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Edited on Mon Jan-09-06 01:01 PM by dusmcj
you've latched onto a very important point - it's a Republican mode to make up for total lack of intellectual capital and platform content by putting forward well-buffed frontmen. If it's got charisma, can wind up the electorate and make them feel good, then hell, let's run it for office.
Well, folks, we would be doing the country a disservice if we were to do anything except work with all our energy to undo this trend. In the collective headscratching over how we didn't landslide one election of 8 years of Democratic excellence in the White House, plus how we didn't landslide a second one running against an ornamental plant and his gardening staff, we have come dangerously close to looking for a "new star" to put up against their "stars". This is what did in Kerry in 2004, that the handlers got a hold of him after the primaries in which it became clear that he would be the candidate, and transformed him from a vibrant lively and smart decorated veteran into a stone-faced cartoon with too much foundation and a voice which delivered a fairly lame message over and over, half an octave too low.
Leave the politics of Fuhrer adulation, "Character" and packaged frontmen to the usual suspects who can't produce anything else, America's conservatives (actually they're the same the world over, but that's irrelevant just now).
The Democratic Party's key failing is that its members have been stupid enough not to understand that conservatives have been making all out war on normalcy for the last 30 years in favor of ideological fanaticism very similar to that of the Taliban. This is not a f*cking tea party folks, the other side is not interested in negotiating, and thinks that giving quarter is for pansies like you. We've been worrying about whether they like us or not and why the people use "liberal" as a cussword (because they've been blasted into numbness by 30 years of clamfucker bombbardment about "family values") and forgetting to in-your-face say "fuck you, you bet we're liberal, and you know what, it's what's best FOR THE PEOPLE, here's the historical record to prove it, so SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU REPUBLICAN SHITBAG". Instead of confirming stereotypes of being a bunch of overprivileged mealymouthed ineffectual fumblers living bicoastal lives and making too much money in the entertainment industry while being detached from the reality of life for the American masses.
There is nothing wrong with the Democratic message as grown into maturity by FDR, it is timeless and absolute, and in accord with the notion of "all men, created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" - freedom from oppression, and access to opportunity untrammeled by social barriers. We've forgotten that it stands by itself, and that the People have been fucked over by a bunch of sloptroughing pigs into believing that the natural state of life is to always have someone licking your ass, and having someone's ass to lick - what passes for "Connected". So let's remember its validity, recall that it's the cure for the latter, and then spread that word in a vigorous egalitarian spirit - "we don't need figureheads, cause our principles speak for themselves, and we invite you to live by them with us".
This is where the rubber meets the road folks - time to prove that the notion that there's no real difference between the parties is wrong, but that rather there is a clear differentiation between what the Democrats offer and what the GOP does. Fail to, and there are a hell of a lot of people who don't care first about the party name, rather they can actually find their principles with both hands and a flashlight and care way more about them than about being members of a club. If the Democratic Party as an institution stops effectively representing those, that demographic will go ELSEWHERE. (Note that ELSEWHERE might be an "expansion" of the two party system to one which represents more than a homogenized moderate mediocrity fronted by a two-piece uniparty. Let's make our choices. Be sure you're ready to stake your future on your assumptions about the size of that demographic. Denial is not a river in Egypt.)
Might work wonders, and spare us the endless cycles of "trow da bumbs out" spawned by Republican promises to champion silent majorities followed by republican sodomization of those silent majorities (and I don't think it's consensual).
Have a nice day (and tell a Republican to go fuck themselves).
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