I need some cheering up and I need something to latch my hope onto, so off the top of my head I am writing down what I see as a few "strategy" thoughts for the next few years. I am going to start with things I see as completely in our control, and move to harder goals later in the thread.
- Fight for control in places we control - The R's didn't take control of the Senate and the House by fighting us in New York City, they did it by consolidating their areas of strength. I say this with a heavy heart, but the days in which we can tolerate moderate Republicans occupying Democratic Seats are over. Its time to take what's ours in the places we own.
- Olympia Snow, consider yourself a Target, Same with Susan Collins, Chris Shays, etc. Lincoln Chaffee, jump the fence or consider yourself a target too. I am plain plain fed up with New Englanders voting for Bill Frist and Tom Delay as majority leaders, there is no excuse for it, and we shouldn't stand for it.
- States rights! Gosh, I never thought I would hear myself saying that, but the Republican Mantra of the 1980's is now the Democrats Rallying call of the new milenium. You want to ban Gay Marriage in Georgia, that's your problem, but Blue states should work HARD to protect their citizens from the reach of the Federal government. There is no reason why leftists should have to contemplate moving abroad, when we have the most gorgeous and liberal cities and states in the world (San Francisco, New York, Boston, Los Angles, Seattle, Chicago, etc) under Blue control right now.
- Don't believe the hype. There will be a lot of talk about how Bush now has the mandate to pursue his goals freely. That may or may not be so, in any event its not my problem. Our job is to be the opposition. What does being the opposition mean:
- Making the incumbant party's life uncomfortable by pointing out inconsistencies.
- Obstructing legislation and judicial appointments that we think are wrong.
- Working to undermine the worst of the ruling parties policies.
Look if the shoe were on the other foot, don't think for a second that the Republican's would give Kerry his due, they wouldn't, and the obligation of the loyal opposition is to keep the majority party honest and accountable.
- Fight secrecy. Secrecy is the Bush Team's MO - they do things in the dark, and say the opposite when asked. Our job is to ferret out information and make it as widely available as possible.
- Market our ideas. "Death Tax", "Partial Birth Abortion" "Tax Relief", excuse my language but, what the fuck? How did we EVER let these terms become popular parlance? Its our flaw for not taking this anti-intellectual stuff seriously. But you know what, the best writer's, designers, artists, musiscians, etc are Democrats - Let's put them to work building "Democrats - The movie".
- Media - the hardest one. How do we win if we can't communicate? We need to pour money into Air America and Gore's TV venture with the same intensity we did the Kerry campaign. "Market" perceptions are going to force the mainstream media to take an even more accomodating approach to Bush, et al, following this election. We need our own outlets.
- Fight them, not ourselves. Look, Kerry fought a good fight. I'm glad it wasn't me having my past and history distorted. We ultimately may want to go with a different kind of candidate next time around, but Kerry, and Gore before him are heros and deserve our respect. I for one would support Kerry for Senate Minority leader.