So Anyway, Here's My Advice for the Democrats

The thing is, the type of reforms that it would take for the Democratic Party to reverse its decline would be so easy for them to do, and yet they refuse to perform them, and no, the reforms don't boil down to "essentially become the Republicans." There is certainly room for a political party that is hawkish on foreign policy but has a greater emphasis on the "social safety net" etc. than the Republicans. That is to say, there is room for the New Deal/World War II-based Democratic Party that lasted all the way up until the late 60s early 70s when the "New Left" took over. I personally would still be a bit to the right of this party, but such a party would stand a decent chance at connecting with "red state", working class voters, and would actually be much more in keeping with what the Democratic Party traditionally stood for. Yet, for some reason, as per virtually every election reaction by a Democrat I have seen, this is never the conclusion that they come to. It's always that they should have gone farther left, been more shrill, been even angrier, which further marginalizes the Party and continues the vicious cycle. All it would really take would be something like the following:

1. Excommunicate or "Sister Souljah" or, whatever the term is, Michael Moore and his ilk. A first step would be not inviting him to your convention and sitting him next to an ex-President. But really how hard would it be for the nominee to say something like, "As president I plan to unite this country, and I think that such divisive and hate-filled propaganda, even if it is intended to help 'my side' has no place in our national discourse. I of course respect Michael Moore's freedom to make whatever sort of film he wants but blah blah blah". There you go, now moderate Democrats who don't like Michael Moore are possibly back on your side.

2. Cut loose the fucking celebrities. If a celebrity really wants to make a difference then they can earn their stripes and run for office like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Having a bunch of out-of-touch, ultra-rich, gulfstream leftists associated with you doesn't help get the message out. It does nothing but alienate people. And yes, “red staters” may continue to watch these peoples’ films, buy their albums or whatever, but that doesn’t mean they want to be lectured to about politics by them. They are actually sophisticated enough to separate the two things, believe it or not.

Note that the above two items do not involve one iota of sacrifice of principle. There is no possible principled argument for associating yourself with Michael Moore or with the entertainment industry left. The only plausible argument for doing so is a purely Machiavellian one: that it may help you win. Since that argument has been proven once-and-for-all to be false by this election, in which Michael Moore and virtually the entire entertainment industry both marshaled their full powers in support of Kerry to an unprecedented degree and the Democratic candidate still lost, I don’t really see why their should be any argument on either of these points. So get on with it.

That was the easy part. Now these next items may seem to come closer to matters of principle, and so are a bit more contentious, but really don’t involve any huge sacrifice.

3. And I can’t stress this enough: DON’T NOMINATE SOMEONE FOR PRESIDENT WHO IS A FUCKING TRAITOR. Since the election is over I’ll just come out and say that I do think that John Kerry’s meeting with the North Vietnamese in wartime while he was still in the Navy does qualify as treason. From doing campaign work in New Hampshire I saw that many older Bush-voters, a lot of whom may have been more inclined to support Kerry on the basis of Social Security or Medicare or whatever, refused to vote for Kerry because he was, in their words, “a traitor”. They didn’t need to be reminded this stuff by all the books, ads etc. that came out because Kerry was running for President. They remembered it!

I say that this might be verging on a matter of principle here because I fear that a certain portion of the Democratic base may have found such things in Kerry’s background to be not a bug, but a feature! As in, “Dude. He was, like, so anti-War he actually met with the other side to broker a peace deal behind the President’s back.” But trust me, lots of Americans, many of them even traditionally Democratic voters; find such things to be a deal-breaker. Thoroughly vet the nominee and make sure they have nothing like this in their background. It’s that simple.

4. Now here’s the hard part: Stop having contempt for vast numbers of your fellow Americans. I know you’re saying, “I don’t have contempt vast numbers of my fellow Americans”, but really, you do. As discussed below, after you lose you call the electorate stupid. Would you vote for the party that included a lot of people who publicly called you stupid? You don’t like people who own guns, listen to contemporary country music, or for whom Christianity is a central, serious part of their lives. Since these people comprise a narrow majority of the electorate, this presents a problem.

Comments

[Sally]

ok, so here's the part I have a problem with:

#4 - isn't this a little bit of the people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? I'm under the impression that there's a good chunk of the Repub. party who condems many honest, hard working, tax paying citizens because they are gay.

Let me be clear that I don't think condemnation on the part of either party is good, smart, etc.., but why is this ignored?

[Eric]

Sally:

I completely agree with you. I don't think that this is morally right either.