It seems to me

[the Princess]

There are enough of us here that are so angry and disillusioned by what has happend here that a third party might be an actual viable party in the next election. I am jumping ship (I like to call it saving my life) - I will be a Libertarian if we are still here for the next election. Is anyone else coming with me? Anyone else thinking it's time for a third party to take power??

[CO Liberal]

1. I've Been a Democrat All My Life...

...but I'm beginning to question whether our party can come back from this very major setback.

[sniffa]

2. no

i think we shouLd adopt the repubLican, "scorched earth" poLicy.

if they wanna pLay that way.. FINE! i'm going after them and anyone remoteLy associated with them. i want bLoody vengence and i'm getting it somehow.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. Easier said than done.

Face it- even within the Democratic Party- we're a minority. The Dems have spent the better part of the last 15 years moving as far to the center as possible. There are tens of millions of disenfranchised voters out there, but how many actually have the gall to stand up and do something about this? Not many, unfortunately.

[The Spirit of JFK]

4. Several things would need to happen

We would need to change the electoral process so that representatives are allocated based on percentages. So if the Republican win with 48% percent of the votes...the OTHER parties still have 52% of the representation in DC based on whwtever numbers they got. As is stands now, it's a winner take all....and we saw how a third party can alter things absolutely.

A third party needs to work from the ground up. Local, then regional..then statewide, then national. It can't be done from the top down... People need to see what it can do for them at home. I'm not opposed to the Greens (or ANY thrid party, really), but they haven't done anything in my area...I have no experience with them....so why should I vote for them on a national level, especially in this 2 party winner take all election?

I'm angry and disillusioned as well...and a good part of it is at the Democrats. But most of it is with the the process, the media, Americans themselves, and Republicans. So instead of adding a 3rd party to the mix, I'm going to work on addressing the process, the media, Americans, the Republicans and the Democrats. Despite the last 24 hours, we DO have some inroads....I believe we can reach the moderate Republicans, we got a lot of new papers who endorsed Kerry we can work with, we have a pissed off base, and we have Dean, Clark, Kucinich, Edwards, Obama, and others who can take over our party and reinvigorate it. I'm not ready to give up.

[MissMarple]

5. We have lost our base. The right redefined us and we didn't fight back.

Thirty years ago the Republicans felt much as we do today. They started putting big money into think tanks that in turn produced a rhetoric that resounded with many Americans. In the 80's talk radio began a concerted effort to spread the right wing thinking and repeating their talking points. An example is The Heritage Foundation in part founded by the Coors family. It supports the work of right wing scholars, and they produce books and speak frequently in public. They are all over television. They also control the content of many magazines and journals. Billionaire Republicans fund all of this quite gladly. Every one is well payed for what they do, and they have the resources to get out their message.

Their message is well honed and consistent, and it is designed to appeal to what many Americans hold dear.

Howard Dean is fighting this and he has been using the work of George Lakoff to help focus on progressive/democratic values. I recommend Lakoffs' books. I just finished "don't think of an elephant" which is a quite short overview of his ideas. I'm now reading Moral Politics. He and some professors from Berkley have founded the progressive/liberal Rockridge Institute. They realize we have been totally out maneuvered in articulating our values and the mass of the American people don't understand what liberalism is all about anymore.

Their goal is to frame liberal issues so that we can recapture the debate on our terms, not conservative or neocon terms. This can make us aggressively proactive instead of defensive and reactive. Lakoff explains the differences between liberals and conservatives, and why facts don't sway people.

I posted some of this a day or so ago in Editorials. There are some links there. But you can find stuff here at www.rockridgeinstitute.org.

I'd like to see what you think. For me reading it is like hearing a Chinook after a long cold, bitter winter.

edit to add: And these guys are in it for the long haul. They know it will take time to develop a cohesive message and to get us to move forward with it. I think we can do it faster than the Republicans, our values are better.

[MissMarple]

6. Argh, bad link, all fixed now.

:dunce: