Building a Long-Term Democratic majority

[tblue37]

I posted this as a reply in another thread, but I am dismayed at the evidence that a lot of people on our side don't realize the steps our party has to make to take over the machinery of government the way the corporatists/conservatives did. They started planning in the mid-20th century, and they worked patiently over a generation to transform the political reality in this country--including taking over the federal bench and the media. They also worked to reframe the political discourse, turning "liberal" into a dirty word, the same way they turned "feminist" into a dirty word, equivalent to "feminazi."

We are at a point where we can probably work more quickly than they did to shift the playing field in our direction, but even at that, we can’t undo overnight the damage they have spent an entire generation doing. We have to start, though, by electing a Dem president—even one who doesn’t satisfy all of us—and a large majority of Dems—even blue-dog Dems—to both houses of Congress. The president and the blue-dog Dems can be made to behave, the same way the Republican Party forced its more moderate members to toe the party line, but doing so will take real effort on our part. We can’t let the Rahm Emmanuels of the party control things and decide who runs and who gets elected on our side. We have to be foot soldiers and really put in the time and effort to back up Howard Dean and those like him who are working hard to move the Democratic Party away from the too corporate-friendly right of center position it holds now.

Yes, the post is long--but please bear with me.

If people can't wrap their minds around any other difference between the two parties, they should at least keep in mind that "It's the Supreme Court, stupid"! The next president may appoint as many as 3 or 4 SC justices, if she/he is a two-termer. Bush's appointments have already created a powerful Opus Dei bloc to work against the people's interests for a generation. A Democratic president has a chance to create a powerful, young liberal bloc, if the Dem president has enough of a majority in the Senate to ensure confirmation of good candidates. (I might point out, too, that Chief Justice Roberts' epilepsy is likely to grow worse over time, so he might not serve out as long a term as was once thought. I don't wish this on him, but it is a factor we should also take into account.)

Furthermore, if Dems control the presidency and both houses of Congress, there is a good chance that many more of the crimes of the Bush administration, including DOJ crimes, can be uncovered.

Politics is the art of the possible, and the perfect is the enemy of the good.

I will vote for any Dem nominee, no matter who it is, no matter what office it is for. The somnambulants in our party allowed the anti-human corporatists and fundamentalists to get a huge jump on us over the last generation, so that the game is now being played entirely ON TEHIR HOME COURT. They didn't just say they would win the very next game after Kennedy was elected, or else take their ball and go home. They began plotting and planning, patiently and carefully laying the groundwork for the corporate robber-baron comeback a generation later.

We have to plan ahead. Get a large Dem majority into the two houses and a Dem president into the WH to appoint liberal justices. Also, a Dem president with a strong Dem majority can start redressing the balance of super-conservative justices on the federal bench. The Republicans successfully blocked the appointments Clinton tried to make, while the Republican presidents' appointments end up getting confirmed. If the Dem president has a good Dem majority, the Republicans won't be able to do that this time.

We also need liberals in congress and in the FCC to work toward getting some control over the concentration of media.

If we work hard, especially in the primaries, we can probably replace a number of blue-dog Dems with real liberals. But that would include working hard to educate their constituents, who reflexively vote against anyone perceived as liberal. But even a blue-dog Dem has to toe the party line if there are enough liberals running the party—just as the moderate Republicans were forced to toe the Republican party line while the Republicans were in control.

Instead of focusing narrow-mindedly on one race and one candidate, we must think in the long term. We need to flood the machinery of government with people-friendly types, and that can’t happen if we don’t get a Dem into the WH and a bunch of Dems into the two houses of Congress.

I might point out, too, that this is exactly what the conservatives did to gain control over all levels and branches of the machinery of government—including the media.
But this is a generational task, not a one-race task. The conservatives and corporatists recognized this back in the middle of the 20th century, and that is when they began to work on it. Because we weren’t paying attention, they won.

Pitching a hiss and refusing to play because we can’t undo 50 years of their work in just one race isn’t going to help. The 2006 elections didn’t get us everything we wanted, but it did get us some. We have subpoena power. Sure, we aren’t getting the tough take-downs of Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al., that we want, but more and more keeps getting exposed, and that is helping us to move toward a larger victory in 2008, which will enable us to uncover even more crimes and even do something about them. Our skinny majority isn’t enough—especially since the Repubs can still mobilize the media to make Dems pay if they move too far too fast to bring the Republican criminals down.

[redqueen]

1. Yup... agreed.

It took the right decades to get to this point, and history shows that pendulums just do not swing quickly. Well, unless you count armed revolt... which is out of the question these days.

[tblue37]

2. Maybe I should have posted this in GD.

GD:Politics seems to draw little attention--even though that is obviously where this post belongs.

[CrispyQ]

3. "It's the Supreme Court, stupid!"

That says it all.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your statements, but when I read DUers stating they will not go to the polls in '08 if X is the dem candidate, I want to remind them how much is at stake.