Ok, people, we need to get our message straight and develop new strategies. And we have to do it
fast. We have been in much worse shape. Even though we got hurt this election, we still have a 45 senators, over 200 Representatives, the newly recovered Big Dog, the almost-as-charming John Edwards, Barack Obama, Howard Dean, and of course John Kerry, who still be representin' Massachusetts. And now, we have some new help. We've got Al Franken, a fiscally solvent Air America, MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, Media Matters, George Soros, and the blogosphere, including, of course, DailyKos. We have Al Sharpton who has moved away from anti-Semitism and is now becoming an earnest and powerful voice for the disenfranchised. We also now have a technique for populist fundraising that has allowed us to match Republicans dollar for dollar in a presidential race. That is
good news.
The bad news is that, even with all that help, we still lost this election. Bigtime. Even if Ohio turns into another Florida, the fact of the matter is that we lost the popular vote by a significant margin, and that the majority of Americans who voted wanted to see George W. Bush, not John F. Kerry, become President.
We all talked about what a disaster another four years of Bush is going to be. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the shit's about to hit the fan. We need to be there every step of the way with talking points, enumerating the failures of Bush and the Republicans, and describing how and why the Democrats would do a better job. It's time for reformation; it's time to make the Democratic party bigger and badder than it's ever been. Our election machinery is still in gear, so we'd better not let it go to waste!
Here are what I think are the key points we need to address. I'm going to discuss them over a series of diaries, one at a time. The first one I will discuss in this post.
- It's Time to Take Back "Values"
- Bring Back The Economy, Stupid
- We Have A "How." We Need a "Why!"
- Organization & Structure
- The "Everyman" Factor
- The Home Stretch
1. We absolutely need to take "values" back from the Republicans.
First of all, the phrase "values" implies Christian values. Not Judeo-Christian values. Jews are already voting at least 80% Democratic in Presidential elections. My grandmother would be shot before she votes Republican. We're not trying to take back the self-righteous, homophobic, hate-filled "Christians" who make up a small portion of Bush's base. There are a lot of other Christians out there who are kind, decent people who think that Bush is somehow a better Christian than Kerry. I met them doing GOTV. You probably did too. They might even be uncomfortable around gays, but that's more a reflection of the social atmosphere in which they live and their lack of interaction with gays than it is their personality. We want to make these voters uncomfortable supporting the Republican agenda.
Something that we have not been successfully using is the fact that the Democratic party, much more than the Republicans, is the party of Christian values. Many of you already know this, but for those who think I've gone batshit nuts, consider Jesus's teachings from the Bible. The trick is that we need to focus not on the ins and outs of the Bible itself (which does include some homophobic and righteous, vengeful passages) but on the words of Jesus. Since many Christians feel that Jesus is the main dude to deal with, my understanding is that any direct quotes from him generally supersede other conflicting parts of the Bible.
Please note that I absolutely do not mean that our big-name candidates should start bringing more religion into their arguments. That would be a terrible idea, because the more the race is about religion, the worse our numbers are. Period. What we want instead is to have surrogates coming on TV and making evangelicals and other "values" voters dissatisfied enough with the Republicans so that they aren't comfortable supporting them. If they can't bring themselves to support our guy, then fine, they can vote for a third party candidate. But we need to erode the evangelical base, at least a little.
A Good Example
In an interview on The O'Reilly Factor, Bush admitted that he "can't justify the death penalty in terms of the New Testament." He claimed that Jesus never spoke about the death penalty. Well, Jesus did. Jesus directly contradicted Leviticus 20:10 ("the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death") by telling a crowd about to stone an adulteress to death, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Basically, Jesus says that only those without sin, a group including no humans, have the moral authority to kill others who have sinned. There could have been surrogates on the air asking "Why Bush doesn't know one of Jesus' most famous teachings?" or "Why Bush trusts his own judgment over the gospel of Jesus?" or "How can Bush disobey the first commandment and one of Jesus' most well-known teachings and then claim that the Bible 'doesn't speak to that issue?'" We blew that opportunity.
Remember, the idea here is not to have our candidates invoke religion more often. Instead, it is to use surrogates to make true, thinking Christians uncomfortable with the current Republican agenda. There are lots of Democrats involved in the Church. We need to get them on TV.
Here are some quick examples of Jesus' teachings directly contradicting Republican objectives. I'm not very familiar with the Bible, but I remember enough to find plenty of ammunition from quick Google searches:
The Poor (Social Security, Medicaid, "Income Redistribution")
Matthew 19:21-24
Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Luke 14:13-14
But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."
Which party will require that the rich sacrifice some of what they can spare for the poor? Which is responsible for increasing the wealth of the already wealthy, thereby making it harder for those people to get into heaven?
War and Killing (The Death Penalty, Wars of Choice)
Matthew 5:38
"You have heard it said, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek turn to him the other also."
Matthew 5:43-44
You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven..."
So how does Bush justify a war that not only goes against Jesus' teachings, but that was not a war of self-defense? Jesus told us to love our enemies, not to kill 100,000 innocent women and children. I understand that a number of evangelical "Christians" will not respond to that argument because they are a self-righteous and somewhat racist. But remember that those are not the only religious people voting for Bush. There are many, many others.
Another thing that we need is to have scenes of desperation, at home and abroad, transmitted on a visual medium. Websites probably aren't going to do the job--if we had a Fox News Channel, the whole game would be different. Imagine how decent, Bush-supporting Americans would feel if they were confronted with pictures Fahrenheit 9/11-esque brutalized Iraqis and poor, decrepit communities when they channel surfed. We need, basically, a visual version of the New York Times, something that reports on the real, hard-to-deal-with news that plagues our nation. That news has gotten much worse, and much more compelling, in the past four years, and the idea here is to force people directly confront the results of Bush's policies. I want to everyone to see mothers who can't afford medicine for their children, dead and maimed American and Iraqi soldiers, and dead innocent Iraqi children. These problems are easy to ignore or write off in the abstract, but they're in your face, they immediatley demand a whole new level of self-examination. Those sure as hell aren't "Christian values."
These are just quick examples, but there is a tremendous, compelling case to made. You'll notice that a lot of people we as liberals respect, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Malcolm X (after his pilgrimage to Mecca), all seem to be in agreement with the general teachings of Jesus. That's because Jesus' teachings were absolutely liberal. He believed in compassion toward and support of the less fortunate, which what is what the overriding ethos of the Democratic party should be (I'll get into that later).
It is very unlikely that this small, targeted influx of Jesusism will alienate the base of our party. I'm about as un-Christian as you can get; I'm an atheist, my mother is a secular Jew, and my father believes in what is basically a cross of Hinduism and Buddhism, but I think that following the teachings of Jesus is one of the best things any political party can do. No true progressive would reject his vision for ideal human behavior.
A Brief Preview of the Next Article: Bring Back the Economy, Stupid
We need to bring the economy back to the forefront of the debate. Kerry won huge among people whose primary concern was the economy (I believe the figure is 3 to 1). We need to be hitting the economy every step of the way, and here's why.
The one thing that Bush couldn't spin in this election was his stance on tax cuts. Did you see clips of him discussing it as his rallies? He had to justify giving huge tax breaks to people who didn't need it while demanding that the middle class shoulder a greater amount of the tax burden: "When you hear them say, tax the rich, be careful. The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason, because they don't want to pay. And you get stuck with the tab. But we're not going to let him stick you with the tab."
That is one of the most ridiculous and preposterous arguments he made in this election season. Indeed, by his logic, taxing the rich at all is unfair to the middle class because in the end they'll get stuck with the bill. It doesn't matter how high the taxes are. We should have had people saying half-jokingly, ad-nauseum, that George Bush "evidently wants to abolish income tax for people making over $200,000." The best part is that it's probably true. In the same way that values-framed debates have hurt us, economy-framed debates will absolutely destroy Republicans. You can bet that Kerry would have been all up on the economy issue if terrorism didn't throw this whole election into the shitter. Since values evidently trumped terrorism this election, there's no reason to believe economy can't take the top slot in two years.
As a final note: please remember that Bush has made tax cuts. He is not providing "tax relief," he is cutting taxes. We always have to be on our toes about letting them frame the debate. Luntz is good at what he does. We have to fight that fire with fire.
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I'd like to hear what you all have to say about this. Am I totally out of my mind? Do you have a better plan? Things about my ideas that need tweaking? Should I continue with the other five sections I plan to write? I put a lot of work into this, but to be honest, it was a lot fun. I'd gladly do more. I was horribly depressed on Wednesday, but I'm getting optimistic again. We can still say no to fear, hate, and bigotry. We can say no to wars of choice. When I think about what blacks triumphed over during the civil rights movement, it makes us look like spoiled, sullen children. We are going to take this country back!
This is a quote that my mom emailed to me today:
"I know you are asking today, 'How long will it take?' I come to say to
you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the
hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it
bends toward justice."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in
Montgomery, March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery
march.
That's right folks. Toward justice.