Our political opponents would prefer that would keep ourselves to restrained, polite discourse, murmuring to one another “The Emperor has no clothes, you know.” Mr. Moore cavorts, does sumersaults and sets off firecrackers while screaming “Nekkid! Nekkid as a jaybird! Look, you can see his wee willie winky! Nekkid!”
That some on their team can call Sen Kerry a liar and a traitor is not relevent, if you listen quite closely, you can catch a “tsk, tsk!”.
Yes he is.
He only beat us once…maybe…and all it proves is that morons outnumber us by 3%.
I agree with Annan. We had no right to go into Fallujah. I do NOT take it as a given that the UN approach would cause the situation to deteriorate, and I think that nothing the UN could do would be more disatrous and immoral than what the US has done and continues to do in Iraq
Who said he was?
Good thing no one has ever done that. Try not to choke on all that straw.
This is a senseless point, and I don’t just mean the gibberish about “colors.” . Some women are conservatives therefore reproductive choice is not good for women? What kind of bullshit logic is that?
Didn’t used to be anyway…
“So many?” Cite?
He doesn’t speak for this liberal, his points are stupid and he can bite my ass.
I didn’t hear any Democrats saying it either. Who are you talking about?
If “special” = “losers”, then, yes, I agree with you. Most of the criticism being levelled at the Kerry campaign right now is that there was no message, and no effort to make a message, leaving undecided and moderate voters unenthused or confused as to what Kerry actually wanted to accomplish.
You may disdain talking points and ‘party line’, but in the modern media, it is the most effective way of communicating one’s position to the voters. And if voters don’t know what your positions are, they’re far less likely to vote for you.
For all the talk about how ‘no one could do worse than Bush’, enough people didn’t trust Kerry to do better- 58% of Americans trusted Bush to handle terrorism, while only 40% trusted Kerry. 49% of Americans trusted Bush to handle the economy- but only 45% trusted Kerry to handle the economy.
If Kerry had actually effectively communicated his ideas and message, those numbers would have been better and Kerry might well have won. And to effectively communicate his ideas and message, he needed to have talking points, and get fellow Democrats to stick to those points and the party line.
Who voted in no greater percentage in 2004 than they did in 2000, and did not go to Kerry by much larger numbers than they did to Gore in 2000.
There were plenty of moderates and fence-sitters who had many reasons to dislike Bush… but who disliked the nastiness, hysteria, and condescension of the anti-Bush crowd more. There were votes there to be had, and they were lost. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Senate and House Republican numbers from 1994 to 2000, during the rise of right-wing hate radio. Did Republicans make substantial gains, or continual losses?
As will the Democratic Party, if they decide that the answer to this election is to insist that fraud won it for Bush, and that moving away from the center is the best way to gain votes.
Democrats don’t need to reevaluate anything.
Our strategies didn’t work as well as we’d hoped, but we should give up on our principles. There just isn’t a desire for a democrat more moderate than Bill Clinton. We don’t want Joe Liberman, that goes against our principles. If that makes us lose elections, then so be it.
What we need to do is to split the Republican party. Why people like Guiliani et. al. are still in the Republican party is beyond me. Face it, guys, the Republican party has moved to the right. Does anyone argue with that? But take the fiscal conservatives. Bush will ruin his party if he continues on the path of fiscal insanity. Its a simple fact. Those Republicans won’t be able to take it much longer. They won’t go democratic, but I expect a shakeup. I don’t expect an anti-abortion, fundementalist Christian Governor to win in New York anytime soon. Those northeastern states with Republican congressmen will eventually get tired of this. Bush also has the added problem of those 4 million evangelicals. He can’t please them because they won’t be pleased until America is something that 80 percent of us don’t want. The only reason he won Florida and Ohio is because of the gay marriage ammendment. They weren’t so happy with Bush to begin with, because honestly, what has he given them other than rhetoric? There won’t be a gay marriage ammendment, and I doubt that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, but if that does happen, it may placate them for a while. But these guys are certainly in it for total change of American culture.
Finally the young generation. There were lots of youth who liked Reagan, but even my home state of Mississippi, the 18-30 year-olds voted for Kerry. That’s one of the reddest of the red. The youth of America are very skeptical. The American dream isn’t really panning out for us, and we want some kind of security, and we don’t want to work hard to get ahead. It won’t be too long before there are more of us than there are of the old people. This election will only further the importance of the youth vote for next time. And with the gay marriage ammendment out of the way in Florida and Ohio, I immagine that it will be easier to win those states.
Dean was a good guy, who spoke his mind. He made a lot of sense to us younguns. If Iraq continues the way it is, I imagine that his criticisms will only become more valid.
As for Moore and Kofi Annan? I don’t give a rat’s ass about Kofi. Moore is nothing more than a propagandist who happens to be on our side. He helps us and hurts us at the same time.
What do you mean by the youth of America? That’s a big group, and they aren’t as homogeneous as you seem to claim.
If said youth is a college kid, attending lectures by left-wing professors until 4:20 rolls around, it’s not surprising he supported Kerry.
If that youth is instead in the military, chances are really good he backed Bush.
Notice I didn’t say they necessarily voted for their choices. Every election is presumably the breakout year for the youth voter, and every time they disappoint. They turned out this year in the same pathetic proportions as always.
Besides, the tendency of voters to grow more conservative as they grow older is well documented. Four years from now, that pool of young Kerry voters will be far more Republican, and voting in higher numbers.
Keep chasing that youth vote, though. That’s been working really well for you.
Who are these “left-wing professors” that conservatives keep fantaszing about? I didn’t see any when I was in college. Most of the time there was no political discourse at all. In a geology class they tended to bang on about rocks and mountains. In New Testament they talked about the two-source theory and Q. In Classical Philosophy they talked about Plato and Aristotle. In Latin we broke down noun declensions.
What are the classes with the wild-eyed liberal profs spewing Trotsky propaganda? If I could have found one I would have taken it,
As a matter of fact, the only two profs I had who ever expressed political opinions in class were both conservatives (both were history profs).
What is the source of this meme that college students are getting indoctrinated into Liberal politics? has anyone who perpetuates that stuff ever been to college?
When you can solve this puzzle, Grasshopper, you will be ready to leave here.
I mean that in all seriousness. If Dems don’t know why these guys are still Republicans, then they will remain marginalized at the national level. Hint: Arnold gave you a clue in his RNC speech.
OTOH, we Dems played nicey-nice at our convention, while the GOP went into full attack mode in theirs, and they won the election. And lately the GOP’s been telling us that the Dems lost because we were too angry. Suuuuuuuuuuuuure.
I’m really not inclined to take advice from the GOP right now on how to get that 2% swing that takes us from down 48-51 to up 50-49. Not only does the advice generally suck, but beyond that, there are really only two things I’m interested in politically right now:
And:
This thread isn’t about the first, needless to say. But the answer to the second isn’t to repudiate one’s extremists and move towards the center; we did that in the 1990s, and lost control of Congress. It’s to be who you are, and be willing to stand for what you believe in, year in and year out. That’s how American conservatism got from 1964 to 1980 and 1994. It did not get there by moving towards the center. It took strong stands, stuck with them over the decades, and moved the center towards it. I bought into that model awhile back, and see no reason to change my point of view.
And FWIW, idiocy isn’t one of those all-or-nothing deals. We’ve all known of people who could calculate fourth-order differential equations in their heads, but really should’ve had someone to dress them in the mornings. GWB may be smarter than us Dems with respect to political realities, but he’s still a moron about plain, old-fashioned reality. Because that doesn’t matter to him; someone else will always pay his tab, as so many did last week in Iraq.
When, exactly, did you graduate, Diogenes?
I went into the Navy before I finished college, and finally got around to completing my degree between 1998 and 2000. At that time, all of my political science prefessors were quite liberal.
That was the case, too, when I attended college full-time in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I ran across very few moderates, let alone conservatives.
I graduated in '98.
So these liberal poly sci profs, what did they expound on abortion rights and PETA? What did they say that so liberal? :dubious:
Was it only poly sci profs or did you hear it in Comp 1 and Intro to German as well? If no one took a poly sci class would they have missed being indoctrinated?
Seriously, what propaganda was being taught as fact? Did they tell you dirty lies about Iran-Contra? Watergate?
I think a lot of conservatives just react negatively to facts and assume it must be proganda.
I wish I knew. I don’t hold much hope.
No, we lost congress because of the 1993 tax hike. And the Republicans won congress in 1994 because of a huge concerted national effort led by Newt Gingrich and Grover Nordquist, where they figured out how to put together all the coalitions they needed to win 80% of the elections they pursued.
So the answer to the second question is to wait for the Republicans to do something painful, but which has long term good, then use that pain in a huge concerted effort to take tons of Republican seats, and then sit and let the good long-term effects get credited to the Democrats.
My wife says I’m not smiling much lately.
Spare me, Diogenes. I know the difference between instruction and indoctrination.
One professor used to show us propaganda films from the Sandinistas, and would openly denigrate, in class, anyone who questioned her political preferences. I just kept my mouth shut, slogged through this horribly boring and infuriating class, and collected my three credits.
There were certainly more than her. A class on political economy had readings by Reich and Tyson, and no readings from the more conservative economic wing. It’s hard to have discussions when opposing viewpoints are quashed in this way.
That’s a rather disingenious use of the word “disaster,” especially since it leaves no other suitable words to describe Zell Miller’s mouth-foamer at the Republican Convention…
Grasshopper? :rolleyes:
I’ll rephrase this. I know why they aren’t democrats, okay? I actually do know why they are still republicans, and I’d guess it is because they have experienced their entire lives as knowing their party as the one of fiscal responsibility up until President Bush. You referenced Arnold’s RNC speech. I guess you are referring to the speech he gave about not having the government on your back, or whatever. How would you classify Dean in this situation?
All I’m saying is that these guys are going to keep getting squeezed if the Republican party keeps going to the Right.
The Democrats luckly have the luxury of being on the right side of most of the issues. The deficit is a bad thing. Not doing anything about it is a bad thing. Bush wants more tax cuts, eg, he’s not doing anything for the deficit. Going to Iraq hasn’t turned out so well yet either. It will take another 4 years for the fruits of George’s labor to come out, but if he manages to somehow come out clean, then we are screwed.
I don’t know what the Democrats should do. Honestly, I think we need to appeal to folks on moral terms just like the Republicans did. John Edwards does a really good job of this. The difference between right and wrong. Its wrong for people to have to work 60 hours a week to barely support a family. That’s just simple and easy to understand. That’s why it’s important to recognize the different republicans. There are those who vote Republican because they believe they have moral character, and there are those who do it for purely economic reasons, and there are shades of people in between. Which part should we go for? We can go for both. But I think we’ve maxed out on our liberal base.
But mostly we just have to make sense. John Kerry made little sense to me although I knew what he was for (because I was deeply involved) The person who has so little time to pay attention can’t really do those things. They get a soundbite from Kerry on the news that was probably an unfortunate outburst or some sort of convoluted logic. I think guy that think like this are the best for the job, but not necessarily to win. We need a cantidate that speaks in soundbites (Howard Dean can do this a little as well as John Edwards) and can analyze the facts well. Bill Clinton was a damn good politician and a smart man. Everyone hated Clinton was mad because he was so good that he got away with anything that he wanted.
[QUOTE=Merkwurdigliebe]
Grasshopper? :rolleyes:
I’ll rephrase this. I know why they aren’t democrats, okay? I actually do know why they are still republicans, and I’d guess it is because they have experienced their entire lives as knowing their party as the one of fiscal responsibility up until President Bush. /QUOTE]
You repost the exact opposite of what you posted earlier and give **ME **the rolleyes?
OOOOkaaaay…
Just one question: Who ever said Kofe Annon was a democratic oracle?
I work over sixty hours a week, every week. Admittedly I’m doing a bit better than “barely support,” but I don’t agree that sixty hours a week is WRONG.
Oh, Hell, Bricker, if work was all that great, the rich folks would keep it all and not let you have any.
The “wrong” part is if it still can’t support a family.
I think your points are idiotic — especially the one about “Johnny Cracker” — and I have responded to them in the Pit.