This is my first attempt at a diary. I have been waiting to get to the point where I can post so it is fairly long and contains a lot of thoughts. I look forward to thoughts and comments.
Given the result of this election, the victory of Wedge Politics over Policy Politics, Democrats need to rethink how campaigns are run. Policy politics gave us a Stronger America, Elimination of Two Americas, increasing the taxes on the rich, and so on. It is clear that this did not work.
What did work? In the eyes of 80% of those who voted for Bush, Democrats were going to take away some rich guys tax cut, Kerry was going to force you to let Gay people have the same rights as homophobics, Kerry was going to take away your gun, and al Qaeda is going to get you if you vote for Kerry. In this 15 second sound bite world, the collective intelligence of middle america will not listen to or vote for policy, just fear and wedge issues.
Continued below...
Republicans have taken most modern wedge issues: lower taxes, gun rights, abortion rights, gay rights, and God. Some theroize that the rise of the Republican control of politics is about the establishment of a new American theocracy
Galiel. With all due respect to Galiel , I do not believe this. I believe that Republicans use religion and "values" issues as cover to pursue their real agenda of wealth redistribution. You never see Dick Cheney going to church or talking about religion, that my friends, is left to the puppet George. You hear anecdotal evidence of Cheney meeting with Ken Lay to formulate Energy policy. You see Cheney's former company Halliburton being awarded billion dollar sole source contracts. You see them going to the Supreme Court where duck hunting buddies determine whether they must reveal who they meet with to form policy.
Republicans use God, Guns and Gays to pander to the lowest common denominator as a front to push their agenda corporate control and wealth redistribution. They tell you they are going to cut your taxes and give you $100 dollars a year while giving Bill Gates $75 million in tax breaks. They tell you we must invade Iraq to fight terrorism, but give away billions of middle americans tax dollars to Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. They tell you they protect the sanctity of life after W. personally signed 152 death warrants and 100,000 Iraqi lives are taken by their liberators.
Given this new reality, Democrats (or whatever new vestige of a Non-Republican party is formed) need to adapt. We need to arm ourselves with wedge issues that allow us to pursue policies that we hold dear. If this means we have to give up some positions to take back the country and pursue policies that make all Americans better, then sacrifice we must.
We have to be creative and use tactics that FORCE Republicans to choose to support so-called "christian values" or to support Corporate greed and wealth redistribution. They use the cover of values to promote their agenda of crony capitalism. We cannot let them have both any longer. We have to expose their greed and use all available tools to separate their values agenda from their corporate agenda.
The average american has completed high school but does not have much advanced education, listens to whatever the corporate media outlet tells them (they do not listen to NPR), lives paycheck to paycheck, is seeing a reduction in purchasing power due to outsourcing and layoffs, and will lose their retirement funds to sophisticated investors through privatized social security. WE NEED TO EXPOSE THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA AS HARMING MOST AMERICANS. We need to be creative and find ways to EXPOSE this agenda in ways that Joe Six-pack can understand. We cannot do this by having John Kerry talk nuances of policy.
We need to push an agenda starting early next year. We need to push this agenda in a powerful, concerted, and united manner. The Non-Republican party cannot be a big tent party that tolerates candidates who do not support our plan. Did Bush hesitate for one moment to marginalize Jim Jeffords, he didn't win the electoral votes in Vermont so Jeffords didn't matter and was cast aside. WE HAVE TO PLAY TO WIN, politics is now a zero sum game.
What issues are out there that Democrats can claim as their own and use to Expose the Republican corporate agenda and force them to choose between values and corporate greed? And how do we frame issues, such as stem cell research, that we want to push and still make them palatable wedges? Some of my thoughts are below:
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION - While promotion of right for all people and making the average person better has long been valued by progressives. Stopping illegal immigration works as a wedge for our purposes because 1) it appeals to the average american concerned about lowering their taxes and 2) it undermines the corporate welfare policies of the Republicans.
Corporations like to use illegal immigrants as cheap labor. They cannot move poultry processing and other food production to China, so they import low priced labor here. They cannot move home construction overseas, so they use cheap immigrant labor to build your new home. They cannot move a McDonalds overseas to serve you fast food, so they fight to keep the borders open. These position are never stated, action is just never taken on closing the border because of the benefits to the corporations and rich.
So, we adopt Illegal Immigration as our wedge to separate the people from the Republican agenda. We must be clear that we will continue to allow immigration under existing laws, those that allowed people like Arnold and Teresa to come to America.
We shout on Crossfire and Hannity & Colmes about the fact that the illegal immigrants increase the price of health care and hospital stays because they go and do not pay. Illegal immigrants increase your car insurance rates because they are uninsured and run from accidents. Illegal immigrants lower wages, because without an ample supply of people who will accept a wage that is under the poverty line (because it is much greater that what they get back home) employers will be forced to increase wages. We tell Joe Six-pack that their taxes will go down because it is cheaper to pay to close the border than to pay the cost that the illegal immigrants force us to pay.
We push securing the borders - a key to safety, stemming the flow of drugs into the US and blocking illegal immigration. It is known that al Qaeda has been trying to recruit in Central and South America. Well trained and equipped operatives can cross the Mexican border just about any time. They can live among the immigrant community and set in motion serious terrorist attacks, all without raising suspicion like "arab looking" terrorists. Closing the borders reduces this threat. Reducing drug trafficking is just part of the War on Drugs that we have been fighting for 2 decades. Serious actions to close the border will stem the flow of drugs into this country. Blocking illegal immigration also has the financial benefits previously mentioned.
The reason the border has not been closed is that Big Business needs the border open. Keeping the border open allows cheap good produced outside of the country to flow more freely for the NASCAR nation to buy at Wal-Mart. Letting drugs in keeps drug users supplied so the balance of power stays intact. Keeping the border open allows for the cheap labor that companies need to generate greater profits for the rich.
Am I saying that we become economic protectionists? NO. This is not about protectionism, it MUST be framed as being required for the security of the country - security from al Qaeda, security from drugs, and security from having illegals stealing our hard earned money. Just think of how much we could reduce taxes if the government did not have to pay for services for illegal immigrants.
Our "security" demands that trucks coming from Mexico get X-rayed and sniffed for HMX and RDX (we know terrorists have these now) just like a passenger at the airport. It may make for longer lines to get the trucks with goods in, but we must sacrifice in the name of fighting terror. We add to this legislation requirements that all cargo in ports and on airplanes get screened by X-ray machines and by explosive detections systems. Who would want to vote against securing our ports?
So what do we get in return, lets review: 1) We force Republicans to take a stand against cheap labor being imported into the US and 2) We force Republicans to acknowledge by a vote in Congress against bills designed to close the border. We name the legislation something creative like "The Terrorist Shield". We discuss this bill on all the talking heads shows and use MoveOn, the Democratic Party, or other "issue oriented" groups to put adds on the air in non-election years to "Urge Congress to Act." We make it very clear when they do not act or when they block this legislation. In the end, we arm all Non-republicans with election year ammo in being able to point out when the Republican majority failed to advance this legislation or when individual congressmen (No need to add women to the GOP congressional list) vote against it.
Selling Stem Cell Research: Promotion of the affirmation of life to the "christian right" and uneducated.
The same approach can be used to force Republicans to choose "values" or corporations to make progress on other issues, for example Stem Cell research. Much has been made of the use of embryos for derivation of stem cell in research during the last few years. As a scientist, I am amazed how little the "average" American knows about stem cell research beyond the fact that you kill a potential baby to make stem cells.
Using an embryo that was produced by in vitro fertilization but is slated for destruction is not destroying a potential life, it is saving these cells so that they can help people. We do the same thing with organ donation, saving lives by using tissues from a person who will be dead soon, and make no mistake, embryos are being destroyed that could help people. I personally view embryonic stem cells (ESC) as form of organ/tissue donation.
We must educate the public on the science and reframe the debate from destruction of an embryo to SAVING a "form of life" from destruction. Also, in order to get legislation that both allows and funds this research we must appeal to the base "values" in a manner similar to what the Republicans do. We must package our goals in ways that sound appealing to christians and the NASCAR crowd. We need to sell funding this research and promotion of stem cell transfer in a package that the 15 second sound bite world can grasp. Perhaps if we recast ESC transplantation in this light (through a methodic education campaign) we can capture the public interest, promote our view of this important research, and undermine Republican use of so called "values" to promote their corporate agenda.
Imagine a commercial that is aired on TV in all the Red States:
Scene 1: Show video of a rat writhing on a surface, paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. Then we show the same rat walking around due to a stem cell transplant (this has been done and does work).
Scene 2: a doctor in a white coat walks into a lab and removes a small vial from bubbling liquid nitrogen. He/She walks over to a microscope and we see a microscopic image of an embryo. The vial is then picked up and the doctor walks to an Autoclave. As they are placing the vial with the embryos in the autoclave, he/she says "I know that the parents of these embryos already have 4 kids from this in vitro fertilization and do not want these other 3 embryos. I wish we could donate cells from these embryos to make stem cells to help spinal cord injury patients. Oh well, that is not allowed so I just have to destroy them" and the autoclave light comes on.
Announcer: "We use whole organ donations from dying people every day to save lives, Wouldn't it be nice to save lives rather than destroy unused embryos? HR xxxx before the Senate right now would make this possible. Call your congressman today to tell him that you support Saving Lives"
OF COURSE, recasting the image alone does not work to get this live saving work funded and to change attitudes. We also need to create legislation with some catchy name like the "Life Preservation Act" and force the Republicans to get on board or risk of alienating either the religious right or corporate fat cats. This legislation must be loaded up with "life affirming" things like forcing all unused embryos to be used for research/tissue transfer (with stiff penalties for creation of an embryo for the sole reason of tissue transplantation) or implanted into the mother. And, like Laci's Law, we need to add things like making it a crime to harm a fetus by smoking or drinking (these activities ARE proven to cause problems in children and produce low birth weight, increase infant mortality, and increase other complications).
Of course this legislation will have a backlash. The whole in vitro fertilization industry, run by doctors who support Republican efforts for Tort Reform, makes billions of dollars out of the misery of couples who have fertility problems. Big tobacco will fight the legislation because it criminalizes smoking by pregnant women. The end result of this type of legislation is that it forces the Republicans in congress to choose between alienating corporations with big lobbying budgets or alienating their "pro-life" (as long as it is not an Iraqi life) christian base.
In the end, we have to be creative and use tactics that FORCE Republicans to choose to support so-called "christian values" or to support Corporate greed and wealth redistribution. They use the cover of values to promote their agenda of crony capitalism. We cannot let them have both any longer. We have to expose their greed and use all available tools to separate their values agenda from their corporate agenda.
Again, the average american has completed high school but does not have much advanced education, listens to whatever the corporate media outlet tells them (they do not listen to NPR), lives paycheck to paycheck, is seeing a reduction in purchasing power due to outsourcing and layoffs, and will lose their retirement funds to sophisticated investors through privatized social security. We need to be creative and find ways to EXPOSE the corporate agenda of Republicans in ways that Joe Six-pack can understand. We cannot do this by having John Kerry talk nuances of policy.
We have to use Average Joe terms and support candidates that can talk about how the track bar adjustments made by the 24 car during the last pit stop in Talledega won that race for him. We have to have candidates who know that when Rich Yankees used their capital to steal A-Rod from the Sox gave the Red Sox the extra motivation to work harder than the Yankees. We need to frame the debate in these terms. We need to show these guys that the Republicans talk values and use it as a way to help corporations and the wealthy to achieve their goal of creating a ruling class and a worker class. We need to show them a new american dream and that the Republicans are standing in the way of this dream.