Bad Democratic Message and Strategy - "Community"

[wabranty]

Dean pushes "community" as the new Democratic theme - http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/36247.html

"Unfortunately, Dean's proposed message looks like the usual product of the same gang of D.C.-based Democratic consultants who continually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Basing their proposed message on polls that show that 60% of the American people believe the country is going the wrong way and the general sense of malaise in the U.S., Dean's message is – "community".

The problem with the message is that it is too easy for the Republicans to attack and turn against the Democrats. In a meeting before Florida Democrats, John Edwards, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and Virginia Governor Mark Warner all gave speeches that described how community would solve the general anxiety that Americans face today. This is anxiety that stems from rising unemployment, worries about retirement, increasing health costs, and the threat of terrorism – all which will be solved by Americans pulling together to do. Now, what they will be doing when they pull together is left open. And this is where the Republican attack will come from.

Senator Obama has opened the door by his keynote speech criticizing GOP plans that advocate personal choice for retirement plans, school choice, and saving for health care. This gives the Republicans their best argument which is that when Democrats talk community, they really mean big government taking away people's right to choose (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012519.php). They will argue that building community is just a code word for taking money from the middle class to give to special interest supporters. Basically, the community message plays right into the traditional GOP attack against Democrats as a group of elitists who believe they know better than the people they supposedly represent. . ."
http://sfam.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-message-of-community-will-lead-to.html

[dusmcj]

1. time to dispose of the hacks and handlers who lost us 2004

as I posted before, I believe I saw their greasy palm prints all over John Kerry the morning after the round of primaries where it became clear he would be the candidate - his face was frozen, and his voice was half an octave deeper, and I suppose he was supposed to be stentorian, just a few drops of water moister than a Roman general's bust.

It is tiresome to have a Party infested, by its own invitation and the benighted non-wisdom of some of its leaders, with the same brand of worthless image manufacturers who service (!) the Republicans so well. The GOP is the party of pose, of image over content, of delivery being what matters rather than what's being delivered. And we stupid well-intentioned, compromise-ready salon liberals run after them thinking "oh but they're doing it so we have to too, to make us palatable to the masses. (After all, they keep making us their bitch <[remember, language is culture>] and we're tired of that)".

NO WE DON'T. The Democratic Party is the party that took the US from being an isolated agrarian patchwork of cultural enclaves to a unified transcontinental nation. Admittedly under the graced leadership of FDR, who has had few peers. I'll contend however that our last President did a largely successful job of overturning 12 years of proto-neocon filth left by Reagan and his Resident, which was built on the cesspool left by Nixon; and beyond that he delivered on the Republican promises of smaller more efficient government and limiting spending, and gave us a foreign policy worthy of adults and a leader among nations rather than Nukuler Romper Room the way we have it now.

We don't need image massagers and PR shysters to build a fantasy out of toilet paper to sell us to the public; the people who advocate that show what danger the Democratic Party stands in of being populated by people who are out of touch with the American public, with the common man and the egalitarian America we always championed and grew out of. It is time to sideline people who think like or are members of the idle rich from the Democratic leadership; if they want to contribute and influence, fine, but this party has been, is, and always will be the party of the people, the common man, who while he may not be rich is the person who produces America's wealth. We have a record of accomplishment to sell, and intellectual capital which deserves the name on which we base plans which deserve the name 'vision'. We do not need buffed shysters who would be more at home in a conservative environment to soil that for us.

(And lest we swoon over the word "change" and think that the public has changed and now eats media manipulation with a spoon, no they haven't, and no they don't. Head on over to some of the opposition's websites and blogs, and listen to the criticism of those from both parties who take it upon themselves to run this country. Underneath the obligatory bleating from the Bush apologists, there is a current of disgust with the endless BS, corruption and incompetence emanating from the circles of those who consider themselves important, which is bipartisan, equal-opportunity, and will turn into a flood which will leave the land fresh and clean if we continue on our current course.

We have a choice here: we can become just as irrelevant as the GOP is, irrelevant because we are no more in touch than they with either the issues facing America, or the real concerns of its people (vs. the ones foisted on them by the media manipulators of the other side), or we can remember who we are, what our base is, or rather what America's base is, and that just because there are scumbags who walk the earth consuming what they find like locusts, that doesn't mean that we in our dismay should conclude that we need to adopt their tactics. Instead let's decide to beat the crap out of them at the polls and in the agora, with some rediscovered conviction that our wares are better than theirs.