When we win the WH this fall, the work has just started.

[Ken Burch]

We're going to need to follow that up with continuous organization and activism, protest in diverse and innovative forms, and an intense effort to build and sustain grassroots momentum for real change.

This is because whoever we elect will be under intense pressure from the Beltway and "the business commnity" to just give up and fit in with the status quo. They'll be under pressure to keep the existing wars going and start more of them throughout the Middle East. They'll be under pressure to pass even MORE reactionary trade deals. They'll be under even more pressure to continue the assault on the labor movement(watch carefully for the first signs of wavering in the Dem pres-elect's support for the Employees Free Choice Act, for example).

We will have to spend the whole four years in the streets and in whatever venues we need to be in reminding this "Dem" administration that WE, not the big donors and not the Beltway, elected them, and that they're obligated to respect our views and carry out our principles.

The 90's showed that we can't trust even a "Democratic" president to do anything progressive if the only political pressure he or she gets is from his Right. No more to Not Fighting Back. No more to Hoarding Capital For The Real Fight. This time, we need to be in it all the way through, and, if whoever we elect in '08 lets us down, we need to replace them with a REAL Dem in '12.

Are you with me, people?

[Benhurst]

1. Would like to join you; but I'm too busy down here counting

my chickens, a job made difficult by their not having hatched yet.

[Ken Burch]

2. There's no conflict between what I'm saying and working hard before the election

I assume you'll agree that letting the last Dem administration face NO pressure from progressives at all ended up being a failed strategy.

[Benhurst]

5. I'm not in disagreement with you about what needs to be done if

we get a Democratic administration elected.

But that is still a big if, despite the euphoria here on DU.

And if in the unlikely event we manage to get a progressive Democrat elected, our task will be far different from what it will be if we end up with another corporatist.

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. LOL!

:evilgrin:

[NightWatcher]

4. how about "When we win the nomination this spring, the work has just started"

the repukes are not going to roll over and play dead. we've got to fight

[Ken Burch]

8. I never said they would. I just meant we shouldn't repeat the "no politics please, we're in power"

approach that destroyed the last Dem administration. We need to be in the struggle for the whole four years. And we need to defend, then AND now, the idea that progressives have a legitimate place in politics and in our own party.

[edbermac]

6. Don't forget the RW media.

They'll be in full attack mode.

[Ken Burch]

7. I meant to include them as well. They will be a huge part of the problem

And simply getting OUR party to fight as hard as the other party will be part of it too.