There is a myth going around that Democrats are divided by ideology.
"Leftists and Centrists are fighting for the heart of the Democratic party."
But it's not true. ... well, at least not to the degree that it's being played up.
And while the SCLM is content to represent this as a struggle of believers versus atheists, or hawks versus pacifists, there ARE a few people who are more than content to lob stones at their exaggerated enemy.
DON'T BUY INTO IT.
Want to make sure you're not falling into the trap? Read on:
A friend of mine grew up in one of the republics of the USSR. One day we happened to have a conversation about propaganda. I told him that the propaganda there was so ridiculously simple that it could not be believed. He agreed with me, and told me that nobody he knew believed the propaganda was true. It was just there.
He then began to explain to me that the propaganda here is much more sophisticated. I thought about it for a second, and it wasn't hard to see. I had to agree. And it came down to this:
The propaganda of the past was a long repetitive monolog, trying to pound your subconscious into submission. The propaganda involved controlling the monolog.
The new propaganda involves controlling the dialog. It involves giving you two engineered choices in a debate.
Most of the time, these choices are engineered to prevent any real discussion from coming through, and allow opinion to overrule the importance of facts and real solutions. Sometimes they can even engineer one choice to be unappealing to nearly everyone.
"Well either you're an A or a B. If you're not an A, then you must be B. And since B is evil, either you're A, or you're evil."
Try it where A = Republican and B = Terrorist. It's fun.
The DLC paints us as having an 'out of touch ideology'. The SCLM gets on this one pretty quickly. We, 'the looney left' are failing to recognize that the country is becoming more conservative, and that our platform is straight out the 1970s and 1980s, and so on.
Sometimes we fire back about how their ideology is out of touch. We point out that they've abandoned real americans and their real problems. Sometimes we even get dragged into debates about abortion, or a strong military, or even about the very existence of God.
This is a misrepresentation. This is once again the controlled dialog of the new propaganda. Religious versus atheist. Pacifist versus hawk.
Not to say that there aren't leftists and centrists in the Democratic party. There are. Nor am I saying that we should ignore the issues for 2006 and and 2008. We can't afford to ignore the issues.
But the real divisions in the party are strategic divisions.
The issues are inseperable from our message, our focus, our overall approach. And ironically, the problem with the DLC strategy of "aim for the center" is that they ignore the issues. By definition, aiming for the center means that today's stance on issue X can change tomorrow.
Often we call the DLCers 'spineless political opportunists'. But to say this is to give them too much credit. We're implying that we don't care about opportunity, and that we don't care about victory. We're actually suggesting that what they're doing is a winning strategy.
If pitfall #1 is getting into an ideological debate with a DLCer, pitfall #2 is suggesting that the DLC is more practical than us. In practice, what have the DLC accomplished?
In actuality, we're more practical because we stand for something.
Moreover, we want there to be no mistake about what we do stand for. We will not be defined by our opposition, or the controlled dialog of the SCLM. We don't want a radical leftist. We want someone who will stand up.
And if enough people agree with me, then we will make a comeback in 2006 and 2008.
The battle between left and center is the wrong battlefield. Where you stand is important, but you can't just focus on where, but focus on if you stand.
People want a party they know won't cave into a fringe special interest, or the first dip in the polls, or the loudest whiner.
For that reason, chasing the middle is NOT practical -- no matter how much they say it is.
This is not 1992.
