First off, I want to salute Trapper and Meteor and say I don't believe either of you for one second. But, for what it's worth, I've learned much from both of y'all and I expect to continue to do so.
Second, to everyone who's put my name in the hat today and given me props these last months...thank you so much.
Third, to everyone who responded to Taking a Stand...thank you. Every opinion was welcomed and read. Seriously.
I, like so many of you, am just fricking fried and frickaseeed by what just went down. But does that mean that the guy who, gulp, wrote George Bush is Toast feels utterly and totally devastated???
Nope
I woke up November 3rd calm and clear eyed and decided to fight on Actually, me and awol, another Kossack, grabbed some breakfast and immediately started hashing over "what next?"....
Now, like most every one here, I think we've all got to recharge at some point....but I've had too many good conversations in last few days, including strong words from someone who's opinion and experience and horse sense I deeply value...my dad...to not share some of these thoughts.
So, I offer this for your consideration....
Moral Values and Holy Cows: a new brew
We Democrats are in a tough, tough spot.
You don't get out of tough spots simply by fighting. Or by being clever and calm. Or by drawing on every resource at your disposal. Or by being innovative and seeking new strategies. Or by simply looking back at the past an figuring out what went wrong.
You have to do all of these and more.
Here's one angle I think we need to think about, and soon: our Holy Cows. To say that the Republicans are exclusively the party of moral values is a load of crap. You know it, I know it, we all know it. But that is the perception, and it's the hand we've been dealt. One of the things that doesn't get talked about in this regard is how our own moral values get turned into Holy Cows.
When it comes to ANWR, to Reproductive Rights, to Gay Marriage, Civil Unions and Partnership Benefits, to Spotted Owls, to Vieques, to the Iraq war and Social Security...we Democrats have values that we fight for ferociously, in a pure manner. Oftentimes those values get expressed in the battles that we choose or are forced to fight. When our values get turned into political football, however, they become Holy Cows, a term that I don't like, but find necessary. We need to understand this.
As soon as we recover from this election, we need to smell the coffee that's brewing in Washington: it's the GOP Congressional blend. We all know that we are gonna be forced to fight some battles in the immediate next few months. As we speak, Republican strategists are figuring out how to drive the wedge on us. They want to pick the time and place and ground of the battles we are going to fight. They want to use our Holy Cows, our moral values, against us.
We need understand this in all of its facets.
I'm not going to plow through all the issues right here...but I would like to ask folks to think about where they stand and what battles they want to fight, and how they want to fight them. To think for a second about what we are going to go through in the next two years of utter Republican dominance of DC. You know that the GOP knows how to use our Holy Cows against us and they will do so, over and over and over again.
We are going to have splits and divisions. That is a fact. There is no doubt that on every single one of our issues we will have those who want to fight till the last dog dies...and those who are willing to trade and play and compromise. A brief pause to think about our Congressional leadership will tell you that "trade and play" will trump "stand and fight" on a host of issues. It already has.
I want to share something personal here....I've been an activist. I've stood on the front steps of an apartment building as someone was being evicted and yelled SHAME at the police and the landlords' lawyers. I've smiled and flashed the peace sign at angry passersby during anti-war protests. I've screamed my lungs out at labor rallies.
But we need to be very very fucking strategic now. Just because we are right, and we are on SO MANY issues, does not mean we have persuaded our countrymen of that. Just because we know that we will prevail someday, does not mean that we aren't faced with strategic choices of enormous import. Just because we can see the end goal of our battles does not mean that we can simply walk straight towards that goal without some sad and bitter distractions along the way.
As someone who's been an activist, who shares those values, who believes in fighting to end Republican dominance in DC...I am convinced we need to look at our Holy Cows and our core values and be extremely pragmatic. We want to do what's right for us, our people, our core, and what lays the framework for winning the legislative majorities that will help us win. At the same time we must never let any of our people feel that we have given up the fight for them....we need to learn how to fight to win in a new way. We must do this, or, quite simply, we will lose.
I am convinced that we on the left need to be more savvy than our Congressional leadership...more innovative...more adept....more clever. This election taught us that it is not enough to know that we are right...like on the Iraq war. This election taught us that you can be right...and still, on some level be wrong, and fail your people when it comes to getting results.
I am convinced that not only will we have to learn how to fight these battles in a new way...but we are going to have to learn how to get along and "agree to disagree" on the battles we are fighting to an unprecedented degree. It will take everything we have just to hold our coalition together and it is not clear, on many of them, that we will win much even if we do keep it together. We are playing defense, but we have to learn how to put offense inside of our defense.
Every victory will be tempered. That is just the Coffee of the Day. But inside every single one of these battles, I am convinced, we can lay the seeds for our eventual resurgence.
Like I said, it will take every new, great, clever idea we've got. But if we Democrats can learn to brew our own new blend....our own mix of pragmatism, values, community and optimism...
someday, in Washington, they will waking up and smelling our Brew in the Coffee Pot.