President Clinton is right - when people THINK, Democrats WIN.

[catzies]

GREAT "Campaign Journal" coulmn in this week's New Yorker by Philip Gourevitch about Errol Morris and ads for MoveOn, with real people.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040823fa_fact

Meet Rhonda:

Rhonda Nix—thirty-six, blond, and trim—spends her working days stained with ink, rebuilding laser printers and toner cartridges, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her husband’s parents, retired public schoolteachers, own and run the business she works for, which is thriving (Halliburton is one of their biggest customers), and when her father-in-law learned that she was taking time off to fly to Boston to be in a political ad sponsored by MoveOn, he phoned her up and told her that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with her.

“Tell me about that,” Morris prompted.

“He has this attitude—he’s a Southern man,” Nix said, and explained, “Where I’m from, there’s two things. You’re Southern Baptist and you’re a Republican. You’re closed-minded.” Her father-in-law’s view is that we’ve got a Christian President from Texas and we’ve got to keep it that way, and although Nix said, “That’s not good enough for me,” she didn’t blame him, exactly. Like everyone else she knew, she had been a “huge Bush supporter” in the 2000 election, and the next year, on September 11th, she had felt, she said, that “he’s going to take care of us. . . . He’s going to take care of America.” But she also found herself wondering, Why do people hate us so much?

September 11th made Nix painfully aware of her ignorance of politics. “I didn’t know anything about democracy,” she said. “I don’t even think I knew how to spell it.” She decided it was “the patriotic thing to do” to get informed about America and the larger world, and, as the Administration’s hunt for Osama bin Laden gave way to war in Iraq, Nix felt hoodwinked: “They used our fear from 9/11, and they shifted our direction to Saddam Hussein, to Iraq, when all the time it wasn’t them.” After that, she said, “I changed completely. I realized I was a Democrat.”

<snip>

Nix spoke for nearly an hour, time enough for a motivated, well-prompted person to tell you a great deal about herself and her concerns. It’s tougher to express a world view in thirty seconds, which is how long Morris’s ads are—and the last four seconds don’t count, since the law requires that they be devoted to a placard and voice-over identifying the ad’s sponsor. A week after Morris finished filming his interviews, I went to see him at his studio in Cambridge, and there, on the monitor, was Rhonda Nix in twenty-six seconds: “We’ve got to take care of this country. It upsets me that you can go and spend billions and billions of dollars trying to liberate other people, when there’s so many people here—they don’t need liberation, but they need health care, they need food on their table, they need education. It is time to invest in this country. That’s what I want to hear about, that we’re being taken care of—here, at home. I’m still a Baptist, but I’m no longer a Republican.”


Emphasis mine. Go Rhonda!
:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Kierkegaard]

1. Another 'pug wakes up

Great story. The encouraging thing is this isn't an isolated incident. Lots of people have realized the importance of this election and are aware of what might happen if this administration is given another 4 years to tear down everything that used to make America the inspiration for, and aspiration of many people around the world.

[Morgana]

2. You're Right, but...

I'm still waiting for Democrats (aka the people who woke up and became Democrats to begin with) to truly wake up!

I have a few problems with the route that the main people in the Democratic party have taken.

Why didn't they fight against the term "Liberal" being turned into a "dirty" word during the Reagan years?

Why didn't they vote against the so-called Patriot Act?

Why did they give W. power to go to war against Iraq when many of them weren't sure about that decision?

Why haven't they been more vocal against this administration's environmental policy ("Clean Skies" are they calling it?) when it's anything but friendly toward the environment.

And, after it was obvious to everyone with a working brain that this war on Iraq was ill conceived, why didn't they speak out against the people who began it?

WHY DON'T THE DEMOCRATS STAND UP AND COMPLAIN SO LOUDLY THAT THEY WILL NOT BE IGNORED?

If this one of the only two major political parties in my beloved country cannot stand up against the party of bullies who use dirty tricks to win elections and then work against the people of this country, who are we Independents going to respect?

In my opinion, the Republican party (with a few exceptions) has become a slimy group who will stoop at nothing to feather its own nest.

I expected more from it's only real opposition -- and have been sorely disappointed.

I voted for Nader in 2000 -- in New York State, after the polls showed that Gore was ahead by more than 20 points. (I've voted every year since 1972, when I was old enough to do so: McGovern, Carter, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Nader.)

I'll be voting for Kerry this year, so you Democrats need not convince me to do so.

But your Democratic party needs to get back to its FDR roots and stand up to the bullies in the other party.

My father, who was born when Warren Harding was president, is a staunch Democrat from the South -- North Carolina. He was never a person who felt bias toward anyone due to race, sex, religion, or any other polarizing condition.

He told me recently that, when Republicans phone him to try to talk him into voting their way, he asks, "What did the Republicans ever do for 'common' people?"

These days, I wonder, "What are the Democrats doing to protect the 'common' people from the Republicans?"

Not much these days, it seems.

Convince me otherwise, please.

[Morgana]

3. Oops!

My editor self cannot let this error go by without correcting it.

Please amend the following in your reading, as I am unable to edit it myself now:

"I expected more from it's only real opposition -- and have been sorely disappointed."

What a very stupid mistake for someone in my profession to have made!

(Ah, but now I feel better! :-)

[thebigidea]

4. so you're quoting your own threads now?