evils, and I'm pretty tired of the constant refrain that we need to pick the fights we can win and ignore the rest. The Republicans of today are wrong, dangerous, and any number of other things, but they got where they are today by building and supporting a base. By convincing people that they stood for something. I've heard it again and again in debates elsewhere, something along the lines of "I'd rather support someone I don't totally agree with, at least I know they aren't just floating from one position to another with the polls." We don't need anymore Clinton's, no more Lieberman's. If much of the public doesn't know how bad things are in some ways, maybe it's because nobody ever bothered to tell them. No more triangulating, tell them the damned TRUTH, even if it will be unpopular at first. Have the courage to stand for what's right, or don't waste our time.
I wrote the following to the DSCC, I'd hope like hell others are telling them something similar. If not, we'll get a few more years of the same, and you can bank on it.
Dear DSCC,
I've been watching the developments of the last several years with growing dismay, and I can't help wondering when you guys are going to consider the good of the nation rather than the good of a party or a person. In the upcoming elections you will probably pick up some seats, but you'll fail to capture the majority. I think I can explain why, if you'll listen.
I am a swing voter, used to tend toward Republican but have nearly as often voted Democrat, though not for President. Last election I did vote for Kerry though, not because I liked him all that much but just because Bush needed to be stopped. But, given the performance of the Democratic party recently, I don't think I'll be doing that again.
You (as a party) seem to not only lack the courage of your convictions, but you lack the convictions to start with. When Murtha came out against the war a number of Democrats acted as if he was toxic, and the few who finally did support him waited a few days to check the polls first, see what way the wind was blowing. When Lieberman decided to act as Bush's lap dog their was little condemnation from your party, when the move for Censure recently developed most of the party ran and hid.
We're the single most imprisoned nation in the world, both in raw numbers and per capita, over 2,2 million currently in custody with some 4.7 million deprived of their right to vote. We're the only democratic nation in the world that deprives citizens of their right to vote for life in many cases. 1 in 8 young black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently in prison, and we wonder why there are so many single mother households and such a low level of education and accomplishment in those communities. Racism was never defeated, it just moved behind bars and you know it. You should.
PrisonSucks.com: Research on the prison industrial complex
http://www.prisonsucks.com/While health care collapses health care companies profits seem to be doing just fine, so you write laws to further tighten their stranglehold on the nation. While jobs are outsourced and wages drop you allow and many of you vote for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, the sheltering of offshore profits, and so on. While our news coverage degrades to the point of pure propaganda nobody in the official world talks about the growing obviousness of the root of the problem, media consolidation. As long as news, business, profits and politics are so firmly entwined there's no way out and you know it.
No, I won't be voting Democratic this next time, not unless you offer me a candidate who can find the courage of his or her convictions. At the moment the only one I see for 2008 is Feingold, and for my local races in 2006 I see nobody. If you don't put someone worthwhile up, think I'll vote Green or Independent instead. I doubt I'll be alone.
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