Too funny. So, because I thought Bush was a total loser and should have lost big…this makes me a Republican? And a STUPID Republican too boot, as I lost $20 to a friend (I bet Kerry would win both the EC and popular vote :smack: ).
Let me ask you a serious question. Did YOU think Bush was going to win? Or did you think he was going to lose big time? If you DID think he was going to lose, and lose big…‘Are you sure you aren’t a Repugnican?’ 
-XT
I looked around in my butt for some statistics, and these are what I found: Democrats should run a 1/3 negative, 2/3 positive campaign. Maybe as high as 40%/60% negative/positive, but no higher.
Yes, the Republican party is extremely vulnerable, and absolutely the Democratic party needs to remind the public of Republican screwups, lest people forget. They need to hammer home:
-Katrina’s aftermath would have been much less awful, were the Administration not rife with cronyism.
-The war in Iraq was sold with false intelligence, and the soldiers are inadequately equipped in order to prop up a failed military theory, and the Administration has supported throwing out basic American decency in order to gain the right to practice torture.
-No Child Left Behind contained unfunded mandates and doesn’t seem to be helping students achieve.
-Congressional Republicans played football with a poor family and a poor comatose woman in order to throw a sop to the religious conservatives.
-Abramoff.
and so forth.
At the same time, the Democrats ought to have specific proposals, ideally bills that they’ll submit in the first 100 days of their control of Congress, that show how they’d handle all these situations.
-What they’ll do to ensure that federal agencies are headed up by “highly qualified” people: if Congress requires that your child’s kindergarten teacher be highly qualified, can they ask any less of the head of FEMA?
-What they’ll do to ensure better oversight of intelligence, and how they’ll restore the United States’ image abroad as a champion of human rights and democracy.
-What they’ll do to professionalize teaching and improve conditions in the neediest schools in our country.
-What they’ll do for the millions who lack adequate healthcare, instead of focusing on preventing doctors from making medical decisions.
-What they’ll do to prevent future Abramoff scandals.
-And so forth.
Tie the positive to the negative, perhaps; but have more positive than negative, and have a lot of proposals that don’t mention Republicans at all, but that describe a liberal, compassionate vision of our country.
Daniel
No.
No.
Yes.
No.
Wha??
This is the sort of shit that pisses me off. I’m signed up for Democracy for America’s email updates, from a year or so ago. I just got an email called, “How we’ll win in November.” I was like, dude, finally, a plan! Sure enough, they say, “Sign on to DFA’s “2006 Plan for Victory” today and take the first step in moving America back in the right direction” and I’m all, score, there’s a plan!
But I click on their link, looking for issues. In the 20-slide presentation of how to win, there’s one, count them, one, slide dedicated to the issues on which the Democrats will run. Here’s what that slide says:
In other words, no specifics at all, nothing whatsoever to distinguish Democratic rhetoric from Republican rhetoric. (Well, the health care item is a distinguishing feature, but that’s it).
It’s really depressing. I want Democrats to win, but where are their issues? What’s their vision? Does their vision consist entirely of grassroots campaigners? Are they all flute, no champagne?
Daniel
“New jobs that stay in America”. Interesting. Those must be government jobs, I guess. 
Sounds like a concession, coming from you.
IOW, you indeed have no facts to support your claim, but are willing to engage in yet another silly personal crack in the hopes that that will mask your utter lack of an argument. You obviously didn’t mean that as a concession, but it counts as one anyway.
Okay, now that we’ve settled that your claim has no foundation in fact:
That’s where the “responsibility as a citizen” part comes in, since you ask. It doesn’t allow for any of that.
If that’s who you voted for, or if you instead voted for some fringe ideologue, of course you do. Actions have consequences. That’s part of the responsibility stuff you admit you don’t understand.
I hope you weren’t stupid enough to pay on that bet! Under the circumstances, a “No bet!” defense would have been a perfectly gentlemanly position to take.
No. The anti-Bush message has already gotten out. What the democrats need is to motivate the fence sitters by promoting their strengths where they are in the majority of the public opinion. Things like improving humanitarian aid to foreign countries & promoting universal healthcare access are issues usually associated with democrats and issues that 70%+ of the public agree with.
Moderator’s Note: Was that really necessary? If he were a Republican, you’d arguably be insulting him with a childish misspelling of the word.
I think the democrats have to set up a few memes about the Republicans being big corporation party. They should run ads before the election on how big oil companies’ profits have soared. How Haliburton and others have benefited. How air and water standards were dropped… etc…
Just hitting Bush is losing ground. Either you make a case against the whole party or the Democrats are dead.
Of course oil company profits have soared. Oil is $58 a barrel. How is that the Republicans fault? Maybe if more people stopped driving their big assed SUV’s and lowered the demand for oil the price would go down and oil companies wouldn’t make as much. It is the market that sets the price of oil, not the US government. A good portion of the money companies make goes back into finding more oil. The days of Jed Clampett shooting the ground and oil bubbling up out of it are gone, just in case you were under the impression that it was that easy.
Point taken.
That’s our problem. 70% favor improving humanitarian aid and universal healthcare, but not quite so many are willing to see their taxes go up to pay for these things. If the Dems run on issues like health care and foreign aid they’ll lose. The average Amrican does not live in a third-world nation and probably will not have a pressing need for health-care in this election cycle. People will say health care is important, but I doubt it’s important enough to them to get their asses out and vote.
One of the conclusions I’ve drawn is that the Republicans are a homogenous party, the Democrats aren’t. If a person is a Republican he is most likely white, middle class or better off, and Christian. This describes the modal average American. The Democrats represent everyone who doesn’t fit this description. I don’t think the Dems can put forward a cohesive message because they don’t have a cohesive message. They’re a coalition government.
In the last election the strategy seemed to be that since they could count on the votes of the anybody-but-Bush left, they needed a moderate candidate to appeal to swing voters. I think in the next two elections their strategy should be to turn swing voters into anybody-but-the-republicans voters, which can defintiely be done in the current political climate.