If we keep nominating non-progressive Dems in "Red States"...

[Ken Burch]

Aren't we basically giving up on ever changing the politics of those states?

Aren't we pretty much betraying the progressive people who work under great duress and at times even fear by nominating people who are against the change those progressives are trying to make?

And how, exactly, does giving up on that and conceding the permanent inflamed redness of some areas really help us as a party?

I'll grant you that we might make major gains in some places by bringing back the Bilbo, Talmidge, Stennis and Russell types...but really, what are such gains worth?

[southernyankeebelle]

1. The problem is if a democrat does run he usually is a blue dog democrat. So we don't have much of

a choice. Last time I just couldn't vote for the democrat because he was to conservative. So I wrote Mickey Mouse in. It was a protest vote. I can't vote for a republican.

[Ken Burch]

3. Then we need to be doing more to recruit non-blue dogs.

There are a lot of people in "Red states" who are able to win without pandering to the worst in those states' temporary majority views.

[southernyankeebelle]

12. I would be willing to vote for one. Just can't find them.

[Ken Burch]

18. And that's why we need to be able to find them and train them.

In the south, we should be recruiting the "Norma Rae" types, not the "New South" yuppie moneygrubber types who think it makes them "moderate" to put in recycling baskets on Death Row.

[southernyankeebelle]

25. You know the real Norma Rae died not to long ago of cancer. Your right we sure need these kinds

of people. We need to find them and raise the money for them. They don't have a chance in hell with the superpacs.

[arely staircase]

21. damned if you do, damned if you don't

if you nominate ken burch or arely staircase the repub wins, if you nominate a dem. who can get elected in those places your congressional caucus grows but you become beholden to blue dogs who screw you on important votes. the closest thing i can see to what we want in those places are economic left-wing populists who are pro-gun and suck on social issues that are very important to most of we progressives.

[TheWraith]

2. No.

That overly simplistic attempt to justify nominating non-viable candidates ignores the factors which actually change the politics of a region. Those factors are bottom up, caused by the people, not top down from someone lecturing them about how they should be more liberal.

[markpkessinger]

4. Excellent point. n/t

[Ken Burch]

6. You can't assume that only anti-progressive Dems are "viable" in any particular area

Really, any candidate who can present well, can look like they have strong values, and can present those values as being in touch with the deeper traditions of their states(we could be drawing on the old Populist traditions in many Red states that are just below the surface waiting to be brought back up).

And we can draw from activists IN those states, who are working from the bottom up.

[woo me with science]

34. Yup. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. A candidate has to speak to the real concerns of the local population

If a left candidate comes into a rural area and starts talking about issues that are of interest mostly to city folk, he's not going to make much headway.

The Blue Dogs mouth the "pro-business" "pro-defense" platitudes that Red state voters THINK they're for, so they win if the Republicanite is not well-liked.

But a left candidate who really understood the local people and had realistic solutions for their problems could get a lot of grassroots support.

[Ken Burch]

51. I'm with you on that.

A left candidate has to know the local issues and connect with the local voters.

That's why you study the Populist tradition, the kind of things the Non-Partisan and Farmer-Labor movements spoke of, and update that for the conditions we find ourselves in now.

[TheWraith]

40. I don't have to "assume," I know.

The only people who don't understand that Nebraska doesn't elect Nancy Pelosi are the people who either have never tried it, or who are ideologically dead set on being the "Tea Party Left," claiming that the only reason Democrats ever lose an election is because we're not extreme enough.

I've told this story about a hundred times here now, but I actually spent five months of 2010 working for a state senate campaign of someone who was too liberal for the district. Despite it being an open seat with a brutal Republican primary, the Democrat lost 72/28. Compare that to the campaign two years earlier, when we had a strong Republican incumbent, but a Democrat much better matched to the district, where we only lost 55/45.

[Ken Burch]

52. Nancy Pelosi isn't the only way to be progressive

Last edited Fri Feb 10, 2012, 10:29 PM - Edit history (1)

You bring in the kinds of things George Norris and William Jennings Bryan talked about, updated to be inclusive for all the groups that are in the red states today(and those states, more and more, are as multicultural as any other part of the country).


It doesn't have to be reduced to "I hate and fear folks who are different too". You base it on the fact that most Nebraskans are part of the 99%, that most of them aren't winning under the status quo, and that most of them don't really have that much to gain from their kids getting sent off to more and more wars in the Middle East. It's not that difficult.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

64. Right: and you attack bigotry in a different way, too

You can't attack it head on, a la activist rally, because then people will stop listening.

You have to take the approach, "How is that attitude of yours helping you? Is it bringing the employers back to town? Is it stopping the wars that your kids are dying and getting maimed in? Is it keeping your homes and farms from getting foreclosed on? Is it solving (insert name of biggest local issue--it's important for the candidate to understand what local issues people are upset about) here? Let's concentrate on our own problems here and bring everyone together to find a solution. Let's figure out what's really going on here."

The case of Huey Long is an interesting one. In those days, most Louisiana politicians inserted racism into their campaigns, but Long completely avoided mentioning racial matters and campaigned for governor on two issues: building paved roads (Louisiana had very few in those days) and providing free textbooks for public schools (poor families were not sending their children to school because they couldn't afford the textbooks). However his later career turned out, it was an excellent campaign, because it appealed to everyone about real problems. The middle and upper classes knew that the lack of paved roads was holding their state back economically, and the poor were frustrated that their children couldn't afford to go to school.

Real solutions for real problems. Not Republican Lite slogans or vague platitudes.

I am not a Ron Paul fan, far from it. Anyone who is a whole-hearted fan of his is simply not paying attention. However, I can see where his appeal comes from. He is talking about two real problems: America's absurdly overgrown military establishment and imperialistic attitude toward the rest of the world and the absurdly overgrown War on Drugs.

Where are the Democrats who are campaigning on these issues at all? Mostly in the Progressive Caucus, where they are mostly disrespected by the Dem establishment, and getting re-elected at a greater percentage than the Blue Dogs.

[joshcryer]

57. That tells us little, imo. 2010 was a bad year.

The entire base was demoralized.

[elleng]

7. Good one, Wraith.

[Ken Burch]

9. And, actually, apparent conservatism in many Red states isn't always "bottom up"

Often, it was created from the top down, using paid media propaganda in press owned by the Bourbon types, using coercion and code.

It's actually an insult to assume that people are just naturally like that. In assuming that, whether you realize it or not, you're taking a condescending and insulting view of Red state people...people who should be assumed, in fact, to be populist types that can be brought to an inclusive, anti-corporate, anti-"big shot" message if only the party will help do the work.

The answer is an optimism-based message, not a defeatist one. We should work as though people want a better life and are willing to work for it, not to assume that they're committed to the existing ugliness.

[Ken Burch]

14. You can't point to any evidence that nominating non-progressive Dems

changes the politics of any region in a progressive direction. It hasn't had that effect anywhere. And in the South, the Dems who ran like that have been wiped out by the 'pugs anyway, so what's your alternative? Have them run even FURTHER to the right?

Should the next Bill Clinton shoot the next Ricky Ray Rector HIMSELF?

[TheWraith]

41. You're still talking about forcing change from the top.

I must really have annoyed you to earn three separate replies to my one post.

But you're still stuck on top-down change, the belief that the purpose of an elected official or nominee is to force or drag people over to their point of view. It doesn't work that way, at least not on the stuff that matters. Take gay marriage for example. Fifteen years ago it was wildly unpopular and inconceivable that any state would legalize it, now it's broadly supported by the public. That didn't happen by virtue of some nominee for office getting up on a soapbox and telling people off that they were wrong for not supporting it, it came from slowly evolving attitudes in the public, from greater understanding spread one person to another, from the participation of a new generation lacking the old prejudices, etcetera. Change comes slowly and in little bites.

[Ken Burch]

47. No, I'm not. I'm for bottom-up change

It's just that I believe that the nomination of non-progressive Dems can't possibly lead to bottom-up change.

Nothing I've said was a dismissal of change-from-below.

And as to gay marriage...are you arguing that support for ssm now is the result of Democrats hedging on the issue in the past? It's not like it helped the party or that cause for Democratic tickets to keep their distance from it. Yes, the work goes on from below(and I'm as much about that as you are)but nominating candidates who are to the right of public opinion can't possibly assist that work. You need the work from below and the validation from above. At the very least, you need the candidates of this party saying "yes, it IS legitimate for people to be working for these things, and they are just as much 'real Americans' as anyone else is when they do work for them".

By the same token, it didn't help the early '60's civil rights cause at all that many of our party's leading figures sat on the fence until 1963 or 64.

[sabrina 1]

84. Good point, we're still waiting to see all that change that those Blue Dogs brought

to those areas. In fact the responses you are getting in favor of continuing that strategy just prove what a failure it has been.

I believe if a good candidate spoke only about the issues, especially economic issues that effect the local population, they would have a chance.

[Hawkowl]

24. Leadership matters

Top down, living your life as an example type of leadership can make even more of a difference. Right now, progressives and liberals are demagogued in the media so much so, that everyday people have no idea what a "progressive" is besides evil. The party needs to put a likeable, living face to the idea of "progressive".

A side effect of always running conservative Dems (an oxymoron anymore), is that it pulls the entire national party to the right of where Nixon and Eisenhower stood.

Really, how much more of this can the country stand?

[2ndAmForComputers]

89. Well, then the people, bottom up, should campaign for progressive candidates in primaries.

If a progressive candidate wins a primary against a conservative one, well, then that area is not as conservative as previously thought.

People should be more active in primaries.

[treestar]

136. +1 zillion

The "solution" of some very progressive candidate running and "getting the ideas out there" and thinking they will be convincing to such extent that people will suddenly make a sudden change - that's just dreaming.

These are the people looking for a "strong leader" who will mesmerize everyone. That's got its dangerous aspect.

[mmonk]

5. Yes but nobody listens, especially since the Third Way took over the party.

[Tarheel_Dem]

23. Is "the Third Way" really to blame, or could it be that old school liberalism has been overly....

romanticized, and seems a bit passe to most? And let's not forget the messenger is almost as important as the message itself. Dump Nader-isms, and the message might finally break through. It wasn't that long ago that "liberalism" was a four letter word, hence the move to "progressivism".

"True Progressives" should stop blaming everyone else (but themselves) for their failure to launch. They ran what some would call a "purist" in 2000 (I will forever call him a shyster), and many thought that would launch a massive wave of liberalism, but instead gave us 8 years of the most horrific rightwing leadership in a generation.

A valuable lesson learned by the hardcore rightwing still holds true today: "All politics is local". Progressives should take over school boards, and city councils, state legislatures, etc. Popping up every four years to run for the WH is nothing more than theater. Do the hard work. Reap the rewards.

[Ken Burch]

33. OK...define "Naderisms"

Is any critique of how far to the right our party has moved in the last thirty years a "Naderism"? Was any resistance to the DLC a "Naderism"? What, may I ask, is the point at which legitimate criticism and debate stop and "Naderisms" begin?

(I'm not talking about going third-party here...I'm talking about what ever else you'd consider to be a "Naderism&quot .

And as to the Nader campaigns...which you dragged into this thread even though they have no relevance in this discussion:

Look it would have been better if Gore had won, but really, just slightly better. The left wing of the party, the ones who actually cared about civil rights, social justice and peace(unlike the DLC and the party insiders) would still have been as totally out in the cold as it was under Clinton.

If it was wrong for those people to go, it needs to be admitted that the party was equally wrong to make them feel that they had no alternative but to go. If you marginalize a large chunk of the base and brag about them being marginalized, you're going to have to accept the fact that there are limits to the degree of loyalty and effort you can demand from those people. You don't have the right to say to anyone in this party "we're not going to care about anything you care about, but you HAVE to vote for us anyway". No one responds well to a pitch that hangs somewhere between overweening arrogance and emotional abuse.

Until folks like yourself are willing to admit that the way this party treated the Left in the Nineties had a lot to do with the emergence of the Greens, you're not going to be able to prevent that type of phenomenon from re-occurring. It happened because too many people were left with the feeling that they and their views didn't matter. It took Kucinich and Dean's campaigns to even begin to heal the wounds of the Nineties...and there's a lot of work to be done. The party needs to admit that, really, there ISN'T a center and there isn't a way to put together an effective program for governance if we continue to fixate on said nonexistent center.

It's not asking to much for the party to admit that, even if you feel it was poor strategy for those who voted Nader to do so, they had a right to feel enraged about how they and their values were being treated. Clearly, the DLC thing went too far and we all pretty much know that now. We'd have won in '92 without the left being told to go to hell. The left never deserved that. Neither did labor. Neither did the poor.

[One of the 99]

43. Only a little better under Gore?

Do you think Gore would have started a war based on lies? Or nominated two extreme right wingers to the Supreme Court? Or appointed someone like Brown to head FEMA? To say things would have been only a little better under Gore is the big lie that Nader supporters tell to get themselves off the hook for helping Bush steal the election.

[Ken Burch]

44. The main point is this

The same issues that the left of the party had with how they were treated under Clinton obtained during the Gore-Lieberman campaign(the pointless further snub of the left in choosing Lieberman, a man that brought nothing to the ticket, hardly helped).

The lesson to be learned is not to have the kind of power relations between activists and the party insiders that existed at that time.
There was no difference in the way Gore treated the left and the way Clinton had treated them. And that's what came back to bite the party in 2000.

It never had to be that way. The country wasn't demanding that the Democrats keep the left totally out in the cold.

Having said that...can we please go back to discussing the present? What happened in 2000 has nothing to do with where the party finds itself now...and nothing to do with the subject of the OP.

[One of the 99]

46. Seems you want to go back to the OP

because you can't defend your statement that Gore would have been only slightly better than Bush if he had become President.

[Ken Burch]

49. I want to go back to the OP because the 2000 election is irrelevant to this discussion.

There was no reason to bring in Nader in this at all. We're past that now, for God's sakes.

[One of the 99]

50. I'm just replying to your post about.

It seems that you don't want to or can't defend your statement.

[Ken Burch]

60. It's not worth you obsessing on this.

Last edited Fri Feb 10, 2012, 08:06 PM - Edit history (1)

We weren't even discussing 2000 here. That's not what this thread is about.

[One of the 99]

63. I wasn't responding to the thread

I was responding to your statement which I guess you can't defend or justify.

[sabrina 1]

85. Who was Gore's choice for VP??

Yes, one of the most ardent supporters of War in the ME. Why do you think Gore chose Lieberman for VP? Out of all the progressive democrats in the party? Did Gore even have a say in that choice?

Who knows, we've learned an awful lot since then, not much of it good. Especially about phony Dems, who betrayed the party, like Lieberman, and who supported John McCain in the last election.

Knowing what is now known about Lieberman, and what was likely known about him back then by many within the Party, do you really think after 9/11, that Gore would not have been pressured to go to war in Iraq?

But maybe you have an opinion on why Lieberman was chosen and how, maybe, HE lost Gore a lot of votes?

[One of the 99]

92. VP is just one advisor

And just because Lieberman supported a war ginned up by the lies of the Bush adminstation is no proof the Gore administration would have taken the same actions. You're just trying to rationalize the actions of Naderites who helped Bush steal the election and thus helped give us the war in Iraq.

[sabrina 1]

102. Gore won the election. What are you talking about?

There was once a time when every Democrat knew how the election was stolen. Were you not around at the time? Gore won, the SC stole that election.

And just as I do not know what Gore might have done re Iraq, neither do you.

But we do know that Clinton succumbed to pressure from the warmongers re Iraq, implementing deadly sanctions to appease them, causing the deaths of half a million Iraq children.

[One of the 99]

115. I know Gore won the election

and the SC helped Bush steal it. But if not for Nader there would have been no recount and the SC would have never been involved.

And I can say with certainy that Gore never would have invaded Iraq as Bush did. To suggest that he would is just an outragous lie.

[Ken Burch]

125. Actually, you CAN'T say that with certainty.

9/11 would likely have happened anyway(or at least we can't say for certain that it wouldn't have)so we have no way of knowing what Gore would have done in that situation, with that kind of insane RW media pressure and the people baying for blood, any blood.

Gore is a good guy, but you have no way of knowing if he'd have kept us out of war.

[One of the 99]

130. Yes I can

The man was against the war. All the justifications for the war were manufactured within the Bush administration. If Gore were president, that would have never happened.

[Ken Burch]

131. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson's campaign slogan was "He Kept Us Out Of War"

In 1964, LBJ said "We Seek No Wider War".

Words are just words.

You can't assume anything. You can merely believe.

[One of the 99]

138. FAUX News logic.

What Woodrow Wilson and LBJ did has nothing to do with what Gore would have done.

And if you can't assume anything then you can't assume events would have played out the same way if Gore had been president.

[Ken Burch]

87. Gore was somewhat different...It doesn't matter how different.

It's silly for you to obsess on the one statement when it really doesn't matter....and we can't assume that Gore would have avoided caving into the LCD as president anyway.

We're done with 2000 already.

[One of the 99]

95. Then why do you keep replying.

You can't assume that Gore would have caved especially when he was an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq. You're just using FAUX news logic to defend a statement that you know is pure BS.

[Ken Burch]

99. I'm simply pointing out the your expectations of the man are simply your expectations.

And, really, why are you so fixated with my opinion about what Gore would have been like when it really doesn't matter?
Gore's political career is over and this subthread is a moot point.

It's enough to say that Gore would have been somewhat different. That's all anyone could fairly say. Your assumption that he would have been radically different is as unfounded as Nader's claim that he'd have been no different at all.

[One of the 99]

116. No I'm pointing out that you made a BS statement

that you can't defend with facts so now you're just spinning wildly to justify. Gore never would have invaded Iraq. He never would have backed out the Kyoto treaty. And he never would have implemented tax cuts for the rich as Bush did.

[Ken Burch]

123. You have no way of knowing any of those things

(the tax cuts, maybe, but if his advisors had said he couldn't get a second term without signing off on them...well, get real...and you'd have defended him for it in all liklihood.

I get it that you like the guy...but seriously, there's no reason to assume he'd have been any less of a sellout in office than anybody else. Gore isn't the Messiah anymore than Obama is(and no Obama supporters ever actually THOUGHT he'd be the Messiah).

Let this go already. You're getting boring.

[One of the 99]

128. Now you're spinning wildly

And I never called Gore a messiah. But he never would have taken the extreme actions that Bush had done.

Maybe you think that Nader was a messiah and you can't admit that in the end Nader's actions did more to get us into the Iraq war than anything Gore would have done as president.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

65. Gore was a founding member of the DLC, a long-timesupporter of the military-industrial complex, and

a supporter of Reagan's interventions in Central America. Plus he ran a lousy campaign (vagueness and more vagueness) when it should have been easy to mop the floor with Bush.

Anyone who supported the Contras (and never, to my knowledge, recanted that support) would be capable of starting a war based on lies.

By the way, the Dems voted to CONFIRM Bush's horrible Supreme Court nominees, so there's a lot of blame to go around. This was discussed on DU both times, and each time, the DLCers on this board just shrugged and said, "No use voting against them. They were going to be confirmed anyway."

With Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?

I voted for Gore, but only because Bush was so visibly awful.

[One of the 99]

67. Answer my questions

Do you think Gore would have started a war based on lies?
Or nominated two extreme right wingers to the Supreme Court?
Or appointed someone like Brown to head FEMA?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

69. I am not required to answer your questions, but here goes:

1. Yes, I think he would be capable of that. At the very least, anyone who supported the Contras (you know, the CIA-backed thugs who were former death squad leaders in Somoza's Nicaragua and "fought Communism" by destroying the schools and clinics and irrigation projects that the Sandinistas set up) would be quite susceptible to the types of scare tactics that the PNACkers used to drum up support for the Iraq War. As a supporter of Reagan's military buildup, he would have been susceptible to caving in to Republican accusations of being "weak on defense." It's all hypothetical, but anyone who is 100% sure that Gore wouldn't have gotten us into stupid wars hasn't looked at his record.

2. No, but center-right justices would have been a distinct possibility, to avoid being thought "partisan." It's funny: Republicans are proudly partisan, but Democrats act as if that's a dirty word.

3. That's the one area where I can be confident that he would be better. The Clinton administration handled the Grand Forks floods very well.

[One of the 99]

72. Sorry but your answers to 1 and 2

are total BS. Gore would never have invaded Iraq he actively spoke out against it, and he would have chosen Supreme Court justicies like Ruth Bader Gingsburg.

You have proven yourself to be dishonest to rationalize your skewed opinions. Buh-bye!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

73. But Clinton was bombing and blockading Iraq all through his term

I have no confidence that Gore would not have been susceptible to the neocons' scare tactics.

[rudycantfail]

79. General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Clinton administration

wrote that a Clinton official suggested letting a U.S. plane be shot down to provoke a war with Iraq.

From Shelton's book, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior:

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, "Hugh, I know I shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event -- something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough -- and slow enough -- so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?"

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, "Of course we can ..." which prompted a big smile on the official's face.
"You can?" was the excited reply.
"Why, of course we can," I countered. "Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go."

No, it wasn't Gore who's quoted there. It was most likely Madeleine Albright. http://salon.com/2010/10/15/clinton_official_iraq_hugh_shelton/

But there it is - the Clinton administration discussing ways of provoking an act in order to invade Iraq to kill Saddam. And as Jonathan Schwarz points out, this wasn't the only time this plan was discussed.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003394.html

How does this jive with the creed that the Democratic Party leadership is so fundamentally different from the GOP? You can't shoot this messenger. A behind the scenes bombshell like this has to shake up the world view of all but the most closed minded. There has been a strong neocon streak running through the top of the Democratic Party for decades now. If you dismiss the possibility of a post 9-11 President Gore (with all that pressure from the GOP and his own party leadership) going into Iraq and killing Saddam then you never would have believed what Gen. Shelton has stated. Even now, a lot of people around here will not and cannot accept this story because of the conclusions they'd be forced to draw.

[One of the 99]

80. Yet it never happened.

No US plane was shot down during the Clinton administration so your example meaningless and doesn't prove anything. What did happen was that Al Gore spoke out against the invasion of Iraq and did so when it was unpopular to do so.

[rudycantfail]

82. If you found out that people were conspiring

to murder a family member, wouldn't you want information like who and why? Wouldn't you draw some conclusions about them and want to see them prosecuted or would you say, "hey, no body, no foul"?

What this proves is that the Clinton administration was discussing plans at the highest level to instigate an event in order to invade Iraq. It's as neocon as it gets. Do you agree that there has been a strong neocon streak running through the top of the Democratic Party for decades?

[One of the 99]

83. Really poor analogy

And it still proves nothing because it never happened.

[rudycantfail]

86. Do you think nothing is wrong with

conspiracy to commit terrorism, murder, war crimes, racketeering, you pick it if the crime didn't actually occur?

[One of the 99]

88. Most conspiracy theorys

are totally untrue. Nice try though.

[rudycantfail]

113. The entire Iraq War

which is what we're talking about, was a conspiracy and most of the Democratic Party leadership in the senate went right along with it as did The Brookings Institution, the so called liberal think tank. Only a few years after the Shelton/Albright exchange, the new leadership (Bush/Cheney) carried out that very conspiracy once they had their "precipitous event" which was 9/11.

[One of the 99]

117. The Iraq war was an invention of the Bush Administration

To contend that the Gore Administration would have taken the exact same actions to fabicate intelligence and sell it to the people is just not dealing in reality.

[rudycantfail]

121. Let's get something straight.

"Gore would never have invaded Iraq." You've said this several times. If you stand by that statement it means 0% probability - zero chance.

You are claiming that I said "the Gore Administration would have taken the exact same actions..." In other words, you're claiming that I said if Gore was president he would have invaded Iraq, 100% probability or close to it. That's false. I'm claiming that it's possible (greater than 0%) that he would have, you're claiming it's impossible.

Given how fearful and pro-war the public was after 9-11 and how easily manipulated we were, the enormous political pressure to get the bad guys, to prove that liberals aren't weak cowards under constant fire from the GOP and media, how serious, pragmatic, great American heroes like Colin Powell withered under that pressure, where Bill and Hillary and the leading liberal think tank stood on invading Iraq, the pro-war senate Dem votes and statements, the strategic opportunity to go get the oil, etc...

Wonderful liberal icon at the time Tony Blair was in on it up to his eye balls. Who would have thought he would do such a thing before this?

Add to that the revelation that a Democratic administration (Clinton/Gore) was discussing ways to fabricate an event in order to invade Iraq even before 9-11, it was just a matter of how to stage a big enough event to fool the American people and pull it off.

All of that adds up to 0% chance in your mind. Who's not dealing in reality?

[One of the 99]

122. No you're the one not dealing in reality

The only reason we were manipulated into the Iraq war was because the Bush Administration was doing the manipulating. If the Bush Administration had never existed, the manipulation would have never happened.

[rudycantfail]

126. Washington was crawling with neocons not named Bush

Last edited Sat Feb 11, 2012, 09:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Cheney or Rumsfeld who wanted to invade Iraq. Would the rest of the neocons have been silent post 9-11? Would the media not be broadcasting neocon accusations 24/7? We saw how nearly all but the old lions of the Democratic Party, Kennedy and Byrd, withered under the constant GOP and media pressure. Most of the leadership of the Dems was complicit in justifying the war. The push to go into Iraq was present in the Clinton/Gore administration, before the Bush administration existed, as I've mentioned. So it was present in the Democratic Party at the highest levels then. It certainly would have been stronger after 9-11.

With 9-11, the military industrial complex, national security apparatus and the Israeli lobby saw their opportunity and were determined to get their war for their own reasons.

The pressure to invade Iraq post 9-11 would have been very strong regardless of which party controlled the White House. The Bush administration merely exploited it. But to believe that the manipulation to go to war never would have happened without a Bush administration is to be naive and overly simplistic.

[One of the 99]

127. That's a fantasy

The only reason Cheney and Rumsfeld were in Washington was because they were serving in the Bush administration. They wouldn't have been in a position for manipulate the intelligence if they were not serving in government. The Pentagon was against going to war with Iraq after 9/11, they only relented because the Bush adminstration pushed for it. If Gore had been president none of that would have happened.

[rudycantfail]

135. What I said is true.

You're reality is the red team had a few lying, manipulative bad guys who virtually alone whipped this country into a pro-war frenzy and the blue team had nothing to do with that and certainly would never under any circumstances lie to get into a war because you know they're good.

The pentagon does whatever the civilian leadership tells it to do.

p.s. - i'm done.

[One of the 99]

139. No it's a lie.

My reality IS reality. It was members of the Bush administration who manipulated the intelligence, conflated 9/11 with Iraq and started the war. That is a matter of history.

But you're right, the pentagon does what the civilian leadership tells it to do. However, the civilian leadership would have been members of the Gore administration. To assume that they would have taken the same actions is ludicrous.

[rudycantfail]

140. "It was members of the Bush administration

who manipulated the intelligence, conflated 9/11 with Iraq and started the war. That is a matter of history." - That's true and of course I'm not disputing that part. But it's not the whole truth. You completely omit the role the leadership of the Democratic Party played in the rush to war. 29 of 50 Dem senators voted for the IWR. The Clintons endorsed the invasion. Brookings did as well. How does that fit into your reality? Do you understand why that's a significant part of the history? Can you bring yourself to acknowledge the major role the blue team played in contributing to the invasion? If it's too painful I'll stop.

And again, I'm not assuming that a Gore administration would have gone into Iraq after 9-11. You're saying it was impossible and I'm unconvinced.

[One of the 99]

141. That's because you're blinded by your ideology.

The Dems that voted for the IWR were just following the lead of the Bush administration. If there was no Bush administration, they would have followed the lead of the Gore administration which wouldn't have manipulated the intelligence and wouldn't have push for an invasion of Iraq.

[rudycantfail]

143. I love how you

dismiss 29 senate Dems, Bill Clinton and nearly all the "serious" thinkers of the party establishment backing up the opposition party president's effort to lead America into a disastrous war based on obvious lies as "just following the lead of the Bush administration". As if that's at all normal or to be expected. You don't want to give any more thought to that? Is that what these Dem senators and party leaders were supposed to do, just blindly follow the Republican president and his campaign of bullshit? I look at that and I see a serious problem and want to dig deeper. You look at that and simply blow it off because you are blinded by your ideology.

Also, continually stating your argument is not the same as backing it up.

[One of the 99]

145. I don't need to back up the truth.

The issue is not what some Dems did during the Bush administration. And I don't excuse them for what they did.

Rather the issue is what would have happened if Gore were president and not Bush. To assume that the Gore administration would have taken the same actions and would have lied to get the country into a war in Iraq is just a fantasy.

[Ken Burch]

90. And LBJ said "we seek no wider war".

What somebody said during a campaign or when out of office doesn't really prove anything about what they might have done in office.

[One of the 99]

97. More FAUX News logic.

You're really very intellectually dishonest.

[Ken Burch]

103. No, I'm not

I'm simply pointing out that statements made on an issue while out of office don't really predict anything about what someone might do when IN office.

Gore would have been in a weak position as president...he wasn't even trying to swing the House or Senate and wouldn't have had working majorities in either(even if Lieberman had been there to break ties, the 'pugs would have filibustered anything that mattered).
And who's to say how Gore might have reacted, had 9/11 occurred on his watch(and we can't assume it wouldn't have)to the right-wing berserkers who were baying for Arab blood, and any Arab blood would do?

It's enough to say he wouldn't have been exactly like Bush.

[One of the 99]

118. Yes you are.

You have no facts to back up your original statement and now that you've been called out for it you're using every intellectually dishonest tactic to defend it.

[Ken Burch]

124. You have no facts to refute it.

You can't simply assume that Gore would have stood his ground, when he never stood his ground under fire at any previous point in his political career.

There's no reason for you to be obsessing on this. It really doesn't matter now.

btw...Neither Gore nor anybody else in the DLC ever gave a damn about the 99%. Those people are all about the suites, not the streets.

[One of the 99]

129. Yes I do

Gore was a vocal opponent to the Iraq war. That is a fact. Everything else is pure BS on your part.

And if I'm the one obessing about this, why do you keep replying.

Also, if Gore didn't care about the people than why was his campaign themed 'the people versus the powerful', why was this tax plan geared to the poor and middle class?

It's obvious that you're blinded by your ideology and not dealing in facts so you're engaging in FAUX news logic with no facts.

[Tarheel_Dem]

91. I wish I could buy you a drink, but this will have to do for now. Thank You.

[BzaDem]

55. That is totally wrong, for so many reasons.

No one forced anyone to vote for Nader. The people that did so, and put Bush into office, were not forced to do so at gunpoint.

The fact that they may not have been thrilled with Clinton could not possibly be more irrelevant. Someone can be disappointed with X, yet know that doing Y is not an acceptable response. This is a basic lesson we all learn before the age of 5.

Sometimes, the acceptability and legitimacy of a remedy for disappointment/anger/whatever is not a function of how disappointed/angry they are. Sometimes, a remedy is unacceptable and illegitimate in all cases that occur in reality. This doesn't mean they can't take other, actually acceptable and legitimate actions in response to a wrong. It just means that sometimes, some remedies are off limits. If someone acts on that remedy, the fault is not with those who their action harms (and in some cases destroys). The fault is entirely with the person who took this action. Few issues could be more black and white.

This is a basic principle that has been established for thousands of years. In fact, the rule of law is one example that depends entirely on this basic principle. And there are plenty of others, from small examples to large examples.

Once we have established that this principle exists in certain cases, the question becomes whether it applies to a third party voting in a two party system, where the election even has a chance of being close. This question is so easy that merely stating the question gives you the answer.

Someone cannot simultaneously be a progressive, and work to irreversibly throw our country in an extremist conservative direction. This is true whether or not the purported motive is to "teach them a lesson," "soothe their conscience," "increase future negotiating leverage," pure revenge, or whatever. The motive or reasoning is irrelevant. The problem is with the idea that the remedy could ever be correct, in any realistic circumstance. It is that idea that needs to be sent to the bottom of the ocean. (2000 largely did this, at tremendous cost to millions of people around the world. But amazingly, some people still do not understand the lessons of 2000.)

This is not a case where some fault lies on both sides. That is nothing more than blaming the victim. The most important victims of a third party vote are not Clinton or Gore. Gore is far more wealthy today than he would be had he won, and the same outcome inevitably holds in other races. The victims are the millions of people who suffered and died as a direct result of the third party votes. The victims are the one that would still be alive today had the third party voter decided to not vote for a candidate who they knew, with absolute certainty, would not be inaugurated the following January.

But in some ways, third party voting is even worse than other somewhat analogous examples of unacceptable remedies. The very idea of a third party vote is that a person is entitled to (at some point) get what they want out of the political system. That is such an absurd premise. With regards to political outcomes, people are entitled to one thing, and one thing only: the ability to attempt to persuade.

If people don't like the direction their party is headed, they are free to attempt to persuade the rest of that party's voters (and the country) that they have better ideas. That is the essence of democracy. Scores of people have been failing to get what they want their entire lives. (Many are on the right.) This has been going on for centuries. People are not entitled to a desirable political outcome. They are only assured the right to try to persuade other voters to move the country in their preferred direction.

If someone wants to vote for a third party candidate (or simply go full Republican), they have the legal right to do so. But they should not dishonestly try to convince others that they are progressive, or that they are somehow the aggrieved party (rather than the victims who suffer from their action).

[Ken Burch]

58. And again, there was no reason for that other poster to inject the Nader thing into this thread

Nothing I was talking about had anything to do with Nader.

[Tarheel_Dem]

100. For far too many, Nader is represenative of what's wrong with "liberalism". I only used him as an..

example. Drop Nader, insert Kucinich if you like. My larger point was that while you're seeking for some utopian "progressive" to occupy the White House every four years, you're wasting so much time not building the infrastructure (local) that could sustain such a movement.

I think the reason wavering Democrats came out against Nader so forcefully after 2004 is that the stakes were so different. Many of us despise him to this day. I, personally, can't bear to look at him because he doesn't look well. That being said, I think others have answered your o.p. quite nicely.

[Ken Burch]

105. Nader isn't what I was talking about at all.

My discussion was specifically about what the Democratic Party should do internally. Nader's basic argument is that the Democratic Party is so corrupt, compromised and discredited that there's no reason for progressives to have anything to do with it.

And in 2004, Kerry was significantly more progressive than Gore had been-Kerry mainly lost because he didn't fight back against the smears(mainly because he'd made the insane mistake of having Dukakis people, people who proved that they are permanently incapable of winning a presidential election) in his campaign.

The way to win in Red States is to use the message of economic populism and "the people against the powerful"-not to settle for out-of-touch elitist millionaires like Kaine. We need to be Populist Dems, not Bourbon Dems, to win those states.

[Tarheel_Dem]

109. Wasn't Alan Grayson one of the "populist Dems" you speak of? How 'bout Russ Feingold? He populist

enough for ya? How about the soon-to-be former Rep. Kucinich, he "populist" enough?
They all were progressive firebrands. What happened?

Listen, I don't doubt your concern and/or passion, I just have issues with what appears to be a political naievete on your part about regional politics. Districts don't normally make wild swings to the left based on populist redmeat speeches. If that were the case, we'd have a Congress full of Bernie Sanders'.

But don't let me discourage you from petitioning, drafting, and running the most progressive leftwing "populists" the nation has to offer. Just don't be surprised when the experiment falls flat, and you can again blame the big bad DLC/DCCC/DSCC triple headed monster for the monumental failure.

It would be great if "progressives", which I assume includes Greens/Socialists/Communists, etc.; took ownership of their own failures, and stopped trying to dismantle the Democratic Party which supports varying ideologies. It ain't called "the big tent" for nothing.

[Ken Burch]

110. Grayson and Feingold were beaten by money politics

There's no evidence at all that non-progressive Dems would have won the races that those two lost-and it was the non-progressive ones that did most of the losing in 2010.

And Kucinich was beaten because too many people in the party kept telling themselves "we can't LET ourselves vote for him, even though we agree with him". Fat lot of good going with the "viable" guy did in 2004, and as for 2008, Obama acted like he was going to be a lot more Kucinich-like than he ever ended up being.

2010 proved, once and for all, that it doesn't work to nominate Dems who pander to the worst views in the regions they represent(or who refuse to stand for the real interests of the people in those regions, as they did when the Blue Dogs fought to water-down the healthcare bills to nothing and wouldn't accept "card-check" for union elections, even when they knew there were massive numbers of people in their districts who wanted and still want to unionize and would do so in a flash were it not for the fact that the labor laws are rigged against workers in this country).

And it's not just "red-meat" speeches I'm talking about...it's creating a real sense that our party will once again fight for "the little guy".
We lost in 2010 because we looked like the party of the suites, not the streets(or, in Red state terms the charmers and diners, not the farmers and miners). We need to have the activism from below(which electing "centrists" can't encourage)and the commitment from above. We also need to have our congressmembers and Senators go back to seeing themselves as part of the below RATHER than the above.

But we should never nominate people with fancy cars or who live in gated communities, or who are more likely to foreclose rather than GET foreclosed on.

[Ken Burch]

151. May I remind you that this thread was never intended to be about third-party voting?

I was talking about the kinds of candidates the Democratic Party should and should not nominate. That had nothing to do with third-party voting.

And it's just plain arrogant to say that progressives were somehow OBLIGATED to always vote for the Democratic presidential ticket even in eras(like the Nineties)where that ticket wasn't progressive on much of anything. There's simply a limit to how much one-way loyalty that can be demanded. The party didn't have to let the DLC take over to win, and it didn't have to silence and marginalize everybody else in it throughout the Nineties.

The lesson is...don't do things like that again...is that so hard to accept?

[Dragonfli]

77. Very well said, this passe old liberal agrees (and remembers) /nt

[neverforget2000]

148. A shameful Nader apologist

Only a shameful Nader apologist trying to cope with their guilty conscience of helping Nader spread his blatant lies about Al Gore which helped Bush the thief steal the 2000 election in Florida would try to rewrite history to hide the ugly truth. For the record, had all of the uncounted Florida votes been counted as Florida law required and Al Gore had gained the Whte House as we the people had voted, 9/11 would never have happened, there never would've been a 2nd Iraq war, there would never have been the Bush welfare for billionaires tax cut that bankrupted the country and the banks wouldn't have been allowed to run wild and destroy the housing market. It's long overdue for the Nader apologists to instead of falsely attacking the rightful winner of the 2000 election to look in the mirror at their own actions in 2000. You should be ashamed. Our country will pay for ever for what Traitor Nader and his out of control ego did in 2000. There's no sugar coating that ugly truth.

[Ken Burch]

149. I wasn't attacking Gore. I was just attacking the introduction

of the 2000 election into a thread in which it was irrelevant.

It's not fair to equate any and all progressive critiques of the party with "Naderism". Most progressives did, in fact, vote for Gore in 2000(although most did so with gritted teeth, since Gore's whole political career, up to that point, had been based on driving progressives out of the party or silencing them if they stayed within it.)

And I'm not a Nader apologist-in hindsight, Nader should have stayed out in 2000 or at least done the "safe states" category. But if we concede that Nader shouldn't have run, it equally needs to be conceded that this party was responsible in many, many ways for causing Nader's candidacies. This was an era, after all, in which the party had done everything it could to kick progressive to the curb and was bragging about how people on the left no longer had any influence on its policies or choice of candidates.

(for the record, though, it wasn't Nader's fault that the uncounted Florida votes weren't counted. That was Jeb Bush's fault. Only the Right was to blame for that one...ok?)

Can't you at least admit that this happened, in part, BECAUSE of the party's pointless insistence in the 1990's on moving unacceptably far to the right? And acknowledge that the party needs to learn from that and never, ever swing that far away from the poor and the workers again.

It's not as if the party should just have stayed with the Clinton policies for the rest of eternity, and it was not appropriate to demand that progressives unquestioningly back the party while it stayed with those policies. To do that would be to imply that progressives needed to vote for a party, without getting anything but crumbs and contempt in return, as a kind of penance...an undeserved penance, since progressives weren't to blame for the party's defeats in the Seventies and the Eighties(there were no elections in those years in which the party would have won if it had only stood on a DLC-type program instead of the program it actually did stand on...a program that was never all that progressive anyway).

The lesson is...Nader shouldn't have run, or should at least have run only in safe states...AND the party shouldn't have taken the steps that caused him to run. There's blame on both sides of that. Just admit it and move on already,

Your posting name is destructive, btw, and it can only serve to keep progressives apart at a time when they desperately need to come together. 2000 is a time we need to move past...holding a grudge about it can only make things worse than everyone, especially since you're never going to get everybody who voted against the way you think they should have voted to apologize and recant, and especially since there's no reason to demand that they do. Please change your posting name, and please stop keeping wounds open that should be allowed to close.

[Warpy]

8. It can be argued successfully that the worst Democrat

is still better than the best Republican.

However, I can't cross that choice line. I wouldn't have been able to cross the abolitionist line 150 years ago, either. Both things are just too vital to too many people. If I know a Democrat is antichoice, I'm voting for Olive Oyl.

[Ken Burch]

10. No one here can really fault you for that.

n/t.

[2ndAmForComputers]

93. Except the anti-choice trolls, of course.

But misogynists don't count, so screw them.

[Dragonfli]

17. Not Really, but keep believing that /nt

[gratuitous]

11. Yes we are

Remember when Howard Dean was pursuing a 50 state strategy as chairman of the Democratic National Committee? There were party big shots giving him grief for sinking party funds into Republican hell holes without any hope of winning. I think Utah specifically was named. But what do you know? Given a choice, and with a real live Democrat to consider, a lot of voters turned out for elections to pull the lever, punch the ballot or color in the circle for the Democrat.

There's a hidebound upper level of party regulars who think there's only one way to do things, and they aren't always a real imaginative bunch. Winning an election this year* may not always be the best thing in the long run. Running a solid progressive and losing can change the atmosphere in which politics is conducted, reframe the issues, and encourage people to get off the schneid in their thinking about what government can do. But that is also counter to what some folks high up in the party want. It's ever so much easier to keep expectations low, issue blistering press releases, then head off to the cocktail party with the very targets of that press release. So very cultured.

Right now, for example, some farmers in Nebraska are getting a wee bit concerned that the XL pipeline might run right through their property if and when it gets built. They probably won't like being called wild-eyed radical environmentalists by Big Oil. Are we in a position to lend them aid and succor when it's their turn in the barrel? Because we should be.

*Note that I am talking about the zillions of races for office nationwide, not just the presidential race, which is a foregone conclusion for this year.

[One of the 99]

45. But...

Remember when Howard Dean was pursuing a 50 state strategy as chairman of the Democratic National Committee? There were party big shots giving him grief for sinking party funds into Republican hell holes without any hope of winning. I think Utah specifically was named. But what do you know? Given a choice, and with a real live Democrat to consider, a lot of voters turned out for elections to pull the lever, punch the ballot or color in the circle for the Democrat.

Yes and thanks to Dean's plan a lot of the blue dogs were elected who many here have complained about.

[Dragonfli]

13. Worse than giving up on changing the political views of people in those states,

We are adopting their ideas and merging them with our party. Their ideas become (D)emocratic ideas once the blue dog or corporatist we have in that red state starts writing republican like bills and voting like a republican.

We have effectively given our opponents a nice sized annex within our party and asked them to just put a D next to their name, infiltrate and live there like termites (even though they believe and vote like Republicans).

That is why a health care bill from the early nineties that was extremely right wing (created within the halls of the Heritage Foundation) is now considered a moderate Democratic bill and was passed with the signature of a Democrat, even tho the idea remains the same as when it was called right wing.

This replacing Republicans with Republican Lights (or (R)epublicans in (D)rag as I like to call them) is destroying the Democratic Party and slowly replacing it with a party more like the Republicans of the 80's. Bad move unless you like that sort of rightward regression.

K&R by the way

[2ndAmForComputers]

94. Nail, meet hammer.

[JNelson6563]

15. Three choices, the way I see it.

In red areas we can a.) Run a moderate Dem that could win, support them as much as possible and accept the reality that every Dem can't be as liberal as we like. b.) Run a real liberal, the kind that would pass any DU litmus test, support them with lots of resources in a sure bet losing race, to make a point (??). c.) Run no one at all and leave the race to the Rs.

Julie

[Ken Burch]

19. In other words, give up on ever changing those states.

Since electing non-progressive Dems never has progressive effects anywhere.

[JNelson6563]

28. I choose option a personally.

The best we can do short term, in relation to red areas, is to have a less progressive Dem than a tea-party Rethug. You can change an area long term by education, demographics (move lots of liberals in), or (really long term) work to win over up-coming generations.

I don't see any circumstances where I'd ever consider it a good idea to abandon an election to the Repubs if it can be helped. Even if it's a Dem I disagree with on some issues.

Julie

[Ken Burch]

20. The people we've run in red areas haven't been "moderate", they've been outright conservative

Heath Shuler wasn't "moderate" on anything. Neither is Tim Kaine(other than the death penalty, which is a one-off with him). Neither were any of the dozens of "Blue Dogs" that went down in flames in 2010.

[JNelson6563]

29. Yes, because 2010 was so typical. Excellent example.

Back to reality....

I live in a gigantic Congressional district. Thirty one and a half counties. Very socially conservative on a few issues but liberal on others. They are moderate Dems. The Rs won that race by 1%. The Dem candidate will be a moderate, liberal in many areas but anti-choice. I will vote for him and work to help him get elected though I am an adamant pro-choice person.

It's a big country with lots and lots of races to be won. Many who take the long view will work to get moderates elected instead of surrendering to the Rs.

If we were smart we'd get busy on the local level and start developing some local stars (with liberal views) out in the towns/cities and counties. Politics is much more personal at that level and those dividing lines can get blurry. Win people over on a personal level, at a local level and move up a bit at a time, building strong support along the way.

It takes local support networks to help candidates achieve this sort of thing. I support my local Dem parties to help affect this sort of change. How 'bout you? Working an particular strategy to achieve this goal?

Just curious as you seem pretty passionate about it.

Julie

[Ken Burch]

30. I agree with you on the local level thing...don't think anybody disagrees.

But you have to have the example, to people trying to start as local progressives, that doing that can lead to a chance of winning more important offices later...Those people won't keep trying if we give them the message that the important races, like Congressional and Senate seats, HAVE to be progressive-free zones.

My strategy would involve speaking in, frankly, a pretty class-based way on economic issues...if there was to be some centrism on a few other things(gun rights, for example)I could live with that. But what's more important than anything else is to establish the idea that a politics of change can have a local voice in "red states", that we don't have to accept the idea that those states are conservative and that nothing can change that. To me, this would involve studying the campaigns of people like William Jennings Bryan, Jim Hightower, Henry Howell(a long-standing Virginia progressive), and even groups like Fannie Lou Hamer's Mississippi Freedom Democrats(perhaps we need a class-based equivalent of the "Freedom Schools" that civil rights groups ran in the South). In the Mountain West, it would involve building coalitions of Latinos, Native Americans, labor(a lot of those states actually have strong labor traditions, and there were states with Farmer-Labor traditions like the Dakotas and Nebraska with its Non-Partisan League.

We can bring that history back to life, combine it with the best of the Rainbow, and build from below(which, as any building contractor will tell you, is the only logical way to build anything, since the roof will just fall down if you try to build it first).

[Ken Burch]

32. The other thing you have to contend with, now that I think of it

Is that, if we depend on the "go with the moderate" strategy endlessly, at some point you run into a situation in which any moderates we may have elected will feel that it's in their interest to work to crush progressive/populist movements from below, because those threaten the hegemony of their kind of politics.

So it's kind of a question of deciding the point at which you say "we DON'T need these bozos anymore".

Any feelings on that thought?

[southernyankeebelle]

16. Well I see some posters disagree with me. That is fine. I hope your all right and am wrong. So

far I haven't seen the change yet. But I am praying your all right and am wrong.

[fascisthunter]

22. nah... we need more corporate right wing Democrats to sell us out

while talking like progressives to get elected. They are much more effective, and pragmatic in, in, in... turning this country into a shit hole.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

26. We just settle for one teaspoon of arsenic instead of two as "not as bad".

[former9thward]

27. Very few people have the time, money and energy to run suicide runs.

I have done it twice. If I had not run the incumbent would have run unopposed. Once for U.S. Congress and once for a state representative position. Both times the Party did not offer any money or support of any kind (other than putting my name on a generic list of party candidates). The advantage was I could say whatever I wanted without worrying the money would be stopped. So in debates with my opponent I could be more progressive on social issues than mainstream Democrats are comfortable with.

But it was alot of work and the work continued after the election. I had to continue filing various paperwork to the FEC for months after the election.

[Ken Burch]

31. That is a problem

Part of what needs to happen is a revival of the 50 State Strategy(Obama's decision to let Rahm and Tim Kaine kill that strategy as soon as they took over their post-election posts was his worst political blunder of all, and the party and the country STILL haven't recovered from that).

There also needs to be more training for candidates in how to use social media and You Tube to get around the corporate media dominance.

[Tarheel_Dem]

42. You do realize that the "50 state strategy" swept in a lot of "non-progressives", don't you?

I thought that was your complaint, that they weren't progressive enough? Heath Shuler anyone? The strategy is fine, but you'll still have degrees of ideology to contend with, and that means blue dogs, yellow dogs, and all the other dogs. So blaming Rahm & Caine for "destroying" a strategy that brought you the "non-progressives" you decry, seems a bit contradictory.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

75. i won't say that its an argument of the poster you replied to

but when I've asked the exact same question elsewhere on this topic the general answer has been along the lines of: Dean got a lot of progressives elected, the blue dogs was the DLC forcing their will onto the strategy.

So basically, Dean got all the good people elected, the blue dogs wasn't his fault in the slightest

[Tarheel_Dem]

76. It's a specious and intellectually dishonest argument. Dean=Good, Kaine=Bad.

I respect Gov. Dean for the fact that he's a (dare I say it) "pragmatic" center left political organizer, who was able to capture the imagination of many progressives. Some of the complaints about Dean, before he ran for President, was that as governor of VT, he was a moderate. That might be because he was being compared to Bernie Sanders who represents a more extreme element of the left. But the op's argument falls apart when he seemingly won't give Dr. Dean credit and/or blame, as the case may be, for the very strategy that brought us many of the blue dogs he wants to remove from office

As a lifelong Democrat myself, my philosophy is that a democrat on his worst day, is better than any repuke on his best day. What many progressives fail to acknowledge is that majorities matter. They matter because majorities determine Chairmanships. They matter because we get to decide what comes to the floor for a vote. They matter because we decide what gets investigated. We set the agenda. So any mix of Democrats who get us to that majority is worth working for.

[Ken Burch]

111. As to what gets to the floor

Would you at LEAST agree that we should NEVER go back to the state of affairs that existed until Sixties or Seventies in which non-progressive Dems were always given control of the House Rules Committee and used that control to, among other things, keep civil rights bills from ever getting to the floor for years and years?

[Ken Burch]

112. Would you have said that in 1996, when the differences between Clinton and Dole

were too trivial for anyone to notice, and when the party actually pretty much BRAGGED about that?

And who, exactly, would have been less preferable than George Wallace? Or Bilbo? Or Strom Thurmond when he was a Dem?

[BrentWil]

36. Democratic voters are the ones that nominate "non-progressive Dems in 'Red States'"

I really don't know who "we" are. It just might be that is who the Democratic party in "Red States" want to represent them. This board is far far to the left. The Democratic Party, isn't.

[Ken Burch]

96. You're leaving out the role of DCCC/DSCC candidate recruitment

and the fact that the state party organizations don't do what they are supposed to do in many cases, which is to remain strictly neutral in the primaries.

[Honeycombe8]

37. Your choice in a red state is a Republican, a right-leaning Indie, or a conserv. Dem.

That's it. Those are the choices. Take your pick. I grew up the dark red state of Louisiana. I've lived in the red state of TX for a couple of decades. Trust me. Those are your only choices. It's considered something of a miracle these days for even a conservative Democrat to win a national election. ALL of our TX national reps are Republican, I think. Senators and U.S. Reps. There may be one or two exceptions, but I'm not sure about that. There are always a few pockets of liberals.

Now with the gerrymandering being done by the Republicans, to redraw the districts to weed out those liberal pockets, it will be even more difficult to get a conservative Democrat elected. Looks like we're stuck with John Cornyn and Ron Paul types.

[Ken Burch]

48. But the only way to change rw dominance in those states is to challenge rw ideas

It's useless to settle for replacing their reactionary with OUR reactionary. What did we get, for example, for Alabama Dems settling for Richard Shelby back in the day? He spat on us and then he deserted us.

The answer is to build a progressive resistance culture from below-and that can't be built by nominating people who demonize progressives ALMOST as much as the 'Pugs do. In fact, if you look at the election results for much of the South for the past thirty years, nominating anti-progressives has pretty much been a washout.

We have to be the Populists, not the Bourbons.

[akbacchus_BC]

38. Am confused with your message! Don't you all vote for Dems who will represent you?

[akbacchus_BC]

39. That would suck if I gave myself a heart! n/t

[Ken Burch]

108. It would suck much, much more if you refused to, though.

That would just be sad.

[Rex]

53. I think we have a far bigger problem the regional issues.

Like maybe not letting crooks become more powerful and get a raise and well, more power. That would go a long way to helping overall. Or even friends of criminals that promote billion dollar fraud. I would say more progressive delegates from whatever state they come from.

[Blue_Tires]

54. I'm beginning to think so...

[limpyhobbler]

56. Ok so what we should do is come up with a set of core principals,

and then say nobody can run as a democrat unless they agree with those core principals.

It doesn't have to be overly specific; there should be room for differences.

But a political party should stand for something.

And it could be more specific on some issues if we want it to be, when there is broad agreement.

I think that's how it's done in other countries with parliamentary systems, isn't it?

Why should people vote for a party when there is no guarantee what the candidate stands for?

[Ken Burch]

62. That's really what it's about

We need to MAKE our party stand for something. And that something needs to be the clear opposite of the ugliness the other party stands for.

[dreamnightwind]

59. Thank you for this thread

and for your wonderful posts throughout the thread too. What you're talking about is really the soul of the Democratic Party, if there still is one.

I'm in the camp of go progressive or don't go. Anything else delegitimizes the Party. This has gone on for so long, that I can think of only one organization less legitimate than the Democratic Party, and that of course is the Republican Party.

There is a one-two punch that has coerced many people in this nation to vote against their interests, and against the good of the nation. One, they have been lied to by a massive propaganda machine. Two, certain views on religious or social issues turn many people off to progressivism, or whatever you want to call it.

The policies of so-called conservative Democrats and Republicans rarely if ever represent the true needs and views of the people, regardless of the district. Where are all of the people that support the international trade agreements, offshoring labor to the least regulated market, offshoring capital to tax havens, using the U.S. taxpayer as the financier for the multinational corporate military complex, incarcerating more people than any other nation, generating massive corporate profits while domestic revenue streams are completely hollowed out, allowing the planet's ecosystem to degenerate into an overheated uninhabitable toxic waste dump? There is no constituency for most of these things, yet it is exactly what is being done by centrist/conservative Dems and Republicans.

It's done by lying, it's done by misdirection, it's done by artificial division, and by exploiting real divisions that, while real, are mostly irrelevant to the larger issues we face.

So no, I don't believe more Dems in office is the goal, I believe having reps that actually work for the good of their constituents (as opposed to the puppet masters) is the goal.

If you build a Democratic Party around that, then you've got something. If not, it's just a "my team is better than your team" partisan football game, with owners, players, and cheerleaders, an empty game that allows the puppet masters to sit back in the shadows and have their way with us.

The truth is far more powerful than lies. So, against great odds, this truth, rabidly defended, can prevail. Red can turn blue anywhere, if blue really stands for the people.

[DAMANgoldberg]

61. As a party...

Is the goal to get our policies passed that we hold close to the heart? I must believe their is room in our party for both Alan Grayson and Brian Schweitzer! or locally, a John Spratt and Anthony Foxx.

[WI_DEM]

66. Democratic party has always been a mixture--not only liberals

not only conservatives. That is why in some ways it is still a functioning polical party. Meanwhile the GOP has moved to where they only primarily have hard right nuts and if they keep that up they will end up being extinct in 20 years.

If progressive dems want to run in the red states they certainly can and then the people in the primaries will determine who the nominees are.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

68. It's functioning in the same area where the Republicans functioned forty years ago

The Republican Party has been taken over by loonies.

Everyone who isn't either supremely selfish or crazy is in the Democratic Party.

That's not viable in the long run. It's a recipe for endless infighting. We really need multiple parties and instant runoff voting.

The "moderate" Democrats are the former moderate Republicans, and they have all the money, so they drown out the populists. With IRV, a person could express their preference for a more populist approach without ensuring that a Republican is elected.

I'm happy to say that my DFL caucus endorsed IRV, which the city of Minneapolis already has.

[justiceischeap]

70. Ideally, a politician is supposed to represent their constituents

How far do you think a progressive Dem would get in some red states? I used this same argument in regards to Gabby Gifford; she was considered a Blue Dog... do you really think that a progressive Dem would have been elected in her district?

We have two options, push for changes and try and get a progressive Dem even nominated or elect Blue Dog Dems who are representing their moderate to conservative constituents.

I'd have much less problem with the Republican party, if those that were elected would actually represent ALL their constituents, whereas it seems to me, that Blue Dog Dems tend to do just that. IMO, that makes them a damn fine politician--I may not agree with everything they stand for but it's certainly better than the alternative.

BTW, changing the politicians doesn't change the constituents.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

74. But what is conservative and what is liberal?

You are correct in observing that Red districts don't like "lifestyle liberals."

But they hear so few political/economic liberals (against foreign outsourcing, against agribusiness as opposed to family farms, really up on local economic issues, bringing jobs to small towns) that the word "liberal" gets tagged with "latte sipping, Prius driving, city folk who don't understand us."

[Brother Buzz]

71. Blue Dog Democrats are a necessary element of the big tent

Think fifty percent of everything or a hundred percent of nothing.

[Dragonfli]

78. It seems to me that with them, somehow we have ended up with 50% of nothing

I am seeing Democratic bills that are passed and signed by Democrats that could have been written by the Heritage Foundation in the late 80's or early 90's. In fact the health care plan we have now is mirrored after a 1993 Republican Health Care bill that even Bill, Hill and the DLC considered extreme right at the time, the entire scheme behind both bills was authored by the Heritage Foundation in the late eighties.

I am seeing a President that wants/believes he has the right to execute anyone anywhere without a trial or even published proof.

I am seeing bankers paying a $2,000 fraud fee for the right to defraud people, take their homes and keep most of the profits from doing so.

I am seeing so much right wing crap in done in our Party's name that it is too tiresome to continue listing them,
if you are honest and sighted then you can see it as well.

We end up with 50% of nothing this way

Nothing liberal anyway.

[bvar22]

81. One of the BIGGEST problems facing...

...a true Grass Roots Liberal candidate is making it through the Democratic Primary.
The Old School Establishment of the Party Structure generally slaps down any "Liberal Upstarts"
by steamrolling them with Party Money & Establishment Endorsements in the Primaries.

The Grassroots/organized LABOR tried to unseat Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln in the 2010 Arkansas Primary
by running Pro-HealthCare Pro-LABOR very popular Democratic LT Governor Bill Halter who was polling BETTER than Blanche Lincoln in the coming General Election.
Guess what happened?

The Halter campaign wound up having to fight the whole Democratic Party Power Structure who turned out to support the incumbent Blue Dog.
Obama personally endorsed Blanche Lincoln from the White House,
the very same woman who was campaigning on having derailed the Public Option.
The DSCC provided funding for her primary campaign,
and the White House even sent the Old Blue Dog, Bill Clinton, back to Arkansas to rescue Lincoln's failing primary campaign.
Adding insult to injury, a "White House Spokesman" ridiculed LABOR for "wasting $10 Million Dollars" by supporting a Pro-LABOR candidate in this Primary.

Arkansas was not the only state that encounter obstruction from The White House and the conservative Party Establishment in 2010. They even rallied all the Party forces to try to give the seat in Pennsylvania to a fucking Republican, Arlen Specter.

The same thing also happened in Minnesota among other states.

Here is an account of a primary challenge to the Conservative Democratic Party establishment from 2005.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=160&topic_id=14207




Taking ALL that into account,
I personally believe that a Fire Breathing Populist (a la Huey Long)

*who looks like the Marlboro Man,

*avoids the Wedge Issues,

*who Keeps it Simple & Folksy,

*and has Party Support & Party Money

...can WIN BIG anywhere.

*Extra votes if he/she can comfortably ride a horse and shoot a gun without looking like a complete poser.

Under the current conditions,
ALL this candidate would have to say in answer to ANY question is:
"Well, I don't know about all that, but I DO know that Americans who Work for a Living
have been getting screwed for 30 years,
and I will do something about that."

The truth is that Americans do NOT vote on The Issues, or even on Party Lines.
They vote for the man (or women) they wish they had had as a Father.
When Liberals finally embrace THAT truth about America,
AND if we can overcome the conservative Power Structure running the Democratic party,
we CAN get Liberals elects anywhere.

The meme that "Only Conservatives can win in a Red area" is bullshit invented BY conservatives.




[font color=firebrick][center]"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone [/font][/center]
[center][/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]

[quaker bill]

104. Yes but the liberals you are attempting to elect

will need to grow a spine. You are correct, it is not about having the right policies. It is all about acting like a strong leader. It is very much an image thing.

[dreamnightwind]

114. That was a great post!

Absolutely right on.

[sabrina 1]

119. Excellent post, bvar,and exactly right. The support for Blanche Lincoln by the leadership

of the Dem Party was an eye-opener. And that was not the only time the leadership derailed the campaign of a more progressive Dem who had a chance to win. Looked like they'd rather lose the seat than have a real progressive Democrat win it. But we learned something from that, which is to donate money directly to the candidate you support.

[JI7]

98. a majority in house/senate can help decide what gets voted on

with dems in control even if some conservative agenda has support a dem might be able to prevent it from coming up in the first place.

things are not so simple as you seem to think.

anyways, there are blue areas where people who tend to complain don't make any effort to get liberals elected. examples are Rahm Emanuel's Mayor's race.

[Ken Burch]

107. Agreed.

There's no good reason Rahm should ever have been allowed to win a Democratic nomination for anything. He's for the suites, not the streets.

[quaker bill]

101. You don't change politics in red states from the top of the ticket.

Politicians do not lead a culture, they are the product of a culture.

[Ken Burch]

106. Agreed. But you don't change the political culture

by nominating candidates who are invested in NOT changing it. You need to work from below AND from above.

[YoungDemCA]

120. The problem is that many of those non-progressive Democrats start with the assumption....

...that the state or district that they're running in is, at a basic level, a "conservative" area.

Once you start with that assumption, you're buying into the propaganda that "America is a conservative nation"

-in spite of the fact that actual right-wing policies, whether they're carried out by a Democrat or Republican, have proven to be incredibly unpopular, time and time again.

-in spite of the fact that higher voter turnout almost always benefits Democrats over Republicans.

-in spite of the fact that that attitudes nationwide on issues like gay marriage, income inequality, wars, health care, etc. are becoming ever more progressive

-in spite of the fact that Blue Dogs and New Democrats have smaller caucuses than the Progressive Caucus, and are much more likely to be defeated by Republicans (see 2010).

In spite of these facts, the Democratic Party establishment still doesn't get it.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that a lot of the Party leaders are less concerned about electing progressive Democrats than they are in pleasing their Wall Street and big business donors.

[Ken Burch]

133. Well put.

If you are running for office as a Democrat and think the worst of your district, you'll end up doing the worst for your district.

[Aerows]

134. Because we have been conditioned to be afraid

Afraid of taking up the liberal banner, afraid of being ourselves.

It's kind of endemic when you live in a backwater. I hate it more than you do, because I live it every day. Still, I do my best to talk up the Democratic party every chance I get.

[Aerows]

132. I live in Mississippi

I do my best to get the vote out, but you have to understand people get violent over politics here. It's rough enough being a Democrat but as a gay liberal? Yeah. See how far you get.

EDIT: and to clarify, I AM a gay liberal.

[Rowdyboy]

142. Really! The only out gay official in this god-forsaken state is the corrupt Republican mayor

of Southaven, a small town just south of Memphis who will probably rot in jail by the end of this year. We're a festering swamp of right-wing bigots, most of whom would be far happier living in the 1800's when everyone knew their "place".

I'm a gay liberal Mississippian too and I miss our "Dino" congressmen, Gene Taylor and Travis Childers. They weren't much but they were good for an occasional vote and far better than what we're likely to get in the next 20 years.

Guess it depends on whether you'd rather have a progressive minority that can't accomplish anything due to size or a coalition majority that can't accomplish anything because of factional differences. Neither situation seems to work very well for Democrats. Apparently we can't govern effectively.

[Ken Burch]

154. I was wondering why you specified "a gay liberal"

Thanks for the clarification.

[treestar]

137. We've got to make progress, slow and steady

People in red states will not suddenly lurch to the left just because there is a progressive candidate running. No matter how charismatic that person is.

[Spider Jerusalem]

144. who's "we"? The national party doesn't nominate state and local level candidates.

And state parties are going to be more local and reflective of the tenor of their local and regional politics. The Democratic Party of Georgia, or Kansas, is going to be more conservative than the Democratic Party of California or Massachusetts. That's just the way it is. There is no "we" involved because it's a state-level process, not a national one. And it's not "giving up", it's dealing with political realities as they are. You can nominate a liberal in a red state, but they won't win(outside of liberal/Democratic enclaves, like Atlanta); Blue Dogs on the other hand might. That's just the way it is.

[dionysus]

147. " The Dem Party of Georgia, or Kansas, is going to be more conservative than the Dem Party of Cali"

you nailed it, i don't understand why some people don't get this.

[RebelOne]

150. Because they do not live in Georgia or Kansas.

I live in Georgia and I get it. We have a very limited choice of Democrats on the ballots. That is why I don't vote in my local county elections. There are nothing but Republicans on the ballots.

[dionysus]

146. you've got it close, but a tad off. you won't win just by making the candidate liberal... you win

by first making the VOTERS liberal.

problem with red states is the mainstream democrats for those states are more conservative than mainstream democrats in blue ones.

if you want to elect a dennis type in a red state, you've got to make the voters think like the voters who elect dennis in his district. this takes a long time and perpetual effort.

some people seem to think throwing the most liberal candidate into an election in one of those places will solve everything. that's quick fix thinking and doesn't work.

you've got to instill liberal ideas into the voting populace of those red states before they'll elect a liberal.

the GOP has spent the last 30 years instilling their foul ideas into entire states worth of people, and it's paid off big for them.

where's our counter effort to that?

[Ken Burch]

152. And I didn't say "Just make the candidate liberal"

What I'm saying is support progressive political education and organizing on the ground, AND nominate candidates who aren't going to run as enemies of progressive change.

There weren't any real instances in which the election of Blue Dogs created space for progressive education and action, and the Blue Dogs themselves didn't generally want such action or education to occur, since the creation of larger groups of progressive voters would ultimately have endangered their political careers.

[dionysus]

153. then i guess we kinda agree.