Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I believe that many Southern Republicans are Republicans not because they made a reasoned choice between the positions of the two parties but because they have been persuaded that the Democrats are the party of big money, big government and the Babylon of the coasts. They believe this because Republicans have spent over thirty years telling them so in language calculated to skip past logical reasoning. In 1968, Nixon used code words that any Southern white would understand. That was the so-called Southern Strategy. This year, Ralph Reed and other Republican strategists seized on the issue of gay marriage, not because there is a snow ball's change in hell of it ever arriving in the traditional South, but because it's an issue of such emotional heat that logic and facts don't apply.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. obie - fight's over in the Republican area. Moderates have disgracefully rolled over and will continue to do so until the neocons get totally and thoroughly and utterly discredited. They can't fight againt it, it's a monster as you pointed out, and I don't think they'll defect.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I don't think the neocons and the religious conservatives are the same people.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. they're not. However they are in alliance in the right wing of the Republican party and do agree on quite a few issues - although I always got the impression that neocons focused more on foreign policy and religious conservatives more on domestic issue. Although both want Israel healthy before they're broken in Armageddon
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. That's not just about the electorate. It's also about the politicians. One need only look at the differences between Democrats elected in places like Georgia, and Democrats in the Northeast to understand why the politicans might feel awkward within their own party. That was the discussion on the Atlanta news last night, how the Democrats need to do something to make the southern Dems feel a part of the party and not that they have to swap parties, as several have done. Chris Matthews basically said the same thing in a very non-PC commentary this morning on NBC news around 6:30 am. If they wish to win, they need to move away from the NorthEast/West Coast dems, and move to dems in the south, or to guys like Richarson in NM. People who might resonate with the battleground. The 2008 election will be fought in the middle....espeically if Guiliani and McCain get involved.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. But none of these address the problem that the Democrats lost on values. Saying "we don't mind about your values" won't win votes when the other side is doing nothing but campaigning on them. You're proposing to abandon your core support to perhaps steal just a little bit of the group the Republicans have been courting for decades. That's risky and foolhardy imho. Look, the reason there aren't Republicans out here wondering why they just can't make headway into Massachusets, New York and California is because they WON. If the Democrats had a better candidate (CLARK!) and 100,000 votes go differently in Ohio, we'd all be rewriting Clash lyrics to "I fought the South, and I won." The country is polarized, but only 50-50. We lost so narrowly, to suddenly demand giant changes is unrealistic. Look at the percentages in the Southern states. Democrats would have to undertake a decades long effort just to see any of it pay off. The South was lost in a matter of years, and I don't think it will be regained any time soon. Just like Republicans aren't regaining New York or Massachusets any time soon either. Also, I think your platform is pretty much cribbed from the libertarian party. Which, ideologically, is fine by me, for the most part. That was obviously an exaggeration, as I should hope you know I'm not a doomsday advocate. But if Mississippi (which I am not officially calling "the Insecure State") passes a ban on gay marriage by 92%, do you think that augurs well for things like abortion rights? Or full civil rights for all groups? Perhaps as a minority and an immigrant I'm a bit more sensitive to these things. The Democrats great achievement in the last 50 years has been the exercise of Federal control over the states to correct social ills. I'm not ready to turn back on that legacy quite yet.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. There isn't anything that the Democrats have that the rural voters want. It would be a waste to go after them. But there is a chunk of the current Republican Party that will be very reachable because they are going to be disenfranchised during the next four years - the secular fiscal conservatives. I am certain that they are reachable because the Democratic party has been shifting towards their direction for a while now (who would have said 30 years ago that the Democrats were the party of ballanced budgets and the Republicans of massive deficits? Heck, lots of people still believe the converse is true.). I don't know how many votes this would translate into (especially as they would mostly come from states like New York and California which are locked up already) but it would get some very powerful financial organizations both domestic and foreign (foreign being important as they own a large slice of US already and are only going to get more in the next four years) and with that comes power. Hey, maybe you can even couch fiscal responsability in moral terms and get some of those southern voters. Recognition of gluttony as a mortal sin has long disappeared from American religion, and I think it can make a come-back. Think about all that pent up self-loathing boiling in those 300 pounders.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Distance himself? He embraced it. And how did "the liberals" bring that issue to the agenda? What did Kerry do? Edwards? Nancy Pelosi? Tom Daschle? Were they the one's who were screaming about gay marriage and abortion issues? Not at all.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I'm going to write in El Jefe. Someone send me an absentee ballot from one of those states with loose voter registration laws.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Only if you think that Karl Rove's "energize and turn out your base, and things will work out for you in the end" strategy will work for the Democrats. I don't. I don't think that our core is as big as the Republicans' core. To a certain extent, I agree with that. The right candidate could've made voters care more about economic issues than social ones and won the Presidential elections. But that still doesn't address the fact that the Democrats are getting absolutely killed in Congressional elections. Just look at how badly it's gone for them since the 1994 election. The problem is that the red states are the ones that are growing, not the blue states. CNN hasn't called Iowa or New Mexico yet (both went for Gore in 2000), but if you look at the other 48 states, only one state flipped and that was New Hampshire flipping from Bush in 2000 to Kerry in 2004. Despite that, Bush got more electoral votes in the states that he did win than he did in 2000, due to population changes reflected in the 2000 census: Arizona +2 Colorado +1 Florida +2 Georgia +2 Nevada +1 North Carolina +1 Texas +2 11 total. The only places where he lost votes by holding them: Indiana -1 Mississippi -1 Ohio -1 Oklahoma -1 Four total. Add in the four electoral votes that he lost when New Hampshire flipped, and he still comes out three ahead. Now look at the same tallies for Kerry. The gainers: California +1 That's it. And the losers? Connecticut -1 Illinois -1 Michigan -1 New York -2 Pennsylvania -2 Wisconsin -1 Add those up and even the four votes from New Hampshire don't help too much. Either the Democrats have to figure out how to win those growing red states, or they have to hope that the population migrations from blue to red states will make those red states more purple, or both. Not really. I think that the government should be a bit more involved with pocketbook issues than the libertarians believe that it should. Fair enough.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The Dems do not have to become more like the Repubs. Heck in most instances they already are or try and posture themselves as such. The biggest thing the Dems need to do is to fight the urge to reshape themselves every four years. Sure changes need to be made, but Dems lost more of their base than they gained from the middle. Look at the huge loss in women and minorities. What the Dems need to do is to get the base in order first. Right now the base is a mess, fix that and you fix about 70 percent of the problem.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. No, I don't. Perhaps its time to shift gears then, but slightly. Pursue targeted groups. Why the Hispanic vote is at only 58% for the Democrats (I believe that's the number) is galling. The growth you discuss below is due to them, for the most part. The Democrats do well with targeting blacks and other minorities. Make the same push. So, really, this is the nature of the beast. An incumbent defeats a poor candidate. Why the need for drastic change then? True. However, as Segroves would point out, its the presence of Kerry that lost Oklahoma for Coburn, for example. And, there are far more red states than blue states, despite population being even. If California were 5 states (it has the population to be even more, really) this wouldn't be an issue. The Dems are unlucky in this regard. You have to expect, therefore, that the Democrats wouldn't do as well. That's just simple math. Add the Democrats general lack of organization, and you have a trifecta of reasons Democrats have a hard time winning Senate seats. See my point about hispanics above. And yet, at the end of the day, its still all about Ohio. So really, a wholesale change of course is just not necessary. Do enough to win in Ohio, and you're golden. True, I did notice that. However, your stance is decidedly libertarian, just less than the actual libertarian party (which is slightly insane).
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. First you'll have to explain to us what the Democratic base actually is.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Yes. But the leadership and the base couldn't be further apart. The left needs the centrist base to give them anything remote to political power, and likewise, the centrist leadership depend on the leftist base to give them identity and the grassroots. They need each other, yet they get in each other's way, classic catch 22.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Look at where Bush made his biggest gains since the last election. Pretty sure it was minorities and women. That isn't the only part of the base, but that part of the Dem party certainly has appeared to have become weak. They were not huge numbers, but if you look at some of the closer states it made a difference. The way to win in politics has always, well at least for the most part, been get the base together and run to the middle. The problem I see with the Dem party is that they tried to get middle and then run to the base. I think they felt that anybody they put up would be embraced by their party base and it simply wasn't. I think much of the base, the people doing a good deal of the grassroots effort, were put off that Dean was basically left out to dry because of a yee-haw.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. It's all about manipulating the masses -- that's where the conservative media machine succeeded. For the liberals creating a "family values" facade is fine as long as they don't move too far to the right. Bashing corporate america (the real "elitists") should really be an advantage for democrats. But apparently the conservative media machine persuaded "middle america" that they can become one of the big corporate types.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. A big problem is that Hispanics in general agree with the Republicans on social issues like "m a r i c o n e s" more than they do with Democrats, especially since the Republicans have stopped getting all hot and bothered about immigration. Without a drastic change, Congress will not change hands. But what about the House? The Republicans increased their share of seats there, too. Again, that doesn't help the Democrats one whit in Congress. I prefer to refer to myself as "socially federalist."
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. "Women" and "minorities" do not constitute a base, they are just biological characteristics. A base is defined by its beliefs/ideologies/needs. The Republican base are the social conservatives. The Democratic base are the Euro-liberal Deaniac people, and the inner city blacks (who still overwhelmingly vote for the Dems, though they are growing uncomfortable with the anti-religious sentiment of the first part of the base). How do you "fix" that?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. It depends on what the goal is. If the goal is the Presidency, forget it -- there aren't enough of these people in the places that grew them to overcome the social conservatives. However, if the goal is a '94-style takeover, they can do some pickoffs in the Northeast and Midwest suburbs that have been stubbornly voting moderate Republican. Newt was brazen in '94, successfully linking long-tenured moderate Democrats with Ted Kennedy. The goal for Dems in '06 will be to attack a few key people -- Santorum in PA, the TN open seat (Frist retiring - Harold Ford, anyone?), the IN open seat (Lugar retiring), Talent in MO, Chafee in RI (though I think there's a better chance he'll switch sides than lose) -- convincing suburbanites that religious nutjobs control their Senator. Yes, I know, in Santorum's case, that takes no convincing. But '94 was almost stealth in its revolution, save a couple of big-name scalps like Foley. Dems need to work the same strategy.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Its far easier to target a specific group than it is to entirely change your whole approach, however. I don't necessarily want it to. True - although I think a lot of that comes from fabulous redistricting plans. Such as the one in Texas, which saw the fall of some long serving Dems. (Not that I need to tell you about it.) And furthermore, don't smaller states get 3 reps? Most of those smaller states being republican? Add all that in, and you get a small disparity, but our current disparity is pretty small. Fair enough. The worst thing for Republicans would be to choke the life out of the Democratic party. Because whatever new animal arises, it would be free of the stench of "liberalism", "failure" and "big government". It would have the same ideas, but none of the negative branding. And a new party would coalesce, because there would be no other choice. It would be like the death of the Whigs. Would it be worth killing the aimless and rudderless Democratic party to save it, and create the "Social Federalists"?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. As Bush has failed to do that, your argument fails.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The thing is that there's an awful lot of centrist republicans out there who are uncomfortable with their party's shift to the right. Why shouldn't the democrats do their best to reach out to them? Important thing to remember is that politics is about improving societies. Well, if the current trend continues, our society is veering far right quick. And this is a disturbing trend. The goal of the Democratic party should be to bring the country back toward the middle, rather than continue to push it toward the far left -- a distinctly unrealistic objective.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The problem is, centrists aren't exactly the pound-the-pavement, get-every-vote-out type that leads political sea changes. I still think the Dems need to experience total catastrophe before it comes back up. Or hope that the divide within GOP force some splinters.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Life is a bit_ch, and then you die. Rinse and repeat. I think the real answer is that the left's lunatics are angry and cynical, at turns shrill and sullen. They're screamers. They jump up and down in the intellectual equivalent of a playground tantrum, or descend into the passive aggressive mode of a Ralph Nader. In other words, transparently pathological. The right's lunatics look like TV anchormen. They're smooth. They talk the good game. They wear nice clothes, and have a preference for Aqua Velva. So the answer for Michael Moore? Get a shave.