So we're not quite at the Barry Goldwater stage of defeat, but with the House, Senate, and Gov races, it's a low low...........
I learned something about myself today. My first reaction was to start looking for work in Canada. But after the first few hours of dispair, a calmer sense of anger and urgency took over. I was born here. I'm an AMERICAN dammit.
And I'm not going to give this country over to the people who don't believe that its principles and ideals should apply to everyone. I don't want my future children growing up as immigrants in another country. I don't want them to listen to their Daddy rant about how America used to be a free country. I don't want them to learn in school that America is a religious state and that it was always that way.
I watched John Edwards and John Kerry give their concession speeches today. And I cried. And despite all my banter during the campaign about this or that major issue was the really important thing, it turns out that what really made me lose it and got the tears flowing was a wedge issue. Stem cells. As I watched the speeches I remembered that my father was misdiagnosed with a bad sinus infection in 1987 and treated for a year...........before they realized that it was cancer. And I made the realization and put the timeline together that he died in 1990, during the middle of Bush I and after Reagan. And he may have lived and be with me today to talk about this upsetting defeat if not for one thing..........BAD SCIENCE.
It looks like there will be another 4 years where bad science prevails. And some other son will watch some other father die before his eyes because the funding wasn't there, because the health care system is messed up, and because, like then, we are told to believe that we have to sacrifice our fathers and mothers and brother and sisters' hopes of a better future to support an unjust war with OUR hard earned tax dollars.
I for one, will not give up. My father didn't raise me to be a quitter.
Obviously, the next 4 years will be about fighting back, trying to win back Senate and House seats in 2006, trying to block ultra-conservative judge appointments, and trying to field and win with a great ticket in 2008. I will do whatever I can.
Despite our great dislike for the direction that this country is headed and our great dislike for the Republican party, there are lessons to be learned from the way that they ran their campaigns. I wanted to throw a rock through my TV every time one of their members would parrot the daily talking point like a robot never giving an inch when being called out on blatant falsehoods. Lying, cheating, voter surpression........at first glance this is all we can look at to see how they won. But these are just the things that sealed the deal for them. The real victory for them was made over the last 40 years investing in think tanks and media companies. We're going to need to match this effort if we ever want this country to move forward and not backwards.
I don't want to revamp the Democratic party so that it mirror's their "Whatever it Takes" game plan. I'm too principled, too honest, and frankly too idealistic for that. But I do think that there is some serious work to do with how to get our ideals and message across. And if we can take some of their messaging methods and improve upon them, make them real and genuine, yet cohesive, we can win back the country.
We didn't lose because John Kerry was a bad candidate. As the season moved along, and I had a chance to read his book, find out more about him, hear him speak, find out what he really stands for, I honestly think that John Kerry would have been one of the best and most inspiring presidents we've ever had. Sure he didn't have Clinton's charm, but I think he had firmer convictions and better ideals. I believe that he truly would have fought hard for and WON a better America.
No, we lost because the Republican party, through their message machine, was able to convince over 2/3's of the people who voted for them to believe things that simply aren't true. You've read the PIPA reports. Those were big big polls with small small margains of error. And they said fairly plainly that the Bushies were deluded and mislead. You've all been here, like me, on this site and you all know all of the things that fall under this category.
It would be easy to take this defeat as a reason to fight fire with fire and start lying to the public, misleading, mocking, bullying. To go the low road playing dirty tricks. It is easy to be disheartened by a primitive and childish level of discourse and start to believe that you have to play by their rules. But we don't have to.
What if we built our messege machine, got our people in line, got our framing issues sorted out, etc, and used it to succintly and purposefully tell the TRUTH?!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!
The problem was never that their truth (or lack thereof) was better than our truth. It was simply that we didn't understand how to communicate it. And the media didn't allow us any room to not have our points lined up perfectly. And that our support in the media these days is nearly non-existent.
Enter George Lakeoff. If you haven't read his books, do so. If you're thinking about waiting until 2005 to donate money to some candidates campaign, don't. Send it to a democratic think tank. Send it to the Rockridge Institute. NOW. NOT LATER. NOW. Then LATER send some more for the campaigns in 2005.
There is another book I'd like to pro-offer to the D-kos community. It's not a political book. But it is a book about how to get your message across plainly and STRONGLY without becoming a childish bullying aggressive.
It's called "The Assertive Option: Your Rights & Responsibilities". It has helped me immensely in my private and professional life and I believe it will help me immensely in my reinvigorated political activism. I highly recommend it to all.
As a final word on today, thank you everyone here for keeping me informed and giving me hope. Today it is okay to cry, and greive for our nation's future. Tomorrow, stand up like proud Americans, and fight with everything that you have.
Yours Truly,
David from Brooklyn USA