Nah, I don’t think honesty will work. The Dems in my opinion have been TOO honest for their own good. They need to build a better media machine, and they need to run a much tighter ship wrt being “on message.” No amount of honesty is going to help if the PUbbies are using a 1500 watt amp to address the voting public and the Dems are stuck with yelling real loud. In fact, Dems should have one set of short, sound-bite talking points and another, much more nuanced set of points for places like the Web. These two sets do not have to match exactly.
This is exactly what the Pubbies have done. The neocons fucking SPELLED OUT their plans for Iraq prior to Bush’s election in 2000. No one paid any attention because it was all on paper. They just put their hands in Bush’s back and had him say, “Awwmm gonn kick Saddam butt cuz he had somep’n or other t’ do with 911 and thass a fact!” and the TV and radio idjits swallowed it wholesale.
We should do the same if we want to win.
Exactly. Stick with your core beliefs. The party may not adopt them, but if you’re in the tent at least, you may be able to make progress backstage. Once again, look at the neocons.
Yeah, but honesty just DOESN’T work in politics. Time to admit it.
Oh, that’s so sweet. So, which part of torturing prisoners do YOU think is worth defending? What part of warmongering can YOU get along with? What part of electoral fraud doesn’t bother YOU?
I mean, I just MAY have thought about these issues prior to posting, kiddo.
I strongly agree with Orbifold on this matter. It isn’t simply about staking out a position that you hope more other people will agree with. What that says is that you are afraid people won’t agree with your real position. If you can’t come out and fight for your position, why should other people even consider adopting it for themselves? People not only want to do what is right, they want to do what seems to be right based on the convictions of those behind the message. Strong leaders are strong because they are compelling, not convincing. People are looking for a champion to fight for them. When we adopt some concilliatory position, we are immediately telling people that they should not trust us to fight for what we believe in, and that means we cannot be trusted to fight for them, should they have aligned themselves with us.
The Democrats must simply stop being afraid. We must compel people, not convince them.
Yes, though I note that deep-sixing the gun control foolishness is “respecting the individual” and (insofar as it makes working conditions for criminals more hazardous) “punishing malfeasance”.
Evil Captor, I note that you’re talking about the delivery of the message, whereas I’m talking more exclusively about the content. I agree that better presentation is a must for the Democratic party, but I don’t see that conflicting with anything I’ve said.
I’m sure there’s a fascinating argument to be had on the moral values of various positions on gun control, balancing society’s respect for the individual with individual respect for society, and debating who does and does not have the moral authority to punish. However, for the purpose of this thread I hope you will be satisfied if I say I disagree with the proposition that all gun control is “foolishness”.
On a policy level? Maybe not (though the orthodox Democratic position has, IMO, clearly gone beyond a reasonably nuanced balance).
On a political level? Certainly – I have not the slightest doubt that if it weren’t for the voters swayed by the gun control issue, Al Gore would be starting his second term.
The Dems can’t become “Republican lite”. The Republican majority in both houses of Congress is razor thin and “the most liberal Senator” nearly beat (or some think DID beat) an incumbent wartime president. That doesn’t tell me that people don’t like the Dem ideals. What the Dems should do to successfully elect a president is:
Get a 3x5 card. Write your goals on the card. If it doesn’t fit, pare it down until it does. The message must be simple or it will not sell.
Forget about changing policy on abortion. Those that base their votes solely on abortion haven’t voted for a Democrat for president in over 20 years. There are simply no votes to lose there, changing policies to attempt to win those voters will lose more votes than it wins.
Forget about trying to suck up to the NRA, for much the same reason as above. If gun control is the number one priority to you, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in heck that you would vote Democratic for president, anyway.
Choose a governor as the nominee. Senators have no chance these days. Governors do not cast votes on defense issues. Every vote cast to cut ANY system, even if it had the backing of the then incumbent Republican president, will bite any Democrat in the butt. Republicans are immune from scrutiny on this- life isn’t fair. Deal with it.
Back to the matter of the OP- I challange anyone to justify the torture of US detainees. Even if it yielded good information (which it doesn’t), the negative political impact on the Islamic street is simply intolerable. Not to mention the practice is unquestionably immoral.
I agree with you, and the points I snipped off, but it can’t be about who will be the next presidential nominee. Waiting until 2008 is too late. Even the mid-terms are too late. It’s got to start now.
Well, here’s a problem: Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, has accepted your challenge:
This was back in June, but it’s coming back to bite him (and the Dems) via the Gonzalez hearings.
This kind of crap has to stop. What makes it even more unforgivable, is that he’s in a very safe seat, and was just reelected in a cakewalk. I was thinking of pitting him, but he’s more of a symptom of a bigger problem the Dems need to deal with.
So…it’s okay for other cultures to torture and kill people? I believe in just wars. Sadly, war is never a pretty picture, but to defeat the enemy, you sometimes have to be just as merciless as they are. The sad fact of war. There was no electoral fraudYou say there was one, but fail to provide the truth of that statement. Bush won, fair and square. Instead of whining about it, why not try to work with the president that was elected? I am no fan of Bush, but he is a lot more honest than Kerry or Michael Moore have been.
As far as I know, Gonzales never said that torture was a good thing, did he? The memo he’s associated with just said that an argument can be made that torture is legal, as far as I know.
Yes. In the same way that I could write a post here all about how one could go about sharing pirated music. I could then argue to the mods as they give me a smack down that I never said sharing pirated music was a good thing.
I don’t know that that’s really a good comparison, because what’s not allowed on this board is writing about how one could go about sharing pirated music, not saying that sharing pirated music was a good thing. In fact, you probably could start a thread arguing that sharing pirated music was a good thing, arguing for changes in copyright law, etc., and the mods would allow it.
Be that as it may, Cap. I do think Gonzalez participating in what appears to be a ‘find the rationale’ game for torture isn’t the sort of moral authority I’d like to see in an AG.
And for an AG to have been the one trying to find out how ‘legal’ torture can be should give everyone the willies.
I’m not sure it was Alvarez specifically, but the Justice Dept. team charged with finding rationales for torture (oh, excuse me … looking into the legal status of Guantanamo detainees) did come up with the bit about anything short of “pain equivalent to major organ failure” not being torture, which would have included things like pulling out fingernails and even cutting off fingers and toes.
The Justice Dept. renounced that memo on New Years’ Day, specifically to keep Alvarez from having to account for it at his AG hearing. But it clearly shows the quality of mind Alvarez and his justice dept. buddies have.
Exactly right. I still think there might be some gun control votes to be had, and that it’s not an issue that’s important to most Dems the way abortion and such are, but I cold be wrong about that.
I also don’t think Repubs are immune from scrutiny on any issue … if we have a media machine that can subject them to scrutiny. Hopefully, Air America will grow in time to become the Limbaugh/hate radio alternative and we’ll get us an unfair and unbalanced “news” channel like Fox.
Back to the matter of the OP- I challange anyone to justify the torture of US detainees. Even if it yielded good information (which it doesn’t), the negative political impact on the Islamic street is simply intolerable. Not to mention the practice is unquestionably immoral.
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Exactly right. I still think there might be some gun control votes to be had, and that it’s not an issue that’s important to most Dems the way abortion and such are, but I cold be wrong about that.
I also don’t think Repubs are immune from scrutiny on any issue … if we have a media machine that can subject them to scrutiny. Hopefully, Air America will grow in time to become the Limbaugh/hate radio alternative and we’ll get us an unfair and unbalanced “news” channel like Fox.
The issue is not of “sucking up the NRA”, but rather of kicking the hard-core gun-ban faction to the curb (which, I repeat, the Democrats must do if they ever want to win national elections).
Smearing a man’s face with fake menstrual blood - what the fuck! My favorite quote:
“I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case,”
Smearing a Muslim man with blood (even fake) is basically waging a religious war, dipshit.