In the wake of this ridiculous and stunning Massachusetts Senate Special Election, it's time for an honest to God wake up call to the Democratic Party: Start Delivering on Your Ideals. There are plenty of scaredy-cat voices out there right now, aided and abetted in full by our national mockery of a Press Corps, saying that the Democratic leadership needs to scale back the health bill as well as the entire rest of their agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Democratic party is not losing elections because people at large don't believe in the core fundamentals of the party platform. They are losing because the electorate does not have faith that the Democrats have the ability to enact their ideals into law. This comes as the result of 2 Serious Errors:
- Message: Years upon years of conservative deregulatory policies brought on the current recession. Democrats were effective in making this argument, or at least advancing the argument, during the 2008 campaigns. However once they took back The White House, they let the narrative go. Being able to assign blame and take credit are essential skills for an effective political organization in a Democracy. The Dems dropped the ball on this and allowed the GOP to get off the mat. They even allowed the Republicans to form their own bullshit narratives about Barney Frank and Fannie Mae being responsible for our current morass. Helping Wall Street get every little thing they want didn't help matters much either for the Democrats and allowed the GOP, who would have done the exact same thing if they were in power, to establish an outsider narrative for themselves. Democrats need to reclaim the message by fighting for what they believe in and selling their fight to the American people.
- Substance: Message is not good enough in today's environment unless you have the substance to back it up. This means fighting. Not buckling under every criticism from the GOP or the Press. When Glenn Beck calls for someone from the administration to resign next time, the answer from the White House should be a more polite version of "Go fuck yourself." When Joe Lieberman tries to foul up a bill, the White House should take him, publicly to the woodshed. Reconciliation should be used with the same frequency by the Democrats as the filibuster is by the Republicans, and a Supreme Court case should be undertaken by the United States Justice Department and White House counsel to abolish both practices as unconstitutional. Our agenda needs to be enacted with force, boldness and urgency. This is what people respect and it is what they want. And last but not least. Time to take on shitbags in our own party who view their jobs as a way to pad their own pockets. The President and party leadership need to be feared in both parties as agents of positive change willing to root out corruption throughout the government, not enable it.