A chicken in every pot (free-range, of course)? 
Exactly (keep talking like this and don’t be surprised if some GOP thugs show up at your house someday to fit you for lead shoes and a refreshing swim 
). Something solid without a lot of political double-speak…chewy as you say, something that we can really look at and sink our teeth into. Don’t give us pie in the sky programs without realisticly looking at the costs. Don’t give us vague utoipa visions without any clear cut idea how to get there…and what they are really going to cost us. Don’t say you are going to stop gas prices rising and falling (for instance ) without saying HOW you plan to manage that (I also wouldn’t recommend ElvisL1ves strategy of deliberately lieing about it and being vague in the hopes no one will catch you up on it…or that they will forget post election).
At least then someone like me can sit down and decide if your grand plans are really the direction I want the country to go in and thus where my vote is going to go. With Kerry I never knew…despite asking in several threads on this board exactly what his plans were and how he was going to pay for them. I never did get a good answer…even here from Kerry supporters.
Bush was the devil folks knew. They knew what they were going to get from him…Kerry was a question mark because despite American’s supposedly being ‘stupid’ they could hear the double talk in his grand speeches and during the debates.
Despite Bush’s reign as President things in the US really aren’t all that bad. And this is with Bush at the helm (I can’t overstate this point). Merely saying folks are ‘fucked’ or that everything is gloom and doom doesn’t make it so. Also, I don’t think the fact that the Dems won’t be running against Bush has quite sunk in yet…but really, attacking Bush isn’t going to carry enough water to win the presidency even IF things nose dive in the next 3 years…something I wouldn’t count on. In order for the Dems to win back the presidency, especially in the long term, they NEED to come up with something new, something chewy and crunchable that a majority of American’s will agree with.
-XT
And most importantly, portray it as
“Won’t this be great when it happens? Our lives will be better when this comes!”
and not
“You’re fucked because you haven’t done this! Aren’t your lives shitty without it?”
I do not *advocate * lying, although I do advocate vagueness if it’s dressed as clarity (which isn’t all that hard). I do acknowledge that lying is simply part of effective campaigning, because yes, campaign lies are indeed forgotten and forgiven quickly. That isn’t unscrupulousness, it’s realism.
As Scarface pointed out, “First you get the money, then you get the power, THEN you get the women!”
Basically, the Republicans on this board just want us to bring that knife back to the gun fight in 2006. We can all see how well that worked in 2000 and 2004.
Uh huh. So Daniel’s a Republican?
What I’m advocating is what also won elections for Democrats in 1992 and 1996. Move to the middle, offer specifics, and be optimistic about what the country can do rather than pessemistic about where the country is right now.
There are plenty of issues that the Democrats can win on.
Talk about Roe v. Wade and how you’ll uphold it, and how you want to make abortions “safe, legal, and rare.”
Talk about the future of the environment and energy and how you want to lead this country to a place where energy is “safe, cheap, and clean.”
Talk about the future of health care and how you want to lead this country to a place where medicine is “safe, cheap, and abundant.”
In 1974, the Democrats won one of the largest majorities they’d ever had in the Senate and the House. How many of them do you think actually talked about Nixon in their campaign ads? Even at the height of Watergate, very few of them ever specifically mentioned Nixon, Watergate, or Vietnam. Rather, they focused on being “outsiders” and being “clean and honest” and “bringing integrity back to government”.
If you insist “We must appeal to the base, we must be loud and angry, and we must be vicious”, you will get fucked. Horribly. Because the Republican base is half-again as large as yours. Republicans can be extremists and rally the base knowing that it will rally the Democrats’ base as well, because they know they’re getting 1.5 Republicans for every pissed off Democrat. Unless you think you can rally Democrats without equally reallying Republicans (and everything about the 2004 race disproves that, don’t it? Highest turnout for both sides), moving left and being shrill is stupid.
Am I the only person in America that remembers the “Sister Souljah moment” and what it led to?
I certainly recall that too. Who will be the 2008 GOP nominee’s Sister Souljah, though? Who will take the risk of disassociating himself from the religious-right zealots, or even be able to find a way to do so?
Seems to me that this is exactly what YOU want to do…bring the same old dull knife to the same old gunfight. I really don’t understand why some of you can’t look at the Clinton years and learn some lessons from that. Its not like you have a lot of presidential examples to hold up of very liberal democrats gaining and holding the top spot. Hell, its not like you’ve been overly successful in aquiring the presidency at all as democrats in quite a long time. You have ONE successful democrat president who actually managed to get re-elected in the last, what? 40 odd years? Doesn’t this suggest something to you??? crickets chirp Someone??
Maybe you should re-evaluate Clinton’s presidency and see WHY he got re-elected and, I don’t know…emmulate it perhaps. Radical thought I’m sure. Or I suppose you could see how running further left without anything more than ‘Bush Sucks!’ as your campaign strategy works out for you.
-XT
It’s not like he’s a leftist, either. :rolleyes:
Wow, that’s an amazing turnaround. 'Cause, y’know, we’re talking about the Democrats, here.
If the Republicans had failed to win either of the last two presidential elections, and hadn’t controlled Congress for 10 years, maybe we could wring our hands and worry as to who would lead the Republicans out of the wilderness.
But that’s not what we’re talking about. But good on you to completely misinterpret something so as to misdirect attention! You’ll make a great political operative one day.
(P.S. I have made spelling errors in this post. If you point them out, maybe people will forget what I actually said! Try it!)
My whole point here, has been if you want it, you have to fight for it. Nobody is going to hand it over on their own. You can’t let the other side frame every argument and expect to win by defending. You can’t play nice or be a gentleman. You have to fight for it. Mudslinging works. Personal attack works. Whisper campaigns work. Attack ads work. “Massaging” the facts works. False accusations by “independent” groups work. It’s a dirty game. Play to win or don’t play.
“That knife” is criticism of the Republicans without having a plan of their own, right? I’m confused: I thought you were a Democrat, but you’re wanting the thing you say Republicans want.
Daniel
Can’t do it without talking about the Republicans too, ya know.
So do you think the 2008 GOP candidate will have to find his own Sister Souljah among the Religious Right or not? Do you think the 2008 Dem candidate will have to find one among, well, whom exactly? If you want to talk about that, then talk about it already, okay?
His actual policy positions from back when he was a governor were not far left, but he is a “leftist” IMO.
In any case, his Republican and Bush bashing rhetoric is red meat for the leftists in the US, and they love him for it. He might not be a hard core liberal on policy, but he’s the favorite son of many of the hard core liberals out there.
I think a lot of you are exaggerating the disparity in political power between the two parties.
Look at the state level
State House seats: Democrats hold 2704 seats, Republicans 2692
State Senate seates: Democrats hold 952 seats, Republicans 966
Clearly, the state legislatures are more or less evenly divided
-In governorships, , the Republicans hold a 28-22 edge. Not exactly earthshaking but significant.
In the US Congress, the Republican edge is 232-202
And in the US Senate the Republican edge is 55-44
This isn’t like Canada or Britain, where the Conservatives fell dramatically from power. The split is still pretty even, as have been the last two presidential elections.
So it isn’t as if nobody is buying our product. I think it’s more of a case of needing a better sell than a better product.
Looks like Hillary has been reading my posts here.
I think it’s relevant to look at the other thread on yesterday’s election, the message there is “Republicans Lost!”, rather than “Democrats Won!” And that’s exactly the message here too.
But going with that approach completely cedes the initiative to the Republicans. If your campaign is on how much the Republicans suck, all they have to do is suck a bit less and they win. Remember the guy who ran against Jim Trafficanti on the message “I’m not Jim Trafficanti!”. Then Trafficanti went to jail and the Democrats ran another guy instead, and won by a landslide? Notice that I can’t even remember the name of the Republican palooka?
Bush isn’t running in 2008. Cheney isn’t running in 2008. Karl Rove isn’t running in 2008. Nobody from the Bush cabinet is running in 2008. This is the first time since the Eisenhower-Stevenson race in 1952 where a president or vice-president isn’t on the ticket of either party. The Republican nominee will be a Senator, or more likely a Governor. And a Republican Governor is going to sidestep all these slams against Bush, all he has to do is tell everyone that Bush did some good things, some bad things, and he’s gonna continue the good things and fix the bad things.
The Republican candidate in 2008 isn’t going to allow the sleaze from the Bush Whitehouse to stick to him. Yeah, the public is probably going to be sick of Bush by 2008, but the 2008 candidate is going to be a fresh face. If the Democrats go into the 2008 race depending on the Republicans to self-destruct they’re gonna lose again. Dammit, doesn’t anyone remember Bill Clinton? Yeah, the Republican Slease Machine ™ tried their damnedest to smear him…but he won, and he made them look like assholes.
If the Democrats nominate another Bill Clinton they’re almost certainly going to win the presidency in 2008. If they nominate another “I’m not George Bush!”, they’re going to lose, because the Republican nominee isn’t going to be George Bush either. “I’m not George Bush!” didn’t win against a mook like George Bush! We lost against George Bush, people!