Really? As I said, apart from his recent gaffe, nothing he’s done or said has made it over here.
I think your claim that Americans love Palin is still not supported.
You’re saying that 15% of independents now favour McCain/Palin. Assuming (probably true) that most of this is down to Palin, just what proportion of Americans is this?
(Aren’t most Americans either not voting or registered to the two big parties?)
How’s Palin doing amongst black women? (They’re Americans too!)
I’m trying to fit “It’s the economy, stupid” into a positive, upbeat framework. I’m not succeeding.
I honestly can’t see any difference between this Sam Stone message and any of the other concerned messages that essentially boil down to “Don’t fight back and you’ll win.”
Cynically, I think that this is an effort to prevent people from highlighting the obvious conclusions from the last 8 years - Republican theories of government are catastrophic failures when they are actually implemented.
When 80% of the people think the country is on the wrong track, it seems like a big mistake to not agree with them.
Another selective data point - unless 2006 was just a…random bit of weirdness?
-Joe
A substantial majority of Alaskans think otherwise.
But I am glad for this thread. It gives a good demonstration of much of the trouble.
Liberals not only don’t get it, they don’t want to get it.
Regards,
Shodan
I think most of you are missing the point.
The OP isn’t saying that presidential candidates should just pretend everything is fine. I believe he is saying they should do a better job of connecting with the American people instead of bitching and talking down to them.
The presidential elections IS like high school. The Republican party represents the “cool kids”. They portray themselves as all things sterotypically American - being white, anglo, Christian, hetero, family, hard, working, wealthy (but in an industrious way), strong. Ideals most Americans have grown up with.
The Democrats represent all of societies high school losers and outcasts (metaphorically) - minorities, gays, the poor, the underprivileged, the overeducated nerds, and so on. Basically a collection of people that many if not most Americans don’t relate to.
There may actually be more “losers” than “winners” in a high school, but the losers are all losers for different reasons and are fragmented and unappealing while the winners all go party together and tend to be your charismatic, attractive and athletic types.
The vast majority of Middle America votes Republican for the same reason that high school kids follow the “cool kids” even if they don’t agree with them. Because they want to be like them. Nobody wants to be like the “losers” who get picked on and ostracized.
And the mistake the Democrats make is when they try to attack the Republicans, it’s like the class loser criticizing the captain of the football team. It’s like “who cares what this weirdo says?” No matter what they criticize McCain and Palin about, it comes across and picking on a war hero and a spunky hockey mom.
Jesus, you do lay out the bullshit narratives very, very well, but it’s worth considering where they come from. If the Republicans really are simply the cool kids, and Democrats really are the social losers and outcasts, it doesn’t really much matter what they say, does it?
If however, these are bullshit narratives that Democrats have allowed Republicans to construct, along with a complacent media “riding the tire swing” (a reference to the frolicking of the press at McCain’s Sedona “cabin”), then the only option is to work to destroy that bullshit narrative, right? To attack it and force a recognition that the Republicans are not cool kids, but are deceitful, dirty, elitist whiny ass titty babies.
I really see those as the two options, based on your premise. Is there another?
(By the way, I strongly recommend Glenn Greenwald’s Great American Hypocrites for a fantastic historical look at exactly how the narratives that msmith537 were developed.)
I don’t normally jump into political threads, mostly because by the time I do, every possible point that I might bring up is already covered.
I consider myself a feminist. I’m certainly not hard-line (ie, “feminist” is not the first label that I would apply to myself), but I do consider myself such. I have absolutely no problem with the way that Sarah Palin has decided to conduct her own life.
She’s religious–that’s great! She’s had five children, and I can’t imagine the amount of energy and strength and committment that takes! She chose not to abort a child with Down’s Syndrome, and instead will dedicate her life–and, believe me; it will be her entire life–to taking care of him. That takes incredible courage, strength, and dedication.
I respect her as a political figure. I would respect her just as much if she were a stay-at-home mother. That’s her decision, and both paths take work, committment, and sacrifice.
I do not, however, want her or anybody else to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body. Her beliefs don’t stop at her life, or her body; she extends them to cover the lives and bodies of everybody else. And while I respect her right to hold such beliefs, I will be damned if I ever support their application in law. Her decisions are her decisions, and my decisions are my decisions. Her life is hers, and mine is mine.
It’s not that “feminists”–and I’m using the quotes here because I’m not sure that this is necessarily just a feminist ideal, but it’s the terminology that Sam Stone used–want to mandate abortions, or want to force women into high-pressure careers, or want to abolish a woman’s right to religious and moral beliefs. It’s that they want everyone to have the choice to do as they see fit. I don’t see how allowing individuals that choice is in any way dictating anyone’s conduct.
So. . .do I want “happy, married women who are religious and have five children and vote Republican and don’t want to abort their babies”? Sure! They’re happy! That’s awesome! Do I want said women telling me what I–or any other woman–can and cannot do as regards my body? Hell. No.
And that is the problem I have with Sarah Palin. I don’t think you can accurately describe yourself as feminist if you want to dictate the choices of individual women.
I keep hearing the GOP paint the Dems as elitists who talk down to the people, but when they say it, it’s strictly part of a partisan narrative. On this board, for-instances are required.
And if you could please distinguish between ‘bitching’ and ‘identifying (and identifying with) the problems faced by millions of Americans,’ and identify instances of the former, that too would be appreciated.
And yet, for forty years, the GOP has painted things exactly the opposite - that the Dems are a bunch of elitists, the cool crowd looking down on everyone else, and it’s the ordinary folks - white, Anglo, Christian, hetero, etc. - who are the ones who didn’t get to sit at the cool kids’ table in high school, and should be pissed off about it.
But the Dems want a politics that is not like high school elections, because such a political environment is ultimately not one in which Dems can achieve their goals. Matt Yglesias summarized it better than I could:
I didn’t realize “the majority is always right” was part of the conservative worldview.
You’re confusing GOP propaganda about feminism with feminism.
But thanks for the recitation of GOP talking points about feminists that I’ve been hearing for my entire adult life.
Actually, most women don’t consider themselves feminists, precisely because of the GOP propaganda I’ve mentioned.
You guys are far better at defining us than we on the left are about defining ourselves. But that doesn’t mean your definitions are true.
Are you gonna support any of this bullshit, Sam?
Why? If Sarah Palin were a man, there’s no chance she would have been nominated. She’s not a woman who’s made it on her own - she’s an example of the GOP caricature of affirmative action, the one that says it’s about promoting poorly qualified women and minorities.
And aside from having gotten nominated as the GOP veep candidate, her record in Alaska is horrible, and for reasons having nothing to do with her body parts. She’s managed to fail upward, but that doesn’t make her a role model.
Why should you expect feminists to cheer the record of a pol whose record would suck donkey balls if she were a man? Feminists think women and men should be judged by the same standards.
Skimmed the thread.
I agree with Sam. Even though we may intellectually know that criticism about our problems is a perfectly patriotic act, politics is a lot about a gut reaction as well for a lot of voters. The GOPs negative ads and misdirection work because they create an emotional response among folks who don’t have time to research every issue. The response they’re shooting for is, “I don’t like and/or trust that guy” I think there’s an effective way to combat this.
Obama’s Yes We can was a very positive message. The concept of “yeah, we have problems and we may have stumbled, but we’re all Americans and even though we may disagree at times, together, we will continue to grow and make our country a place we’re proud to call home.”
I hate the divisiveness of us vs them when we’re all citizen’s of the same country.
Still, I think it’s reasonable to point out where this administration has failed miserably.
Here’s my own advice for the democrats if they want to attract independents and moderate conservatives.
When the GOP rolls out the dirt and the trivial crap like Wright etc. take it head on. Call it the dishonest political misdirection that it is. Go ahead and denounce the words and acknowledge that lots of us have friends we disagree with on certain issues. It’s a big country with lots of opinions. Keep talking about the issues that really effect people’s day to day lives and point ouut that the opposition wants and needs a distraction. Make every distraction come to mean, “They don’t really care about you. That’s why they want distractions more than they want solutions” Counterattack strongly every time. Obama has done this but not strong enough. Now with the whole Lipstick thing and the sex ed for kindergarden crap he’s finally stepping up.
Be strong and direct but not mocking. If you ridicule conservative politicians then people who hold conservative views feel like they are being ridiculed as well. We welcome freedom of speech and diverse opinions.
Attack the false memes about the Dems namely
1 They can’t protect you from terrorism.
2. Tax and spend and endless handouts to the poor.
We will go after terrorists without hesitation. We will not be attacked with impunity. We will work hard with allies to present a united front against terrorism.
If that means boots on the ground then that’s what we’ll do, but we take our vow to protect American lives very seriously. That means we will not send our troops to risk their lives and to take lives until we have exhausted other avenues.
We will encourage all nations to join is a quest for lasting peace, but our enemies will have no doubt that we are ready and strong if they make force necessary.
We want to remove any roadblocks for people who are willing to work hard and take advantage of the opportunities available in America. That means big business and small business. That means the hard working individual trying to provide for his or her family. We’d like to offer some aide to those who are going through a rough patch in their lives and need a helping hand. We want to lift them back to a place where they are working citizens contributing to our great society. We want a simplified tax code that encourages the entrepreneur and people of vision, while not punishing those who are barely getting by. That means those that have more will be asked to give a little more. We will encourage compassion as well as personal responsibility.
A couple of things:
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Is the abortion debate the sum total of feminism? Is this a hard litmus test?
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Is there any evidence whatsoever that Palin wants to take away anyone’s right to have an abortion? I think sometimes people make an automatic assumption that anyone who is deeply religious and personally pro-life automatically is going to work to prevent choice for others. The net result of that belief is a litmus test that says, “Anyone who believes abortion is wrong is not allowed to be a feminist.” But I thought feminists were all about empowering women to make their own choices. Can’t that choice include the the moral judgment that abortion is wrong?
I did some searching for any evidence that Palin wants to kick off the culture war regarding abortion. I found nothing. I found lots of statements of her personal pro-life beliefs, but nothing that said she’d extend it to others. In fact, when questioned she often says something along the lines of, “My social beliefs are not really what I came into government to promote.” In one case, she was asked point-blank what she would do as governor if Roe v. Wade was abolished (she never called for it to be abolished - that’s how the question started). If the decision were turned over to the states, would she work to make abortion illegal in Alaska? Her answer: “It’s not the governor’s job to tell the people what to do. That debate would have to spring up among the people of Alaska, and they will have to decide what values they wish for their culture.”
Note that Alaska is a libertarian-ish state, the least religious state in the union, and would almost certainly choose to allow abortion to remain legal.
Palin’s record is not as a culture warrior. Not even close. She’s more libertarian than anything else. She supports jury nullification, for example. A very lefty-type cause, and one that only three governors in the U.S. support. Marijuana is quasi-legal in Alaska, and she’s not brought that up as an issue once that I could find.
Now, maybe this will change now that the national GOP has its claws into her. Maybe they’ll force her to toe the line. But to date, I see nothing about her that should scare women into thinking she’s coming to take their choice away.
So if you’re making the assumption that personally pro-life automatically means you’re disqualified, does that mean the tens of millions of female evangelical Christians, Mormons, and observant Catholics are not welcome in the tent of feminism? That any candidate from those groups that runs for office must be fought vigorously? And isn’t that kind of a religious litmus test, which is really what the establishment clause of the constitution was trying to prevent?
Well, maybe it doesn’t matter what they say. At least not to the kids who identify with the “cool kids”. Think of it as the Democrats are the brainy, articulate nerds promising better cafeteria food and whatnot while the Republicans who’s speach concludes with “USA FOOTBALL RULES!!!” to thunderous applause.
As I mentioned, you can attack the narrative but as long as people identify with the values of the Republican party, you will simply come across the ones who are the “whiny ass titty babies” and it will unite people against what they percieve as an outside threat.
No, they painted the Dems as the rich snooty kids from the private school across town. The kids at the cool table might still be jerks, but no one in their right mind roots against their own high school football team.
I can feel the value added by this comment. Can you feel it? I can feel it.
And - shock horror - I also largely agree with Sam and have been saying something similar for years. Excluding the muckflinging from the right, the Democrats have been their own worst enemies. In 1980 Carter went with “We need to take a hard look at our economy and our energy usage and make some tough decisions.” Reagan went with “It’s morning in America.” It’s not that hard to see which message people would prefer.
Even where tough decisions are needed (like now, with two wars on the go and a slew of economic troubles), no candidate will succeed by telling people that things suck. Instead, the message has to be “We can make things better, and together they will BE better.” (Ideally it would be nice if things actually became better, but that’s something for after the election).
OTOH if the message is “We’re America, where the sun always shines and nothing is ever wrong that isn’t caused by liberals and terrorists”, well…I’m not a great believer in denial and delusion as a driving force in public policy (which explains my ongoing problem with the current administration - it’s not just the Dems who go “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”).
Problems exist and they must be faced. The candidate who inspires us to face them and take them on - that’s who gets my vote.
The truth of the matter is that things don’t suck. Really, they don’t. To hear Democrats talk, you’d think we were in a bloody depression. They go on and on about all the jobs leaving, and all the poor, and how everyone’s afraid of the future, and how people can’t make ends meet, yada yada yada.
But the reality is that life has never been better. Life expectancies are still growing. Unemployment has been near historical lows for most of the last 8 years, and is still quite low. The U.S.'s manufacturing base is growing, and not shrinking. It’s only dropping as a percentage of world output, but that’s because the world is catching up, not because the U.S. is falling behind.
Americans have the highest per-capita income of any country on the planet other than Luxembourg. Food is abundant and cheap. Technology is breaking down barriers of communication, dropping the cost for everyone, and entertainment outlets are expanding.
Remember the movie “Wall Street”? It wasn’t that long ago. One of the signs of gross decadence in that movie was that Michael Douglas had a cell phone - the size of a brick with a four-foot long antenna. And he said it cost him a thousand dollars a month. Today, half the kids in America have phones in their pockets that make Star Trek communicators look quaint.
Real incomes may not have grown much over the past few years, but income is only part of the equation. I am FAR richer today than I was ten years ago, because i spend most of my discretionary income on technology, and my dollar goes about 50 times further today than it did then. Go look at a $15,000 car today, and compare it to a $15,000 car from 10 years ago. The difference in quality and features is astounding.
Anyone who wants to get elected needs to tell that half of the story. I know it’s tough when you’re running against a president of the other party, because you need to make the case that he screwed the pooch. But if that reduces you to constantly harping about how rotten everything is, prepare for the other party to beat you again.
It’s not just good politics, it’s good for the country. Politicians should be propping their people up, not knocking them down. They need to be boosters for their country, not apologists for it. This is a uniquely American thing. I don’t hear Sarkozy running around apologizing constantly for France’s policies in Indochina and the Middle East. Reagan won great approval when he refused to accept the cluck-clucking of the bureaucrats in Brussels and the UN, and told them that America was a great place and still the greatest country on earth and the greatest force for freedom on the planet.
Democrats need to figure out how to talk about the positives, while still getting their message across that there are problems to be fixed. Too often, they lose sight of the positive and just recite a litany of woe, over and over again. Then they lose.
Look, 75-80% of the American public believes this country’s on the wrong track. Maybe you should wake up and smell the coffee.
This thread’s not the place to go into a detailed discussion about the problems with the main unemployment rate. But the dissonance between that rate and the increase/decrease in the number of jobs over the past several years is really pretty eye-popping. Anyone who just looks at the unemployment rate without digging deeper is missing most of the story.
That’s how stuff is doing, not people. It’s valid if you’re arguing for wealth redistribution as a fix, but you aren’t.
How about median income? Per-capita is another thing that doesn’t mean shit unless you’re advocating for wealth redistribution as a solution.
Food, gasoline, health insurance - all going up. Value of houses, going down. Number of employed persons, going down. People either foreclosed on or behind on their house payments - at record levels.
When people are a bad month or two from losing their houses, or one major illness from bankruptcy, having a cool cell phone won’t help.
Maybe you can link to a speech by Obama or Hillary or Biden or Edwards from the past year or two that’s a for-instance of this. I’m not so sure this isn’t just the picture the GOP paints of the Democrats, rather than what Democrats actually do.
It seems to me that the Democrats and Republicans both admit that we have problems; the difference is that Republicans talk about problems we can blame on somebody else.
With the Democrats, the problems are vague and not caused by anybody in particular. Our health care system is broken, but it’s hard to say who broke it. The economy is weak, but you can’t point one finger at that one. There’s plenty of sentiment against the fatcats and the big corporations, but in general we have problems, and we need to find solutions for them.
The Republicans, however, have problems that other people caused. Gays, atheists, secularists, liberals, terrorists, Muslim extremists. Things might be screwed up, but we didn’t screw them up.
Maybe the Dems are doing better this year because they can blame Iraq and some of our other issues squarely on the Bush administration.
No; however, it is one that you mentioned repeatedly in your post. It is also one of the few issues in feminism that is still up for fundamental debate on a nation-wide level. I mean, we already got the right to vote and all. . .
A quote on ontheissues.org:
The first two sentences are fine. The last sentence–when taken with the previous two–at the very least infers that she would be all for legislating against abortion. I grant you that it’s not explicitly stated, but it is heavily inferred. Also, she’s has chosen to accept the nomination with McCain, who has explicitly stated that he would overturn Roe v. Wade.
I agree. This is why I don’t have the rabid hatred for her that many of my political persuasion seem to. She’s okay.
No; it’s an unfortunate side-effect, to be sure, but it’s not against the establishment cause. To take this to an extreme, say that a religion existed that explicitly stated that women were not to work. Say also that its adherents pledged to work on a political level to make it so that this belief was made law; in other words, that they would make it illegal for women to work. I would certainly vote against any candidate that espoused such a position–and this is my right as a citizen. But it would be the position, and the desire to legislate it, that determined my vote. It would not be the religion itself.
As to who gets to be a feminist, or who gets to call themselves a feminist. . .well, I don’t get to determine that. Anyone can call themselves a feminist, and I won’t argue the point with them or get pissy about it. And there are certainly points of feminism that have nothing to do with the abortion debate. However, I have a very hard time personally believing anyone who wants to tell me what to do with my own body is a feminist.
Personally pro-life is fine. Believing that the government should dictate those beliefs upon the populace. . .that’s what I have a problem with. I don’t get to dictate who is or isn’t a feminist; I mean, shit, that’s not my place.
Your analogy just died. The rich snooty kids in the private school across town don’t get to vote in your high school’s election, or run for high school president at your high school.