Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. True to some extent, yet I think the south and rural American are more in tune with free-market/personal responsibility economic values than you think. Meanwhile, the problem with deferring to states on the moral issues is that you will inevitably have some states, like California and Massachusetts, with jurists who will promote and/or lubricate the "radical/leftist" social moral agenda. Then circumstances will demand you take a stand. Now taking a stand means something different than working to DO something about it. Your stand has got to be credible. Bush is on record as being against abortion, but really, has he done anything about it? No, and he won't, because he knows it is a losing issue. But when he says he's against it, you know he means it. Did anyone EVER get the sense that Kerry really meant he was against same-sex marriage? Frankly, Democrats have a very hard time walking this tightrope now. The party's rank and file is simply too allied and associated with the leftist moral territory. You know, I think the Democratic party is in the same predicament that the Whig party faced in the mid 19th century. It's a party without an intellectual foundation, or a set of issues that resonate with the electorate. It's a party at sea.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. This is a load of bull, except for the part about Moore's right to express himself. If you or major swaths of the American electorate had actually paid attention to and cared about the platforms of the candidates, it would be the right wingers having this conversation today. There was nothing radical in Kerry's platform unless you don't understand how radical Bush's platform is. Much of the passion and grass roots activism of the Kerry campaign may have come from the liberal fringe, but very few of the ideas did. As for Moore himself, I have absolutely no problem with him or his style. He's not a politician, and he's not a major influence on the Democratic party. He's one of the few lefties with the kind of take-no-prisoners approach that the conservatives have used to such great effect over the last couple decades. The closest I come to worrying about someone like Michael Moore is my concern that there aren't enough people like him on our side to winnow out the bad ideas and ineffective strategies.
Dear Mr. Michael Moore.... Just wanted to ask you how your day is going? Just wondering how you are feeling. I just wanted to express to you my thanks for all you have done to help out in this election. Really! Thanks so much! And please keep doing what you do!
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Kerry's ideas were indeed moderate. However, his "base" was from the far left. How would you feel if the KKK began campaigning for Bush?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. What makes you think they weren't?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Seriously. This is a classic "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it". If the Dems distance themselves from the fringe, where are they going to find the grassroots? What is their identity? Whichever direction the Dems turn to, they need some serious rehauling.
Re: Dear Mr. Michael Moore.... Most of his loyal followers didnt even show up to vote because they said the 18-24 yr old voter turnout was only 10 %.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I agree. I brought up the closeness of the election on all fronts mainly in response to the nonsense that somehow Bush and the Republican party have suddenly run away with the country. That just isn't the case. They have the majority now and in four years things are going to be very, very interesting unless Bush has a simply magical 2nd term. Democrats need to take a deep look within and begin making the changes needed in order to stay on a level playing field, no doubt. The point is that when one side looks at a 2% popular vote win out of a historical turnout, and a Presidential win based on another very, very small margin, and then declares that there is a clear majority I believe it to be a dangerous outlook and worrying. It is clear that the population is still severly divided and no amount of reverse finger pointing on the part of the Republicans, now that they have won, is going to heal that divide. There just does not exist a clear and strong enough majority one way or the other for one side to declare that America as a whole is leaning one way or the other. That's stupid. The Democratic party was in touch with 49% of a historical popular vote last night, this isn't a party that is fading. It may have hit a speedbump or two in the recent past, but its far from fading. The Republican's increased grip on the House and the Senate is a situation that will be interesting to watch, now that there is real power there for Bush to push through his agenda.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Daniel Carver of the KKK who appears on Howard Stern from time to time said he was voting for Bush because he said Bush has strong moral values, believes in god, etc. I'm guessing that Bush got 100 % of the KKK vote.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. They may have been. But Bush was clear in distancing himself from those guys. It is true that he played to his base as well, on the anti-gay and anti-abortion issues and the Pledge. However, with the anti-gays and the Pledge, it was the liberals that have brought that to the forefront of the national agenda. The problem is that the demographics allow Bush to play to his base while p1ssing off the other party's base. The Dems cannot afford to do the same. Karl Rove has figured the numbers out a long time ago. Where will they find the base? In the poor, middle-class, and rural voters across the country, in the South, Midwest, East, wherever. Look at even the most liberal states and you will find the starkest distinction is between rural and urban voters. Do you think the South (the nation's poorest region) is happy with the job loss, with the billions spent on the war, or with the tax cuts for the rich? They're not. But they have morals that override their wallets, and they feel they cannot morally support the Democratic party associated with being pro-gay/pro-abortion/pro-secularism.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Michael Moore did at least reach 1 person, and had an obvious impact on this persons views.... Osama Bin Laden!
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. What the Democratic Party will stand for are dollars-and-cents economic issues that most Americans care about and agree with: * Greater access to affordable healthcare * The continued existence of Social Security to provide for a financial safety net for those who reach retirement age * Lower deficits * Fewer tax incentives to ship jobs overseas * Tax cuts to people who will put the money back into the economy, rather than putting it into the bank. Things like that. And how far do I want to take the deference to the states on social issues? I'm not entirely sure. But saying that it'll lead to Jim Crow? Come on already. Saying stuff like that is actually part of the problem.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. That's debatable, isn't it? The gay marriage thing could have easily been played off as a kooky Northeast/Bay Area thing. The Pledge was just one SCOTUS case and it's a non-issue for most liberals. The GOP just milked them for all their worth by treating them as big deal.... or is that what you're trying to say?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. How come the Republicans get to keep/nurture/exploit their lunatics for votes, but the Democrats have to be ashamed of theirs? How many states would Bush have carried if the religious, right-wing equivalent of Earth First! formed the Jesus Party (But No Dancing)? Three? Five, tops?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. It's called demographics, and the proof is on the scoreboard.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. It's been over three years, and I'm still waiting for Dubya to "reach" Osama bin Laden.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. They're in tune with it, but they're also very populist and aren't that exceptionally enamored with either "big money" or "big government." It's the reason why Bush's economic policies didn't win him the red areas of the country, it was his other stances. Most people saw that Bush's economic policies were all about helping "big money," not helping them. Fortunately for Bush, that was only of secondary importance. I agree with you to a certain extent there. But I think that the Democrats in Washington expend too much political capital in fighting battles that are losers for them even if they win.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I think a more likely answer is that southern politicians of both parties have spent so long playing to anti-intellectual and xenophobic impulses that many southern voters arae now convinced that its lunatic fringe is all the Democratics have to offer. Here's a hint, it hasn't been Democrats of any flavor that have been convincing them in recent decades. The Southern Strategy used to be all about race; now it's about sex too.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Their "lunatics" equate to more votes than our "lunatics" do. So the electoral math is that we gotta win more than just a majority of the everyone else.
Re: Dear Mr. Michael Moore.... Where did you find that factoid??? Every piece of data I have seen suggests that the 18-29 demo represented about 16-23% of the total voter turnout. And yes that is the smaller number out of the four major demo's...but you also have to keep in perspecitve the fact that the 18-29 demo is the smallest in terms of size. you can start by looking here...there are better data sites around but this one is probably the easiest to navigate and understand. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/president/ look under exit poll data and pick your favorite State of the Union.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Telling everyone to the left of Joseph Lieberman to stay home hurts more than it helps.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Moore's problem (besides being a filmmaker, which lends itself to both a select vs. widespread audience, and repeat viewings / scrutiny in a way that the ethereal talk radio world doesn't -- you don't see the right wing making movies about Al Franken) is that he's just as much into himself as he is into what he's talking about, and he isn't afraid to share it. He's decided that he wants to be the whipping boy because it means better box office. I have no doubt that Moore wants regime change but four more years of Bush in office made his financial future rosier. Generally I agree with this, though this will be a fight within both parties, not just Dems, over the next couple of years. Democrats have traditionally been more dogmatic -- you have to support the teachers' union, you have to support abortion rights, etc. And it's held them back (though the GOP's demonization of all things Democrat has helped maintain long-held assumptions about the party that don't necessarily hold). Republicans used to be more dogmatic as well on fiscal restraint and social libertarianism, but as the southern more socially conservative Dems searched for a new home, the northeast-dominated GOP made a decision that it was more important to win than agree, so they invited them in. And it's worked wonders. But now they've created a bit of a social conservative monster. I can't imagine that Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee and Saint Rudy like the idea of 11 states passing anti-gay rights legislation, but there is little doubt that we are going to see more, not less, of that sort of legislation and ballot initiative out of the more activist wing of the party. The northeast & west coast moderates have to decide if they will fight, defect, or roll over. It's easy to say they'll roll over and play along to keep the money and power, but for someone like Giuliani, rolling over likely means that he will never have a chance of winning the GOP Presidential nomination even though he'd kill in the general. The True Believers make up the biggest segment of the Republican population in Iowa (first caucus) and South Carolina (2nd primary), and they wouldn't allow it. It's going to be an interesting couple of years.