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a Democratic majority that has spent the last twelve
years slipping ever further away. And, let’s
face it: they’re just not as tight an organization
as the RNC.
As I’ve said before, liberals own public opinion
on virtually every major policy issue. Even gay marriage,
which right-wing Republicans have spent the last six
weeks proclaiming as the decisive issue, is owned
by Democrats (60% of Americans oppose gay marriage,
and the same number, 60%, support civil unions—exactly
in line with Kerry’s stance). But Democrats
flail in the one area where Republicans shine: Selling
the product.
The real business side of politics, you see, is advertising.
If soda companies can convince generations of Americans
that a product that can double as drain or battery
post cleaner is so superior to water that you should
actually spend money to poison yourself with it, then
Republicans can certainly convince a plurality of
them to cast their vote against their own best interest.
And, boy, have they ever.
Usually, the very business of politics is what does
the consumer—er, constituent in. The Republican
lawmaking/deal making machine has become one of the
biggest businesses in the world.
Arnold Schwarzenegger calls nurse staffing ratios—essential
to the lives of his constituency, as anyone who’s
ever even visited a hospital knows—an invention
of the “special interest” nurse’s
unions whose butts, he said, got a kicking. Major
contributor to the RNC Wal-Mart, on the other hand,
is not a special interest. Their whims, like
the urge to deprive employees of lunch and break times,
thereby having to add fewer seasonal employees, constitute
a state of emergency—literally. Last month,
Arnold submitted a plan to suspend regulations relating
to employee lunch hours and breaks. California law
only allows for such an order when it is “Necessary
for the immediate preservation of public peace, health
and safety, or general welfare”.
Oh, my God! The kid at the GAP (major Arnold contributor,)
counter is taking a lunch break, and I’m third
in line! Quick, call the Governor! With the money
that this little bow to special interests will land
Arnold, he'll have millions more to convince gullible
voters that he’s a good guy. Then, when he’s
re-elected, the workers of California can expect another
round of assaults on human decency and their own best
interests, for which he’ll receive even more
money to buy the votes he doesn’t deserve.
And Arnold is one of the good guys on that
side of the fence. The big boys at the RNC make Arnold
look like a Saint—and I mean that in the connotative
way, not the historical. George W. Bush has operated
the White House like a vending machine of special
interest favors, while simultaneously vilifying his
enemies with vague allusions to corporate control.
During the campaign, Bush ran ads attacking Kerry
for taking “millions from special interests”.
Factcheck.org (Dick Cheney’s favorite website,)
was quick to point out that Bush took far more money
from the same sources he accused Kerry of being beholden
to. But it goes beyond just the evil of soiled money—an
investment in Bush will pay off for even the most
wicked of companies.
Power companies gave Republicans $13 million in
2000; Bush relaxed environmental regulations so much
that some projected their savings to be in the billions.
And, no, this has not given the consumer a price break.
Bush received about $3.5 million from pharmaceutical
companies for his 2000 election campaign and inauguration.
The industry has been allowed to control life-saving
drugs like a diamond cartel, costing millions of lives
in third world countries and untold human suffering,
while simultaneously making billions selling drugs
that they knew killed thousands of Americans.
The chemical industry gave Bush half a million dollars
in 2000. Even though the military projects that a
chemical plant attack is second only to biological
warfare in terms of potential lives lost, Bush and
the Republican-controlled Congress refuse to secure
the open-door plants. And, to make sure nobody knows
how close they are to just such a facility, post-9/11
legislation has made that previously public information
classified. Frankly, Bush’s willingness to forsake
human life for special interest money is beyond nauseating,
and those are just the tip of the melting iceberg.
Democrats, who expanded their private donor base from
400,000 to 2.7 million individuals in the 2004 Presidential
Election, are in a great place to attack special interest
politics.
With Republicans getting so much dirty money from
evil deeds to promote themselves as guardians of the
public trust, I guess the truth's defense simply must
be an ad campaign. I call my hypothetical campaign,
wherein everyday Americans quickly and simply dispel
myths about the liberal agenda, one fact at a time,
over the next two years “Fact check”.
Why aren't the cameras rolling yet?
You see, this isn’t going to be about candidates
for another eighteen months. Right now, it's about
incumbents. And my, oh my, do these people have some
very dirty secrets that by all legal standards is
public knowledge. If the next year and a half are
made about defining parties and the status quo, then
Democrats will have a decided advantage going into
2006.
Even at the end, the Democratic campaign for Congress
must be a coordinated national effort. The message
must be all-encompassing, and more importantly, passionately
opined. Everyone at the DNC: Step one is to take a
deep breath and realize that focus groups lie, elections
do not. You cannot ever turn-of a swing voter by stating
your beliefs and standing up for them. If you could
turn swing voters off, Republicans would never have
won with their vile, chimerical ’94 campaign.
What worked for Bill Clinton will not work for another
candidate. It’s that simple. Clinton, you see,
had something most politicians lack: Charisma. Other
candidates cannot simultaneously suppress their beliefs
and still project a likeable personality, much less
one that shows real conviction. Those without Clinton's
gift for oration must actually own what they believe.
Let’s start with a little bit of re-framing
when it comes to our rhetoric. From here on out, the
word “conservative” no longer exists.
Say it with me: “Reactionary.” Conservatives
don’t run up the biggest deficit in history
with tax cuts. Also, the Bush Administration no longer
exists, unless someone is being prosecuted for something.
Say it with me: “Republicans in Congress.”
Or, if you’d rather, “The Republican spending
machine,” “The special-interest cash-machine
Republican Congress,” or even, “Socially
reactionary, fiscally irresponsible Republicans in
Congress.” It isn’t name-calling; it’s
observation. Control the language, and you control
the debate.
The word liberal must be reclaimed. For some reason,
social liberals have been equated with lavish spending,
which has been a ridiculous equation since Reagan
hammered it in the 80s. Republicans can spend trillions
on tax cuts that actually stifle the economy (sure,
you got $300, which comes to $220 after depreciation
due to the deficit, but the stagnant economy probably
costs you, and well, you're gonna have to pay it back
along with about $3,000 in interest). But when Democrats
demand Bush actually pony up a couple million
to pay for his own education program, they get the
big spender label. Reagan and Bush have been the two
most irresponsible spenders ever in the White House,
while Clinton was among the most responsible. There
is no conservative or liberal when it comes to spending—there’s
responsible and irresponsible, and Republicans haven’t
fallen into the first category during my lifetime.
Now that we've taken ourselves just a tad outside
of the lunacy of contemporary politics, let's all
pick up a copy of our old logic text books from college.
Memorize the informal fallacies. Republicans, you
see, aren’t very good at winning arguments.
They are amazingly good, however, at muddying any
argument just enough to turn it into a draw. You’ll
be amazed at how quickly the word “red herring”
shuts up a smart person who knows they’ve got
no concrete case. You’ll also be amazed at how
childish it looks for an adult on national television
to demand that their argument, logically invalid by
definition, deserves serious attention. Guess what?
Not every argument is sound, and not every argument,
even in what some have called our “feminized”
society, deserves to be taken seriously. (I want to
note that, personally, I dislike that term, as it
equates irrationality and emotional incompetence to
an entire gender, when frankly, these are not traits
specific to either gender. I do, however, believe
that the phenomenon itself is real.)
But, while doing this, we must also realize that
being right just isn’t enough. Facts are great,
but the touchy-feely “I believe,” “I
feel,” and “I just know”-s that
reek of self-help nonsense have also defined George
W. Bush’s “connection” with Soccer
Moms. Bush has been great at turning irrational appeals
to our sentiments into votes. If charismatic people
could replace his rationalization, which appeal to
the worst parts of voters (even if they often value
them the most,) with appeals to the best part of voters—their
reason, compassion, and desire to do good—Congress
would be unrecognizable in two election cycles. Soccer
moms have a higher self, too.
We must also accept that Red States must be targeted
even more than swing states. People in these states
have voted against their own self-interests because
Republicans make them feel personally victimized by
social trends in far-off states. So why not make sure
they know how they’re really being victimized?
The next two years should be spent bombarding red
states with information and ads illustrating just
how eager Republicans are to sell them out for a big
donation or a golf buddy. Disillusionment is your
friend, especially when you're not in power.
The South is too far, and so very inexplicably,
gone. Then again, some people there still feel victimized
by the Civil War, so maybe it's not such a surprise.
The Mid-West, however, can and should be
the heart of the Democratic Party. The voices that
the party chooses over the next two years will play
an immeasurable role in deciding its fate in these
states. Garrison Keillor should be a major voice in
the Democratic Party (though, let’s be honest,
not a major face). Steve Earle must be our Rush Limbaugh
(only not a repugnant moron). “Republican favor-for-money-machine,”
should be shouted loud, clear, and in an Oklahoman
accent.
Above all, Democrats need a new crop of leaders.
They don’t have to be proven, experienced, or
even the best person for the job. They just have to
be likeable, smart and passionate. Proven, experienced
Gray Davis lost California to Arnold Schwarzenegger,
a man whose resume was bolstered mainly by his ability
to lift heavy objects. Proven, experienced Al Gore
lost (in some accounts) to George W. Bush, who spent
the first 40 years of his life in one perpetual party,
before going off to run several companies into the
ground and becoming Governor of Texas. Both Ahnold
and Dubya are likeable personalities, with exceedingly
poor qualifications and obvious ethical problems.
Fresh, likeable faces must lead the Democrats through
2008.
Finally—and I know that it’s hard to
part with something that we’ve had for forty
years—we’ve got to lose the losers. Not
the losing candidates, as they already have a built
in support base. If anything, Democrats need to treat
their losing candidates better. Democrats have got
to ditch the losing campaign managers, and
anyone who relies on their failing strategies (Hillary
Clinton, this means you). Everybody makes mistakes,
sure, but if you worked on Dukakis, Kerry, Gore and
Carter, I would say you should probably move into
a more peripheral role. Like maybe, handing out buttons.
In spite of Bush’s “mandate”,
I have a feeling that one-point-five percent of the
American people might be able to be persuaded to vote
in their own best interest, if only there was a competent
campaign to persuade them. With a crop of moderate
Republicans running in 2008, Democrats are going to
have to move to the left just to survive. But will
they move far enough to win? If so, they've got to
start moving America. Now.
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