The Ticket
Mon Dec 18, 2006 at 10:03:16 AM PDT
We have an opportunity to win in '08, the door is open.
To do it, we need to fully own the emerging Dem identity and distinguish it from the Repubs
Dems are the party of the people
Dems are the protectors, in today's world, of 'Government by the people, for the people and of the people'
Dems express the will and vision of the people, via forward thinking progressive policies, but always clearly driven as far as timing and content by the people
Repubs are the party of the ideologues, the actual and would-be elites.
Repub ideologues, be they fundamentalist religious, anarcho-capitalist, neo-con militarist, aloof academic libertarian, or worshipers of a simplistic and narrow view of our past, are always about imposing ideas on the people that they think the people should want, regardless of what the people do want
Repubs are here to tell you what you want, and give it to you whether you want it or not
more ...
Dems are here to embrace your dreams, the dreams of the people, and extend them into practical reality by creatively engaging, challenging and transforming the big interests and big complexities that have become government and globalization today.
Dems are simply the vehicle for the voice of the people in govt, committed to doing the nasty work of finding effective, pragmatic progressive solutions at the intersection of the people's dreams and the complexities of our world
Transition
We are in a transition time, historically, in this regard.
Dems will have to be increasingly willing to make govt more open and clean, available and responsive, finding more and more ways to include people directly in the process
We are only beginning in this regard.
Still, we have to stand on and run on this emerging identity now.
The Opponent
Faced with a tough opponent then, the way is clear; they are ideologues and/or panderers to the ideologues.
They think they know better and they are about conniving their way into power so as to institute their version of better onto your reality.
What is the Repub about? Himself. His ideas, his way, he knows better.
People want less troops in Iraq, they wants more.
People want change, the Repub wants to intensify the same old thing.
People want a new attitude that leads us forward, the Repub wants a new improved version of the old attitude
People want the future, the Repub wants himself and he wants the past.
People want to send a message to the ideologues, he wants to appease and pander to them.
Embracing Those Yearning for Change
One of the shifts that will need to happen, is an embrace of all those who abandon the ideologue's ship, from all of their factions.
Let's look at each of these
Evangelicals
Dems need to embrace of an emergent, freedom-oriented evangelism.
Those who walk away from Repub-led manipulative religion, need to be invited into a passionate, evangelical politics, which is about doing Jesus' work here on earth, in a way led by the heart of the people, and not by top-down manipulators.
So, Dems are not against the religious, against Jesus, against religion-inspired politics and social-work, at all.
Dems are for all that, when it is freed of its shackles and becomes a co-creator of a better future for all.
When it no longer is forced into an angry corner for political purposes, reduced to a simplistic rejectionism around hot-button issues; but is instead expanded into a full embrace of bringing religious inspiration into good works in all areas of life.
Free-Marketeers
We also need to embrace a new, people's capitalism.
This does not mean an end to markets or a demonizing of markets, but instead infusing markets with a human spirit.
Moving from free/anarcho-trade not to no-trade, but to fair-trade.
Making efficiency matter, without tossing away the opportunity for redress when consumers get overrun by big interests.
Promoting a flexible workforce via education and support for mobile workers, while encouraging fairness in union-building, including card check.
Supporting health-care that makes sense for the country and the little guy; and that makes big business in the USA competitive with those in other regions of the world.
Celebrating the growth of new markets, new technologies, new entrepreneurial opportunities, celebrating the ability of business to make a positive difference in people's lives in new ways;
Yet promoting increasingly level playing fields; demanding fairness in the nature of the internet; opening the media; opening communications like radio to more people; reducing govt interference in markets through narrow loopholes; requiring business to acknowledge the cost to the environment and our future of certain technologies; acknowledging that it helps everyone and reduces systemic costs when full-time workers can support themselves, so funding a decent wage and finding new opportunities to make health, education and strong communities a reality in all lives.
We can make business better, people richer, while making the business playing field fairer.
Military-Internationalists
We need to embrace a tough new, 'inspired realist' internationalism.
The world we will face militarily, diplomatically, economically, environmentally, will be overwhelming in many ways for decades to come.
We cannot dictate what that world will look like.
We cannot overrun the world with a tank and establish little Americas everywhere as if the were McDonald's franchises.
The reality is that globalization is both challenging everyone, all cultures and peoples, but also empowering everyone.
People everywhere are seeing that they can leverage their new-found power and sense of empowerment to move forward visions long kept tucked away in their own idealistic closets.
Some of those visions sound creative to us and some sound destructive and reckless.
Yet, in many cases what's going on is simply the yearning to have a dream at all, to express a unique cultural, philosophical, religious, tribal and even personal identity.
To blast that identity onto the world stage and be a competitor with the dominant philosophical forces driving globalization, which appear to many to be running rough-shod over their sense of themselves as a unique culture.
We can't change some of these dynamics; globalization is based on science and technology; is oriented towards materialistic benefit; is essentially liberal; comes historically from the West; and is majority owned by a small number of people in a few Western countries, including primarily the US.
Those dynamics are going to offend people.
What we need to do is let globalization be what it is and encourage its progressive humanization, without insisting that it become a substitute for people's religions, traditions, independent national spirit, their tribe, and their own unique future.
Globalization and the cultural changes it enables through trade and communication, must be a kind of soft force, that encourages each culture to find its own way forward, preserving its sense of honor.
It must act as a container for a new world, not insist on being the contents of that world; people must remain and feel free to define who they will be and what their culture will be.
Still, in such a world, the US has an obligation to ensure a decent amount of stability and adherence to fundamental norms.
This does not mean Western democracy in every pot; but simpler norms like respect for borders; transparency in trade; cooperation in law enforcement, intelligence and the kind of militarized security that is necessary in an age of commonplace terror; a willingness to honestly address and resolve lingering historical issues of justice; a dedication to not promoting violence based on religion, ethnicity, identity; support for connectivity and education for youth.
And we must be ready to both build the international frameworks that constitute this underlying order or community; and to have the kind of modern military, intelligence and civil infrastructure corp that can help failed and failing states survive and transform into successful members of the community.
So, this involves a kind of military posture that is strong, willing, capable, available, engaged; yet is entirely different from a neo-con concept of remaking the world by habitual intimidation and force and cheap dysfunctional attempts at transformation of conquered states.
Libertarians
We must embrace the libertarian ethos, yet expanding its awareness of the threats to liberty by including non-governmental players in the equation.
Whether it be corporations; big-money lobbyists; unaccountable forces and complexes of all kind, in and around government; a wrecked environment; or an ineffective security and health model; people's effective sense of liberty, of what it can mean to be human, can be systematically diminished.
We need to promote liberty, not as dry ideas removed from life, but effective liberty, addressing all aspects of our world and the ways they can get shut down by forces who disregard liberty, the liberty of the people.
Traditionalists
We must embrace anew the sense of our American roots.
All people want to love their homeland, their hometown, their home country, their family and home.
Yet this natural passion has become cheapened and distorted too often into an unreal vision of what America has been and how it came about.
America has always been a creative experiment with freedom.
Not an abstract image of freedom at the expense of all tradition, all memory, all honoring of structures and ways of life and unique community identities.
But the freedom for all these things to intermingle freely inspired by the magic and unknown of the present.
Our hometowns, our main streets, have fundamentally always embraced freedom, possibility, opportunity, the future.
We have always trusted ourselves.
We need to rediscover our roots as freedom-lovers, and embrace the sacred memories of our collective past, as emblems of a culture of freedom, of experiment, of progress, of risk, a living culture.
We must liberate the love of our culture, our history, from the clutch of those who fear change and seek to substitute control for embrace of the future, embrace of our own capacity.
Government by the People
In many ways, people will become the government and government will more and more be the servant of a fully empowered people.
Dems can be the party that represents that historical movement, and stands opposed to forces of oppression; rigid, controlling ideologies; elitism at the service of itself.
This is our opportunity to make a new kind of case, introduce a new vision of leadership, and welcome the transformation of those who got caught up and manipulated by distorted versions of their real vision, which is always a vision about people and freedom.
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