I’ll take that as an admission that you’re talking out of your ass again. Comes as no surprise.
You keep telling yourself that, John, if it helps take the sting away. 
Instead of acting like a drive-by asshole all of the time, you could actually try to make a point related to the OP every now and again. Maybe your addled little monkey brain doesn’t quite grasp the concept, but here’s a starter: When the OP is about what the Dems should do to win elections, you shouldn’t jump in with some pointless references to the lovely Ann Coulter. Focus on the topic. I know, ‘Dems trying to win elections’ is pretty outlandish and depressing, but stick with it!
Oh ya, :).
I really think you’re off the mark here. I agree with you that most of the opposition is not directly the result of “fundie gay-hatred”, but an even smaller chunk is related to practical concerns. Most of it is just a base, gut reaction.
Consider my dad. He’s an educated professional, probably the definitive practical libertarian, though thirty years as a social worker made him understand better than anyone the need for social programs. Not a religious bone in his body. And he hates gay people. On a deep, instinctual level that he couldn’t even explain if he tried, the idea of homosexuality and homosexuals just irks him to no end. (Then again, I doubt he’s ever had an openly gay acquaintance.)
He’s far from alone. A huge chunk of the people I know still can’t refer to a man and his boyfriend or a woman and her “companion” without a snicker or rolled eyes. Probably 3/4 of my patients are taken aback when I take a sexual history and I ask if their sexual partners have been men, women, or both. A lot of these folks would probably be outwardly tolerant to a gay acquaintance, but when they’re alone in the voting booth, they just can’t support something that might make them have to see men holding hands in the mall or gay wedding announcements in the newspaper.
The problem with your suggested position for the Dems is that the majority of those amendments that passed last year also specifically prohibited any sort of civil union arrangement. A strict reading of some of them would strip away any protections that were already in existence, or that were offered by localities. Not to mention that there isn’t much substantial difference between your statement and John Kerry’s position in the last election, so it’s not exactly a shift.
This is not an issue the Democrats can run from, because they weren’t the ones who made it an issue. The Massachusetts court decision that brought it to the fore had nothing to do with the Democrats, and the push for state amendments last year was a very stage-managed plan of the Right to get the fundies out to vote for Bush. The only choices Democrats had were to ignore them, support them, weakly oppose them, or strongly oppose them, and there’s just not a winner in that bunch.
As to the OP, I don’t think emphasising one aspect or another of the platform is going to help very much as long as the GOP controls both the debate and the terms of the debate. This bit by a writer at Daily Kos is strongly worded, but I generally agree:
Ann Coulter’s cover and puff piece in Time this week only makes this clearer–reasoned arguments and strong policies are not going to win elections. I wish I knew how to address this without rolling in the same mud, but it’s true.
There is another way – which arguably involves rolling in the mud, but not quite the same mud. See “Making Connections: Why is the news so bad?” by Jessica Clark and Tracy van Slyke, In These Times, 5/9/05 – http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2069/. And a much shorter piece from the same issue, “Five Ways to Combat Conservative Media,” by Jamison Foster – http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2065/.
I think, instead of “stocking up on cinder blocks,” we need to think in terms of “moving the goal posts.” E.g., there’s a new progressive TV network being formed, Independent World Television – http://www.iwt.tv/. If that takes off, it will weigh down the left side of the scale, balancing out Fox News – and, by showing America what real left-liberal journalism looks like, it will make CNN and the broadcast network news shows appear less “liberal” and obviate the incessant right-wing lies about “liberal media bias” – especially as IWT will be in a position to harp just as shrilly on the even more obvious conservative, pro-corporate bias in CNN and the Big Three, and how it is directly related to who owns them.
And the folks who have been actively participating in this thread – instead of just jumping in on the last message, as you just did – are getting a laugh at watching you blunder past, unaware that the OP actually was addressed despite your charges otherwise.
Thanks, Brutus! I knew you wouldn’t let me down!
And maybe you brain can grasp that name calling is not allowed in Great Debates?
Do not do this again.
.
rjung and John Mace, I would ask that you not let this civil discussion be derailed by hostile sidebars.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Well, as to the OP, I think the problem is, what does it take for the gucks (those voters who form their opinions from TV soundbites cause they don’t like to read if they don’t have to) to feel the income inequality? They don’t have enough imagination to understand exactly what being wealthy does for a person and his family – they just think it means they can by REALLY BIG TVs and BIG CARS and eat out in fancy restaurants with waiters and everytning and tip real big to show what big people they are.
To put it another way: when I heard on NPR yesterday that “new economic figures released by blah-blah-blah show that slaries are not keeping up with inflation” and I also heard that “corporate profits continue to rise” I knew exactly what was conclusion to draw – rich people were giving the poor and the middle class the shaft. Corporate bosses are raking in record profits by firing people and outsourcing and increasing productivity and giving them shit for wage increases because they COULD in the job market they’d created with their firings and outsourcings. Class warfare, at the corporate level, aimed at the poor and the middle class.
I don’t think the gucks are gonna buy this – hell, there are quite a few people on the SDMB who don’t see it though it’s blindingly obvious. The gucks only care about how much money they get in their paycheck and what it can buy. The fact that the prospect of sending their kids to college or buidling up a decent savings account or retiring and living well afterwards is too distant for their teeny, tiny minds.
Howver, I do believe that they’re noticing that their kids sure are getting shitty jobs lately. If the Dems were to bang loud and hard on that one, they just might get heard over the Republican noise machine. Maybe.
Is it just me, or was that the most condescending message towards poor people this board has seen for a while?
Funny how many of the people on the left who claim to be champions of the poor and working class actually think so little of them.
Not just you Sam…struck me the same way. Its fairly sad how low an opinion thise champions of the poor have of the poor. Bunch of ‘gucks’ who live in trailer parks or some gods forsaken ghetto somewhere drinking cheap beer and dreaming of a larger TV…
:dubious:
-XT
I have to agree. What the hell, Evil Captor? Way to reinforce the stereotype of the elitist liberal.
If my fellow Democrats want to appeal to ordinary voters, they had damned well better hold those voters in some esteem. Otherwise, Democrats don’t deserve to win any elections.
EC, this is the sort of thing that makes it so hard for me to vote for Democrats even when I can clearly see that the Pubs are obviously no friends to working people. If this really is the atttitude many progressives have towards their fellow citizens–and it certainly seems to be–maybe they just ought to admit that they really don’t believe in democracy at all.
First of all, way tgo avoid the issue, guys. Notice noen of you addressed the point, which is that although there is ample evidence of class warfare by the rich on the middle class going on right now, nobody seems to be paying any attention to it. Interesting times, I says.
Now as for my alleged condesension – sorry, I’ve lot all patience with the idiots who don’t bother to learn about the issues when they vote, which is what I defined “gucks” as – not specifically poor people, though I will grant you there are plenty of poor gucks out there (and some rich gucks as well). I REFUSE to give these bozos respect that they do not deserve. And spoke- don’t worry about the gucks being offended by my words. They don’t read, get it? As long as I don’t speak the words with my mouth, they’ll never know.
No, he wasn’t discussing poor people at all. He was condescending toward “those voters who form their opinions from TV soundbites cause they don’t like to read if they don’t have to”. That is not related to income at all.
His further statement that “The gucks only care about how much money they get in their paycheck and what it can buy” in fact makes guckery just as likely to occur in the middle and upper classes.
In fact, it gets worse for your preferred view: “Class warfare, at the corporate level, aimed at the poor and the middle class.” That’s a denunciation of the moneyed classes, not the poor. How you reached your interpretation is best known to you yourself.
If you’re going to denounce or deplore a view, at least try to understand what it *is * first.
(GREAT BIG ENORMOUS SIGH) You people just don’t listen, do you? The arrogance and contempt you and EC have shown in your respective posts is the main reason I feel repelled by most so-called progressives. Are you guys capable of self-criticism at all?
In a sense, though, the Dems are victims of their own success. Generations ago programs such as Social Security and various kinds of labor legislation raised the living standards of millions of people and bought them the gratitude of millions of working folks. But many of the families they helped gradually began to move up the social and economic ladder across the generations and to lose touch with their roots, so to speak. In doing so they began to identify more with the upper classes than the lower and to identify more and more with the Pubs than the Dems. When you’re three generations removed from a hardscrabble farm, and you haven’t got even the vaguest memory of what the Dems did to help your great-grandparents avoid losing all they owned, when the events such as those described in *The Grapes of Wrath * are something that happened to complete strangers and not to you or someone close to you, then it’s a natural human tendency to say, “Well, what have they done for me lately?” and vote your pocket book. It’s a sad commentary, I know, but it’s human nature.
Wow. How could you miss the swipes at the poor taken by **EC **in that post? Here they are again, with the offending passages bolded:
Those barbs ain’t aimed at rich folk. Sure, there is some casitgation of rich folk in there, but the whole point of that passage is that the poor “gucks” are too stupid to figure out they are getting shafted by the rich folks, according to EC.
“People who don’t have imagination” are essentially the poor? People who don’t look ahead are the poor? Only the poor don’t look ahead to retirement funding?
Please. He’s castigating the ignorant.
No, he’s not.
This is a clear reference to income and/or social class.
This is another clear reference to income and/or social class.
Ever since the '60’s there’s been a tremendous contempt for poor and working class whites among many progressives. It costs the Dems dearly at election time.