The struggle for progress goes on forever.
Although, Winston Churchhill said the following after a great victory to prevent overconfidence, it seems to work as well for excess gloom.
This is not the end.
This is not the beginning of the end.
This is the end of the beginning.
Yes, we've had a setback with Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and a tougher than expected first year. The dreadful Bush-Cheney legacy may hang over us for years, or even decades to come.
We now need to re-engage with even greater passion and put back together our winning coalition.
We are on the right side of the issues. The long term improvement comes from raising public conscioussness and education about these issues.
I was really inspired by Howard Dean's fighting spirit on the Chris Matthews show, and Rachell Maddow just interviewed Ed Rendall asking him should we "dail back the agenda and lay low" as Lieberman and Bayh recommend, or should we re-engage the progressive fight and "get something done?"
We need to keep up the good fight.
Let's ask ourselves what are our core beliefs and find something that we are all willing to pull all the stops to fight for and win.
Showing we can put back together our winning coalition.
Showing that we do have core beliefs and policy goals that differentiate us from the GOP, and we are willing to fight for them.
Showing we can effectively govern and pass legilation in a hostile and challenging political environment populated by right wing obstructionsists.
We will need much discussion on how do we best accomplish these goals. But let's try to do it in the most constructive ways possible. Ways that bring us back together and allow us to counter-act the power of the "just say no to everything" group.
I like this idea Ed Rendall talked about breaking out recission and denial for pre-existing condition and forcing the Repulican obstructionists to either support them or clearly vote against the best interest of the common citizen. Let's do this on every piece of the HCR bill until they relent.
I loved Howard Deans refutation to Matthews that the meaning of the Scott Brown election is a repudiation of the progressive agenda.
While continuing to push on true health care reform let's push jobs bills to the forefront, and show the American people what we hear their pain about this economy.
And let's pull together the way we did this last week trying to rescue the Coakley campaign.
I'd like to personally thank and congratualte all the GOTV heros who rolled up their sleeves and did the work to make it happen. I beleive we have benefited from these efforst in many ways we don't even realize yet. Like for one, reminding ourselves of what we can do when we pull together.
Also, I'd like to thank the OFA who pulled all the stops and reproved why they are useful to have around. I had unsuscribed last November to protest insufficient dedication to progressive progress of our mainstream party organizations.
I'd like to retract that protest and say I support the OFA now. I still will boycott the DSCC and DCCC and send my money direclty to candidates, for reasons described elsewhere.
But, today, I'd like to call for us to learn as much as we can from this defeat in constructive ways that allow us to reunify for the November 2010 elections. Let's not sit on our hands again to the last minute before we remember that we our many diverse Democratic Party coalition stakeholders are bound together by more common interest than divide us.
Especially, when it comes to our collective best interest in keeping these GOP and Teabaggers out of our government.
Let's keep hope alive and start winning again fellow travellors.
And ask ourselves how we can put or winning coalition back together again.
:-)