They set the debate, we respond with smart-assed posters.
Over most of the course of my 40 years, I've watched the supposed 'progressive' party give more and more ground, too busy lapping at the corporate trough and playing to organized interest groups while the culture slipped out from under them.
The Democratic leadership just don't get it. Wellstone did, I think, but he was often a voice in the wilderness. The Party of the Right combines a fine sense of political theater with a willingness to lie and play to people's fears, racism, ignorance, self interest and greed. Daschle tries to be civil, play nice. Ask any fifth grader how well that works. The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them.
I'm no expert, not a speechwriter or politician. I don't know how to turn this around, but I think MoveON and the Dean campaign are onto something. I recognize that a Dean run for the Presidency is a BIG crapshoot. However, you can't discount that YOU HAVE THE POWER is far better political theater than anything the DNC, DLC or Democratic congressional delegations have staged.
Politics is in large part theater. Great staging and costumes and visuals get you to get the audience to listen to the soliliqy. Get their attention, then touch the soul. The Rethugs serve up blood and circuses to the hoi polloi in great measure. Dems serve up ridicule and droning policy and same-old same old and 'compromise' and .... blah blah blah.
We were the party of 'Ask not what you can do for your country ....' We were the party for public investment and fairness. We were the party that led, and won, the nation in a world war while the opposition often obstructed that effort. We were the party that convince the nation that humankind could reach out and touch the moon. We were the party of Franklin Roosevelt and JFK and Robert Kennedy and Paul Wellstone and LBJ's fight for civil rights.
Now we're the sparring partner for a bunch of thugs that are taking to the Ring without any opposition. A 98 pound weakling quaking in our boots in front of Mike Tyson.
I'm sick of it.