Red State/Blue State bullshit

[ibegurpard]

Red state Montana just overwhelmingly denied a corporate backed initiative to overturn restrictions on cyanide leach-mining. Red state Montana just overwhelmingly APPROVED an initiative to allow for the use of medical marijuana. Red state Montana just elected a Democratic governor by a four point margin for the first time in over a decade. Red state Montana appears to have increased the Democratic margins in their senate to a tie and increased the Democratic counts in the House. And yet red state Montana backed Bush by a margin of 21 points and Republican congressman Denny Rehberg by 22 points. People are not monolithic.
We have to STOP focusing on the national scene and go local. Build from the ground-up. Put the infrastructure and propaganda networks into place to combat the fascist ones that have been forty years in the making. It's going to be unrewarding, unromantic, and ugly work. It's going to be virtually impossible because now that they've solidified their grasp on power they'll be attempting to shut down all legitimate avenues of opposition. But that's what the fight entails...either that or revolution. If it's revolution, who are you going to convince to join you? People like my brother? Who think it's all just politics as usual and the usual cycle of philosophical swings? Good luck.
This didn't happen overnight. They've been working on it for years, with people willing to do the grunt work and go under the radar with no prospect of short-term gains for their efforts. That's what we're faced with.

[Walt Starr]

1. Yep, that's how the GOP did it

that's the only way we can do it.

[Tweed]

2. Yeah, Clinton won this state in 96, less than ten years ago

Just like Clinton won a lot of states which we lost by over 15%. People can change.

[ibegurpard]

4. Perot was a big factor here

But what I'm trying to stress is that we have a focus on NATIONAL while the local is dying in many places and yet doing quite well in others. The work has to be done on the LOCAL level to build up to the national level. And things can't be looked at monolithically. Montana is not a "conservative" state in many ways and in other ways it is. What scares me are the people who think that all we need to do is tweak the platform or get a different candidate and we can appeal everywhere. No. We need to build the MACHINE from the ground up and starting at the local level with people who understand their area and the way people think. The Republicans have a huge head start on us.

[RinaJ]

3. Yep

DNC simply needs to change how they come at people at the local level.

[ibegurpard]

5. No

The local machines need to grow and change the DNC.

[ibegurpard]

6. kick

eom