Just after the 2006 elections, many of us felt positive and hopeful about the effect of the liberal blogosphere, and DailyKos in particular. Though we were a small player, we felt we might become an important one, a David able to occasionally slow down a few Goliaths. Then, as the year rolled on, observing the timidity of the Democrats supposedly elected on a mandate to stop the Iraq war, optimism became doubt, then disappointment, then anger, and finally frustrated rage. We no longer feel that we are making an impact, that anyone is listening, and we've begun to confirm this fear by inventing strawman squabbles between ourselves, browbeating each other on how we should think and feel. In our desperation and fear of what the future may bring, civility has declined, and kossacks are TRing each other right and left over petty disagreements.
I'd like to remind us all to take a deep breath and invoke the spirit of cooperation, flexibility and positive thinking that is required for any large or small enterprise to work. Here we are, trying to revive the free and democratic system of government for an entire nation, and that just for starters...we have so much work to do to make the world a better place. How could we imagine it would be easy?
This is a plea for us all to keep trying, to be creative and try out new ideas. I for one don't believe we have exploited all the possibilities of this medium. As insignificant as we are in terms of percentages of readers and participants, we have many things going for us, and I feel that although we are not having the policy impact that we would like, we are affecting the national political dialogue in subtle ways because of our good ideas, deep commitment to traditional American values, and sincere intentions. I have one suggestion for how we could possibly make an impact on the 2008 presidential election. It might not be a good idea. Many people may not like it, and I hope that people who do not will respond or diary with better ideas, because my larger intention is to get a positive, constructive brainstorming going that will eventually lead, somehow to our finding our way to success, in all of our efforts.
Perhaps we could benefit from voting, as a community, on a specific platform we would like a Democratic presidential nominee to support. Once having established this platform, of six or fewer imperatives, we would support those statements with which we agree and organize talking points to that effect. We would ask the candidates to respond, and endorse them based on their responses and requested actions, which would mean a negative endorsement for any candidate who refused to respond. This would be our official "relative endorsement", which though representing a small percentage of the population and "radical left wing" at that, would at least raise and clarify our positions, and, if torn apart in the traditional media, we could easily and quickly refute those arguments, possibly drawing attention and...pretty soon we are setting the terms of the debate.
I can hear a lot of people thinking "we could never do that" or "no one would ever listen to us" or "they would just laugh at us", but wouldn't it be worth a true? Yes, it would be audacious, which is why I would like to see it happen. I think it would be a good idea, anyway, even if it made absolutely no impact on the candidates or traditional media, to focus our energies on constructive, reason-based arguments about the present candidates, instead of falling into the overly emotional, reactionary, fear-based invective that we are seeing a little too much of now. Sometimes from the "left" I get a sense of defeatism, of quitting before the battle is done. Why are we discussing with so much passion whether or not we "should" vote for the Democratic candidate, regardless of who it is, when that race hasn't even been run yet? That's a premature, defeatist argument. We shouldn't give up before we've tried. To reference a song from "A Mighty Wind", what if David had just refused to fight Goliath? Then we'd all be sleeping between giants' toes. Let's not let that happen, the odor could be quite unpleasant.
Also, to show my hypocrisy is as good as the next blogger's, we shouldn't be telling other people what they should do anyway! We could leave that to the blasted neocons running the country and the faux-Christian churches. We can, however, have a reasoned discussion on whom would be the best candidate. Wouldn't we like to have a fair and open debate among all the Democratic candidates on national television? Then why wouldn't we want to have the same debate here? I think this would be a good exercise then, to focus the discussion productively.
We could start by picking approximately four to six issues of primary importance to us. Mine would be, in roughly descending order of urgency:
- Iraq (as in, when and how do we get the hell out)
- Iran (maintaining peace with, helping with regional stability along with the rest of the middle east)
- Global warming (what we're going to do and how fast)
- Restoring the constitution, habeus corpus, privacy, fixing Patriot Act
- Alternative energy, how to switch to it
- Health Care (although my views about it would probably be too radical even for DK)
Having once voted on the top 4-6, we would then ask kossacks to write diaries to propose specific policy requests, statements we'd like to hear or actions we'd like them to take. Eg, we could demand those able to do so to immediately cut off funding for the war, or openly advocate for said action, regularly in public, if not currently serving in legislature.
We'd then vote on the policies, put it all together, review it, and publish it as our new "Contract with America" or whatever we want to call it, obviously not that, but same idea, remember how well it worked for Newt. Admittedly, liberals are more independent minded and it might be like herding cats. But if we could do it...I think it would be pretty powerful.
Once we had the platform and a title for it, we might attempt to win over as many liberal and independent/centrist blogs, as much attention from as many places as we could get, and/or immediately submit it to the candidates for a response.
That's it. What do y'all think? Got any better ideas, or refinements to this one that would make it more palatable or effective? Obviously, in order to work this would have to have major buy-in from almost everyone in the DK community.