In every political forum, we Democrats are always 'socialist Democrats'. The Republicans have triumphed in branding us what we are not, and we have never answered back effectively.
Conservatives equate Socialism to Communism, and thus, all Democrats are Communists in disguise.
This lie, I truly believe, was what cost us the 2014 election.
Democrats believe in free enterprise, private ownership, and the rights to personal liberty and freedom as much as any conservative does, but we have been spinelessly wimpy at answering back to their most spurious and effective charge against us. Some of us do answer back individually. Lots of us, but our party does not, and our President cannot. Our leadership seems to be either oblivious, arrogant, or too willing to take another one to the gut, over and over, with never swinging back.
This leaves all of our Democrats who seek state and national seats in our government on their own, with only their supporters covering their back, abandoned by the most prominent party leaders, and left on their own far too much in financial support as well. The finances will come when voters all know that we are NOT Communists or Socialists. All the other tags the Republicans have tried to stick to us have failed over and over, but this one has worked all too well for them, and we just take it, over and over, with our top leadership oblivious to the damage it does to us.
We can do it, but our leadership have to be leaders and be the first to kill this false charge. They're the ones getting all the face time, and they are all failing miserably.
I've been mad as a hornet at the DNC, the DSCC, and our other leadership groups ever since last November, but especially angry at Debbie Wasserman Shultz for her pandering ways and her total submergence into the Washington Bubble. Shultz has no idea at all of what the rest of us are doing outside of her little insider's world.
I've never been more disgusted in here than I was this morning. I'm not a violent man, but sometimes a person needs a slap to concentrate his attention, and Debbie is a good candidate for some slappage. This woman either needs to get real or get gone!
I read a lot of conservative websites. Knowing the opposition's mind is a necessity if you want to triumph over him.
This morning, I read this:
http://rightwingnews.com/...
Since I don't listen to conservative talk shows, and dropped my cable long ago, I had to look Larry Elder up. For those who don't know him already, Elder is a black conservative lawyer/talk show host/pundit from L.A.
He seems to be intelligent, and he went straight to the conservative's strongest talking point with this article.
Read it, folks, this is what all conservatives of all shades completely believe.
In the article, he defines socialism using Dictionary.com as a definition source. Curious as to how it's defined by other dictionaries, I looked the term up in several others. The one Elder used is less squishy than some others, but generally agrees with almost all the other definitions, and I have no problem with it.
And then, he goes on to mention Debbie Wasserman Shultz' total failure to answer a direct question from Chris Matthews. He pulled a Palin on her, asking her to define socialism, and she instantly turned into a blonde Sarah, stuttering, dodging, prevaricating, and ducking the question.
Elders doesn't provide a link to the show and the incident, so I looked it up. Here's the Matthews interview:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
I'm no genius. I flunked out of 3 colleges a total of 5 times, but I could define socialism, and my off the top of my head definition closely matched all the various dictionary definitions.
Debbie had her head so far up her ass that she missed an excellent opportunity to really hit the Republicans hard on their single most-winning talking point, but she didn't. She ended up confused, weak, and as out of it as Sarah Palin looked when she was astounded by Katie Couric, who asked her a similar direct question.
I was sickened and angered by Shultz total failure just as much as a last year, when I wrote this rant:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I became all the madder when I looked up our leading website, Democrats.org. I wanted to see what our platform had to say. I wanted to see something that refuted the lie that Democrats are socialists.
What I god was an ad begging for money, with no link to the main website. I had to do a search to find our platform, and that made me mad. But the pile of blather our platform is made me even madder.
The Republicans are not clever, nor very good platform writers either, but they do go straight to the heart of the matter on the home page of their website, where there's a link to their platform right up at the top. There is a lot less fluffy bullshit in their platform than ours.
And where was a statement of our Democratic beliefs? Nowhere to be found. Nowhere. On none of our party's official websites.
And nothing, zip, zero, nada on how a Democrat is not a Socialist. We're letting them use their best thing against us at will, anytime they want. With no response, no directness and no clarity from a blonde bimbo who isn't fit to lead a kiddie wagon parade. If she is the Chairperson, how bad are the rest of the Democratic Central Committee?
I'm no expert. I don't know how to fire Debbie, but if I could, I would, so fast she would be on the street before she knew what hit her. And I would be having a Come To Jesus with the rest of this useless bunch of overpaid beggars within 5 minutes later, and they would all be certain they would be following Wasserman Shultz if they didn't straighten up and act like the leaders they are supposed to be.
I sure as hell don't want my party going into 2016 with leadership like this. We need to be sharp, hard, and on the point to win back a Congressional majority next year, and every state will be voting for Representatives and Senators along with the President next year.
We can do better. We must do better than 2014. We don't have a charismatic visionary who will capture all the voter's admiration as we had in Barack Obama. President Obama is our Ronald Reagan, a person who comes along once or twice a century. No one we have has his personal qualities, and we won't see the likes of him to come again for a long, long time.
Our people are good. Quite good, better than any the Republicans have. But Hillary Clinton is nothing like her husband. Everything sticks to her, and nothing ever slides off once stuck. Bernie Sanders is old, strident, and while arousing, is not particularly personally attractive. O'Malley is a yet to be defined mushy lump, and I can't even remember the fourth guy's name. Thats no good sign, for sure.
So- it's up to us. I just want to know how to do what we must do to secure both a Democratic White house and a Democratic Congress in 2016. I have firm faith in our base, our unity and our intelligence. Items our leadership seems to completely lack.
I am not content enough to ever believe we will win this one by just showing up. I sure hope to get some suggestions and thoughts on this.