Rosenbergs post...
Democrats need to start winning again - for the good of our country and for the health of our democracy. The Republican Party is in a position of dominance unseen in our lifetimes. Their misguided agenda threatens to put our country on a dangerous downward path. It is up to us to offer an alternative way - a vision for our country and a smart political strategy to implement it.
I have no doubt that in the coming weeks, the conversation about where Democrats need to go and how to get there will grow in intensity - as it should. It is a vital conversation that is essential to our party's future.
For the conversation to succeed in helping us tackle the challenges in front of us, it is crucial that we start first with an accurate assessment of where things stand today.
In the spirit of NDN's continuing mission to help build a better, stronger, winning Democratic party, here is our analysis of where we are. In coming days, we will outline our ideas for a path forward.
The highlights below the fold...
The Republican/conservative alliance has built a superior information-age political machine. By investing billions of dollars over 40 years in a vast array of powerful institutions and capacities, the Republicans have changed the national political playing field. Their combination of mature and modern intellectual, political and media capacities is simply bigger, better, more coordinated and more strategic than the arrayed set of institutions on the progressive side. We like to think of it as an information-age Tammany Hall.
Even at the campaign level they have a much more modern model for reaching voters. They began investing heavily in databases and direct one-to-one marketing in the 1970s, and have built a campaign communications system that has much greater ability for "smart" narrowcasting - personalizing messages to specific groups and individual voters and reaching them through specialized communication. Though we made great strides in the last two years, our campaigns are still built around an aging "dumb" broadcast model that blasts a more generalized message to a larger and much less differentiated audience - which in an era of Blackberrys, Amazon.com, Tivo, hundreds of television channels and even radio simply cannot compete with the personal, increasingly iterative, segmented "smart" model used by the other side.
3. As an intellectually-based movement born when the Republicans were a true minority Party, their infrastructure is built on a foundation on the need to persuade. At the very core of their collective institutional ethic is that they must persuade, persuade, persuade. The institutions and leaders were born and grew when few listened to them, let alone agreed. In a recent Washington Post piece, incoming RNC Chair Ken Mehlman talks about their plan to persuade - through issues and message - Republican voters to vote for the President. All of their infrastructure, talk radio, direct mail, and television ads are built around a modern argument about where they want to take the country. Our politics must become much more about sophisticated communication of a compelling message. We cannot assume voters know what we are talking about.
http://www.ndnblog.org/archives/000728.html
All in all it is not a speech but a blog like assessment... We will see what come out in the future.. But he understands the ground and the field we are playing on. Not in a left right center of the party but as a whole party...
Donnie Fowler
In a time where America's progressive movement and the Democratic Party feel the pain of defeat, Democrats must reaffirm our soul and commit ourselves to the new politics while perfecting the old. Today's Democratic Party is the legacy of our nation's greatest accomplishments - the American Revolution, abolition of slavery, giving women the vote, the right to organize, winning two world wars, and the civil rights movement. Standing up for this tradition is the charge of the DNC and progressives everywhere.
Democrats must stand up for our beliefs and take risks. Democrats must be defiant in defeat. When we lie down, we get run over.
Democrats must cross the values threshold. Democrats love issues, but we must remind voters we have a soul before we convince them that our policies make sense.
Democrats must remember that voters don't live in Washington. Conventional wisdom and an aristocracy of consultants have created a national party that has lost the handle on what is truly important to voters and what is really happening in their lives. Local people know better. Let them lead.
The Democratic Party must increase its communications capability. Democrats must communicate year round with voters where they live, through their local news outlets, and by using trusted local opinion leaders. Regional political and communications offices plus a true understanding of new media and new technologies are essential.
We must form a shadow government. The DNC should coordinate the Party's leadership, not just our congressional members but also our governors, party chairs, DNC members, and leading thinkers. The Democratic Party needs a single entity, acting as a clearinghouse, so that the resources and message of the progressive movement do not duplicate each other or directly conflict.
My DD has the rest...
http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/11/30/122711/44#readmore
All in all this is a conversation we need to have and I hope we can not have a flame war like during the primaries... probably just dreaming but regardless of our views we have the same goals and more incommon than we have differences.
Blogswarm has the rosenberg speech and the links to Dean and fowlers check them out..
http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/10/121515/08#readmore