The 2010 campaign begins in earnest today. (OK: It begins with the Labor Day picnics.)
And I am here to act as your Progressive Armorer.
First, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Go for the viscera. Go for the gut, and you've got the issues and the ammo to do it.
Now, a lot of you dunderheads out there think that you are non-violent, and peaceful jerks, and you think that you are Gandhi. I need to remind you that Gandhi was NOT peaceful on the rhetorical battlefield. He sized up the British and realized that military insurrections or revolutions were pointless. He decided to make war on the British conscience. And he defeated them,winning modern India its independence.
Non-violence does not mean that you accept the opposition's "arguments" (almost all slurs, as you well know). Non-violence means that you do not try to kill them or contend with them PHYSICALLY. It means that you engage them on the rhetorical field of combat with every weapon you can muster.
And that's what we need to do.
Gandhi's people were beaten, arrested, jailed, fined, beaten, crippled and killed. And they refused to fight back. But no one who was beaten was not remembered -- both by the Indians and by the British. The British Press was vicious and unrelenting. Gandhi's presses did not quit the field of battle. They engaged.
Martin Luther King, Jr. realized the same thing, and, arguably the same result.
Got it? Good.
We have won a great victory.
For the first time in nearly 30 years (save for that small island of peace, prosperity and forward-looking under Clinton, mostly stolen from us with Impeachment and endless fake scandals that WE footed the bill for with Starr, et al.) we have a chance to turn the country from looking backwards to "Ronald Reagan's Nineteenth Century®" to looking towards the Twenty-First Century.
The punditocracy is Universal that we can't win. That we might as well not even try.
I say that they're wrong. Here is your first and most important weapon. Beat any Republican about the head and shoulders with it eagerly and often.
Our disgust might be channeled in the direction of the 400 bills passed by the Democratic House that the R's in the Senate are blocking. A lot of those bills ADDRESS those pressing issues in our country. Where's the self-righteous anger over that?
Obama getting fewer judges confirmed than Nixon
By MARK SHERMAN (AP) – 15 hours ago
WASHINGTON — A determined Republican stall campaign in the Senate has sidetracked so many of the men and women nominated by President Barack Obama for judgeships that he has put fewer people on the bench than any president since Richard Nixon at a similar point in his first term 40 years ago.
The delaying tactics have proved so successful, despite the Democrats' substantial Senate majority, that fewer than half of Obama's nominees have been confirmed and 102 out of 854 judgeships are vacant.
Forty-seven of those vacancies have been labeled emergencies by the judiciary because of heavy caseloads.
Even some Republican senators have complained.
And your disgust might be channeled in the direction of the 400 bills passed by the Democratic House that the R's in the Senate are blocking. A lot of those bills ADDRESS those pressing issues in our country.
Bill to Cut Taxes, Help Unemployed Nevadans Is Blocked By GOP
June 24, 2010
(From the office of Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, NV*)
This afternoon Senate Republicans again blocked legislation that would cut taxes for Nevada's working families, help the unemployed put food on the table and take care of our veterans. "At a time when people are struggling to find work and keep their homes, it is difficult to comprehend why anyone would vote against helping them," Said Reid. "This is a good bill that helps people who need it while strengthening our economy." By voting no on this bill, Senate Republicans said no to -- among other provisions -- closing loopholes that send American jobs overseas, a $250 tax credit for teachers who pay for supplies out of their own pockets and an extension of unemployment insurance through November.
Where's the self-righteous anger over that?
(* I'd cite a news story, but nobody in the news is interested in covering THAT. Nosirree. That alleged "liberal media" sure as hell looks either comatose or conservative to me, if that's not redundant.)
Words are our weapon, and here is something from the Arsenal.
You want Founding Fathers? I'll give you Founding Fathers. It's right there in the Declaration of Independence. Just substitute "Republicans have" for "He has."
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
This is a visceral reaction we need to focus on for the next 60 days:
We voted for hope and change, and the Republicans blocked it. We are in the worst financial straits since 1929 and the Republicans are blocking us from doing anything to fix it -- so that they can win THIS election.
I'm voting at LEAST once.
Courage.