D.A. Blyler to Democrats: Got Balls?

[palomaki]

This op-ed put to words what I've been thinking for quite some time.

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/blyler/democrats_got_balls_1110.htm

During the past week John Kerry’s campaign misfortune has been chewed over by all the usual suspects—who also served up advice for what Democrats must do in fielding a winning candidate. Clinton’s former labor Secretary Robert Reich claimed that technocratic policy talk needed to be eschewed in favor of the language of morality. The boys over at Slate.com echoed a similar refrain, citing the importance of Gods, Guns, and Gays inside the national psyche. Meanwhile Paul Krugman at The New York Times beat yet again that tired, old mule of how the Dems must more effectively rally their base.

Obviously at a loss, The Nation’s editors resorted to vague generalities about the need for politics of “conviction, passion, and substance.” Arianna Huffington mined the same platitudinous vein, declaring that a return to the “generosity of spirit” which characterized JFK and FDR was the order of day. And channeling a literary muse, Professor Camille Paglia, argued, with all due seriousness, that a humanist message delivered in “poetic” language was the key which might unlock the White House doors.
What a steaming load of horseshit.

What John Kerry needed, and what the Democrats horribly lack, are balls. The simple courage to hang the polls and tell the public the straight story. To give them their medicine, no matter how nasty it may taste at first. When things are “fucked up,” say so openly and not just to a Rolling Stone interviewer. If personally attacked, challenge the accusers immediately and forcefully with withering contempt. Temper that frankness with an ounce of self-deprecating humor, a dash of laughter at the expense of the sitting President and the national press Corps, and voila, you have a winning recipe....

(Continued at)

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/blyler/democrats_got_balls_1110.htm

[Jack_Dawson]

1. Prrrty much...

:beer:

[Eloriel]

2. Oh, he means like

Howard Dean.

[cal04]

3. Democrats played the game too timidly

Howard Dean taught the Democrats that standing up to Bush was the way to beat him, but as soon as the primaries were over, they forgot the lesson and went right back to timidity.

If members of the public don't see the Democrats fighting for their candidates, they're going to assume the Democrats won't fight for the public. John Kerry got no more upset about the swift boat veterans' slanders of his war record than Michael Dukakis got over George Bush the Elder challenging his patriotism.

We now hear accounts of how, in private, Kerry was angry. Yeah, well, he hid his anger beautifully. Kerry's concession speech fit neatly into this pattern of Democratic lassitude. Instead of a ringing call to arms, he gave the same old unity/hearing speech nearly every losing candidate has given.

His model on this occasion should not have been Al Gore but Barry Goldwater, who after losing by the biggest margin in history gave a defiant, demanding, dynamic speech calling on his followers to take the nation back - which, of course, they later did.

Democratic leaders are like members of European royal families who have intermarried themselves into ineffectual irrelevance. We keep hearing about how they are unwilling to campaign in any way that might offend independent voters.

They are so bewitched by the siren's song of the independent voter that they end up looking like cowards, and that is no more marketable.
In 1962 after President Kennedy helped the steel companies in labor negotiations by getting unions to hold down their wage demands, the companies responded by raising prices as soon as the ink was dry on the new union contract. At a news conference Kennedy denounced them with language so severe that reporters in the audience gasped. JFK then turned loose the power of his administration on the companies and forced a rollback in prices. It's hard to imagine Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry doing that. None of them would have the nerve.

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2004/11/10/opinion/myers.html