Even after all the shit, and even after we win in November ......

[Stinky The Clown]

.... there are many American sheeple who will continue to fight us tooth and nail.

There are the neocons and their general population supporters who will never vote for a Dem and who will never stop caterwauling about the evil 'liberals'.

There are the religiously insane, who though they may be fed up with Republic Party broken promises, will never stop caterwauling about the evil 'liberals'.

There are the 'win at all costs' crew members, mostly now-adult-age former Young Republics and College Republics who will never give up being cheerleaders for Team Republic and who will never stop caterwauling about the evil 'liberals'.

The Republics have spent forty long years working their asses off to not only defeat us, but to make us so much the embodiment of evil that they have created an entire generation that just plain hates our guts. They may not want to support the current crop of Republics, but don't think for a moment that they'll be coming over to our side any time soon. Oh sure, there are the rational ones who will. There are some 'Reagan Democrats' who will probably come back. Cobbled all together, we can eke out a majority that could even hold together for the next six, eight, ten years. Maybe a bit more.

But if we don't come up with more, we won't hold power again. Our party has been so cowed and coopted by so many who want to try to appeal to the people who will never see things our way that they've allowed our core values to be hidden in a cave for far too long.

Yes, we've got a LOT of work to do. We need to stop the very worst of the Bush excesses FAST. Nancy Pelosi's 'first hundred hours' swamp draining is a good step in that direction. The hearings that are more needed now than they were after Watergate must start in that same hundred hours.

But starting right now, we need to work very hard on our image and our message. We can't be wishy washy. We can't keep going fopr that squishy middle where some seem to thing the holy grail of voters - the 'moderates' - lives.

As a party we need to stand proud and tall for our CORE values. That's not a call to throw anyone overboard. It IS a call to be proud of who we are and to start ACTING like we're proud of it. We need to go back to our real base - ordinary working people. Middle- and lower- and under-class Americans. And the rich people who wish to help them.

Our message needs to be clear on one single, solitary, lone, easy to understand, unequivocal, position: We're the party that will support ordinay Americans over the interests of the wealthy, the corporations, the special interests (like the religiously insane), and the war hawks. Every other plank in our platform stems from that essentaial point. We stand for the interests of YOU, the proud but very ordinary American citizen.

Stand for that, keep it in mind, and everything else will fall ito place.

Now ..... can we get our leaders - the ones who get all the face time and who set the image - to stand up and say that?

Starting on November 8th - after we win the day before - that's our job down eher in the grass roots. And, perish the thought, even if we lose, that's still our job.

STAND FOR OUR CORE VALUES and work to get people who believe that elected. The slate of candidates for the midterms are set and unchangeable. We need to work our asses off to get them elected ....... and then we can REALLY get to work.

[derby378]

1. It's the "Mussolini Is ALWAYS Right" insurgency you're talking about here

And they will be full of piss and vinegar, spewing vile invectives about how those "pro-terrorist, anti-American, anti-homeland, 9/11-trashing filthy Jew liberals" are undoing all the work that the Dear Leader has done over the past six years.

This time, they must be humiliated before they realize the error of their ways. I fear it may be the only way.

[Gregorian]

2. I hate to say this, but I fear it's genetic.

What a day! My trip to the local country store. I was confronted by what appeared to be Bush clones. Permanent smirks. It was rather shaking.

It's aggressive behavior combined with arrogance. And it's frightening as hell.

but that's only the vile end of the republican spectrum. There are educated who also tow the conservative line.


Bla bla bla. In a nutshell you are right. And it has been on my mind a lot lately.

It's not going to change. Only a small fraction will change even when shown the light. My aunt is surrounded by a liberal family. Her kids, her brother, her cousins. We dragged her to Gore's film. Nothing. She made up her mind fifty years ago. And it ain't changning. And what is so telling is that she considers her brother to be a genius. And yet she won't take his cold hard fact and digest them. They just bounce right off. The good news is, she'll be dead soon.

[Oldtimeralso]

3. Bush/Mussolini

Mussolini was credited with making the trains run on-time,Bush wants to destroy our rail passenger system(Amtrak)

[liberalmuse]

4. "They" have been around since the beginning of civilization...

I think this describes them quite well, from Timothy Leary's "Declaration of Evolution":

......The history of the white, menopausal, mendacious men now ruling the planet earth is a history of repeated violation of the harmonious laws of nature, all having the direct object of establishing a tyranny of the materialistic aging over the gentle, the peace-loving, the young, the colored. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to the judgement of generations to come.

These old, white rulers have maintained a continuous war against other species of life, enslaving and destroying at whim fowl, fish, animals and spreading a lethal carpet of concrete and metal over the soft body of earth.

They have maintained as well a continual state of war among themselves and against the colored races, the freedom-loving, the gentle, the young. Genocide is their habit.

They have instituted artificial scarcities, denying peaceful folk the natural inheritance of earth's abundance and God's endowment.

They have glorified material values and degraded the spiritual.

They have claimed private, personal ownership of God's land, driving by force of arms the gentle from passage on the earth.

In their greed they have erected artificial immigration and customs barriers, preventing the free movement of people.

In their lust for control they have set up systems of compulsory education to coerce the minds of the children and to destroy the wisdom and innocence of the playful young.

In their lust for power they have controlled all means of communication to prevent the free flow of ideas and to block loving exchanges among the gentle.

In their fear they have instituted great armies of secret police to spy upon the privacy of the pacific.

In their anger they have coerced the peaceful young against their will to join their armies and to wage murderous wars against the young and gentle of other countries.

In their greed they have made the manufacture and selling of weapons the basis of their economies.

For profit they have polluted the air, the rivers, the seas.

In their impotence they have glorified murder, violence, and unnatural sex in their mass media.

In their aging greed they have set up an economic system which favors age over youth.

They have in every way attempted to impose a robot uniformity and to crush variety, individuality, and independence of thought.

In their greed, they have instituted political systems which perpetuate rule by the aging and force youth to choose between plastic conformity or despairing alienation.

They have invaded privacy by illegal search, unwarranted arrest, and contemptuous harassment.

They have enlisted an army of informers.

In their greed they sponsor the consumption of deadly tars and sugars and employ cruel and unusual punishment of the possession of life-giving alkaloids and acids.

They never admit a mistake. They unceasingly trumpet the virtue of greed and war. In their advertising and in their manipulation of information they make a fetish out of blatant falsity and pious self-enhancement. Their obvious errors only stimulate them to greater error and noisier self-approval.

They are bores.
They hate beauty.
They hate sex.
They hate life.
We have warned them from time to time to their inequities and blindness. We have addressed every available appeal to their withered sense of righteousness. We have tried to make them laugh. We have prophesied in detail the terror they are perpetuating. But they have been deaf to the weeping of the poor, the anguish of the colored, the rocking mockery of the young, the warnings of their poets. Worshipping only force and money, they listen only to force and money. But we shall no longer talk in these grim tongues.
We must therefore acquiesce to genetic necessity, detach ourselves from their uncaring madness and hold them henceforth as we hold the rest of God's creatures - in harmony, life brothers, in their excess, menaces to life.

We, therefore, God-loving, peace-loving, life-loving, fun-loving men and women, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the Authority of all sentient beings who seek gently to evolve on this planet, solemnly publish and declare that we are free and independent, and that we are absolved from all Allegiance to the United States Government and all governments controlled by the menopausal, and that grouping ourselves into tribes of like-minded fellows, we claim full power to live and move on the land, obtain sustenance with our own hands and minds in the style which seems sacred and holy to us, and to do all Acts and Things which independent Freemen and Freewomen may of right do without infringing on the same rights of other species and groups to do their own thing.

And for the support of this Declaration of Evolution with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, and serenely confident of the approval of generations to come, in whose name we speak, do we now mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.

[calimary]

5. Very important. We CANNOT afford to get complacent, even if we

do win.

They may be temporarily vanquished. But they won't go away. Nor will most of 'em see the light. Unfortunately, not all souls can be saved.

[sofa king]

6. Hear, hear!

Fight for the core democratic values with the same singleminded determination that the Repbulicans have fought for inequality, bigotry, war profit, zealotry, disenfranchisement, and ustairs wealth redistribution.

Notice that's little-d democratic values: Life, liberty, pusuit of happiness, common good, justice, diversity, truth, popular sovereignty, patriotism (not jingoism), rule of law, separation of powers, representative government, checks and balances, individual freedom, federalism, and a civilian-controlled military.

It's as simple as America gets because they are the values taught in K-12 civics classes. The Republicans have gone so far beyond the pale that they've left us not only with the moral high ground, but with the opportunity to nail them to the wall for their transgressions against every single one of those basic tenets of democracy. We've got to bring them back, or risk losing them forever.

[TheBaldyMan]

7. I disagee with you, there is not a legion of neo-con supporters

remember that Bush stole two elections, i.e. more people voted for the other guy.

The general populace are far to the left on most issues than your average politician.

If it seems that you are beleagered by dimwitted bushbots it is most probably because almost all the media and certainly all the MSM has been a RW monoculture for years. Just because it's wall to wall on Fox and Clear Channel doesn't make it so. They can say black is white and the sky is green but that doesn't mean the RW are right.

on edit: There was a post here at DU a few days ago about why the RW hate America, I figure the reason why the fundies and neo-cons hate America (or more specifically) Americans is that most Americans aren't like them, Americans don't vote Bush, they are pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-peace - everything the plutocracy hate and despise.

[hootinholler]

8. You FN clown!

Nice.

-Hoot

[garybeck]

9. What in the world makes you think we're going to win in November?

Polls? As I remember the polls showed Kerry winning.

the votes are counted in secret my friend. you have the cart before the horse. I believe the dems will get more votes but I'm very skeptical they will win.

[grasswire]

10. If we only had a Dem strategist worth a dime, H2S.

I will never understand why the DNC has not hired a PR firm to tell the story of the Democratic Party -- its reverence for equality under the law, its constant fight for dignity for the working family, its commitment to the helping hand, the living wage, the promise of health care and freedom from poverty for our grandmothers and grandfathers. There's so much more to tell, and it is a righteous story. It's the American story the rest of the world loves us for.

A couple of dozen million dollars in advertising and there would be hope in the land and Democrats in charge.