I mean it. Screw it. Bad idea. Old idea. What is a tent anyway, even a big one, but a temporary abode. Flimsy and thin, barely keeping out the wind and usually never the rain, and cold after not so very long.
Sure tents are fun when you choose to go camping or when you're little and you want to unroll the sleeping bag, blow up the air mattress, and sleep under the stars in the back yard.
But we're not little kids anymore.
Just talk to the unfortunate survivors of Hurricane Katrina who've been living in tents for the last few months, waiting for trailers that are sitting in Alabama - empty and all paid for - holding on to see if help comes in the form of building funds or materials from FEMA or Washington D.C. or God. Ask them about how they feel about their big tents.
Forget the bad idea that the Democratic Party should be a Big Tent.
Big tents are for circuses and refugees; clowns and acrobats, the starving diaspora ripped from ancestral lands by civil war and genocide. None of these images bodes well for Democratic candidates up against the seamless goosestep strategies and robotic talking points of those leadenly adult Republicans they face on television and debate stages.
I don't want to be a second class Democrat, a housewife wandering around arguing with the lion tamers and the contortionists in any big tent.
I want a fortress. Fort Democracy.
I mean it. I want a bunker. I want a medieval castle, with turrets and tiny little windows, and a big drawbridge. I want a moat full of reptiles, ready to bit the toes off of any of the enemy trying to enter my gates. I want a stockade in which to hide my family and friends, build a roaring fire, and draw up battle plans for 2008.
It seems like all the political operatives who are calling on the Big Tent vision of the Democratic Party are simply those insiders already safe and snug inside this tent. I picture it a sort of nomadic oasis, complete with floor pillows, belly dancers, and all sorts of billowing silken fabric. They sit, effete and sodden with food and drink inside their Big Tent, eating food with their hands and whispering about deals and candidates and campaign funds while the American people who would be Democrats stand outside, in line, waiting for a chance to peek inside.
The Republicans have created a huge marketing tool - the Endless War on Terror. The Democrats need to build Fort Democracy in order to counter-attack this nebulous and never-ending meme. They need to show strength and courage and strategic skills and a sort of stick-to-itness in the face of the bottomless abyss of fear that the GOP is throwing up as the direction of our country and the face of our children's future.
We need to be fearless and we need to stand our ground. I want a fort to stand within.