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Exactly, we Dems need to let our voices be heard and not just rely on the media to report negative aspects of Republicans. We musn’t be happy right now, we still have some months to go on election and in that time we could get our opinions out there and win over some moderate republicans. We need to focus on health care and gas prices and also the deficit. I still have some hope however that some intelligent Democrats will get Democrats motivated to vote and for our voice to be heard in the country.
Democrats desperately need to have some specific policies. Just relying on not being the GOP is not going to work. Bush’s polls are likely to fluctuate. The closer to elections we get, the more we may hear about more color coded threats posed to the U.S. So the Democrats need some specifics. Bull Moose is also correct about the return of the McGovern faction; they are essentially saying Clinton did not matter. He didn’t matter, yet he did well in elections, even with the impeachment hanging over him. I see the Democrats as getting close to blowing it…but they can reverse this if they can give voters reasons for voting for the Democrats instead of just voting for Democrats because they’re not Republicans.
I could not agree more with the Moose! The Democrats do not seem to have used their time as a minority party to come up with a winning strategy. Voters know they sat back gleefully as GWB’s troubles mounted in scandal-ridden GOP-dominated Washington.
They figured all they had to do was stay out of the way to win in ’06 and ’08. That indicates to me that Dems need new and stronger party leadership. Pelosi and Reid do not seem to be either particularly strong leaders or skillful, strategic politicians. To hear them speculating on what they will do when they regain power has a hollow ring-are they counting chickens before they’re hatched?5
Why bank on “the culture of corruption” when you know the opposition will highlight corruption in your own party? The Dems still suffer from a weak image on national security, and are successfully described as “tax and spend liberals”.
Francine Busby was a very weak candidate who blew her advantage by putting her foot in her mouth in the worst possible way. I probably would have voted for Bilbray too, after hearing her gaffe on such a sensitive issue.I’m just hoping Rahm Emmanuel will get his party into shape-he seems to be one of very few with common sense.It is our only hope to have two-party government in the near future.
Contrast the performance of the Dems with Newt Gingrich’s Republicans in the ’90′s. Newt, tired of being out of power, developed “The Contract With America”, giving voters a clear idea of what the party stood for. He helped Repub. candidates with language tapes which they could use to skillfully convey a strong image. As we all know, the strategy worked like a dream until now.
I agree that the Dems don’t seem to have a consistent strategy or message and to some degree that hurt them in CA-50. But lets get real! The odd that the Dems would make that race competitive, let alone have a shot at winning on an unremarkable political year are slim and none (I’d rather use “unremarkable” instead of “normal” because I don’t know what “normal” is anymore). That’s a district where Reps have a substantial registration advantage and where illegal immigration plays a lot stronger than in most other districts, which makes Busby’s gaffe even more significant.
I don’t think it’s a given that the Dems can retake the House. They have a heck of a good shot at it, though. But if CA-50 showed anything is that (1) Dems can’t afford to make mistakes and (2) Dems need to put a set of ideas, views, plans, whatever to show how they are different from Reps and why.
I disagree with Bull Moose because he is deriving results of the national election based on the CA-50 results. That’s ridiculous. To a greater or lesser extent, local issues do play a role and what resonates in CA-50 may not resonate in other places or not to the same extent. For example, in New York, Hilliary Clinton is going to be reelected by a ridiculously large margin. I don’t hear anyone saying that she’s a shoe-in for the White House in ’08, right?
Marshall Wittmann’s vision of the Democratic party is the Republican Party minus the theocrats. His non stop attacks of the “lefties” who are trying to present an alternative to the Republicans and are the ones who are going to be the foot soldiers is what is wrong. The corporatist neocons of the DLC are not an alternative to the Rethuglicans.
But the lefties, just like the righties, alienate a good portion of the country. That’s why I support centrist candidates-otherwise we just swing from rightie extreme policy to backlash to extreme policy, to leftie extreme policy, back to backlash. Not a good pattern. Sex scandals aside, I thought Bill Clinton hit the right note for America-though there was even a backlash to that moderate democrat. Can you imagine the backlash to Pelosi?
I’m with Ron. Whittmann is an idiot, and I’m not sure he even leaves out the theocrat bit. Whittman even worked for the Christian Coalition.
Kim, if you would have voted for Bilbray due to that gaffe then YOU are what ails is this country, not the polar extremes. It’s gullible fools like yourself who fuel the high-expense negative advertising campaigns that both sides use and destroy our political system.
May I say “if Democratic leaders can’t or won’t come out publically with a solid foundation and plan, why then can’t the left, Democrats, moderates, and Independendents do the same darned thing that Lewis Faracon and one + – million black men that had the guts to stand up and be counted did for a cause or causes they believed in?”
Surely there are at least one million people, whites, blacks, hispanic, Asian, crap, people from every ethnicity, that can afford to take a few days or just one day off from work, depending on distance, just like Faracon and his followers did, and make our voices heard in Washington D C.
It wouldn’t be like going to a foreign land into combat…that takes real guts. It would be just a simple walk down the streets of probably the safest city in the world…Washington D C.
I guess it all boils down to each individual citizen’s opinion of what their nation is worth.
If we can blog the internet then we can clog the streets of Washington for one day…and if the illegal aliens can have the courage to take a day off all over the nation in protest, we surely can muster the courage to take a day off in protest in our own towns and cities. Make these corrupt employers, president and congress feel the rage by our voices in Washington, and our absenses from work.
Or can we?….it does take a modicrum of intestinal fortitude and a bit of organization.
Ya know….after the million man march, and all the illegal aliens stood out in national protest not one single group on the left or middle has even suggested we take a day off in protest…not the DNP, DNC, MoveOn, not even local Democratic party organizations….nobody.
It goes to show which among the people living legally or illegally, citizens or non citizen in this nation have balls to stand out in public and be counted…that’s for sure.
If what I’ve said in my last two posts hurts…I say GOOD.
Elrod- I think we can disagree without name-calling, thank you! Busby was caught on tape telling undocumented workers they didn’t need papers for voting. There’s no way I would have supported her after that idiotic comment. She tried to take it back, but it was too late-apparently she didn’t realize she was being taped. I don’t think it was about negative campaigning-it was about a rookie blunder that probably cost the Democrats the election.
Exactly, we Dems need to let our voices be heard and not just rely on the media to report negative aspects of Republicans. We musn’t be happy right now, we still have some months to go on election and in that time we could get our opinions out there and win over some moderate republicans. We need to focus on health care and gas prices and also the deficit. I still have some hope however that some intelligent Democrats will get Democrats motivated to vote and for our voice to be heard in the country.
Democrats desperately need to have some specific policies. Just relying on not being the GOP is not going to work. Bush’s polls are likely to fluctuate. The closer to elections we get, the more we may hear about more color coded threats posed to the U.S. So the Democrats need some specifics. Bull Moose is also correct about the return of the McGovern faction; they are essentially saying Clinton did not matter. He didn’t matter, yet he did well in elections, even with the impeachment hanging over him. I see the Democrats as getting close to blowing it…but they can reverse this if they can give voters reasons for voting for the Democrats instead of just voting for Democrats because they’re not Republicans.
I could not agree more with the Moose! The Democrats do not seem to have used their time as a minority party to come up with a winning strategy. Voters know they sat back gleefully as GWB’s troubles mounted in scandal-ridden GOP-dominated Washington.
They figured all they had to do was stay out of the way to win in ’06 and ’08. That indicates to me that Dems need new and stronger party leadership. Pelosi and Reid do not seem to be either particularly strong leaders or skillful, strategic politicians. To hear them speculating on what they will do when they regain power has a hollow ring-are they counting chickens before they’re hatched?5
Why bank on “the culture of corruption” when you know the opposition will highlight corruption in your own party? The Dems still suffer from a weak image on national security, and are successfully described as “tax and spend liberals”.
Francine Busby was a very weak candidate who blew her advantage by putting her foot in her mouth in the worst possible way. I probably would have voted for Bilbray too, after hearing her gaffe on such a sensitive issue.I’m just hoping Rahm Emmanuel will get his party into shape-he seems to be one of very few with common sense.It is our only hope to have two-party government in the near future.
Contrast the performance of the Dems with Newt Gingrich’s Republicans in the ’90′s. Newt, tired of being out of power, developed “The Contract With America”, giving voters a clear idea of what the party stood for. He helped Repub. candidates with language tapes which they could use to skillfully convey a strong image. As we all know, the strategy worked like a dream until now.
I agree that the Dems don’t seem to have a consistent strategy or message and to some degree that hurt them in CA-50. But lets get real! The odd that the Dems would make that race competitive, let alone have a shot at winning on an unremarkable political year are slim and none (I’d rather use “unremarkable” instead of “normal” because I don’t know what “normal” is anymore). That’s a district where Reps have a substantial registration advantage and where illegal immigration plays a lot stronger than in most other districts, which makes Busby’s gaffe even more significant.
I don’t think it’s a given that the Dems can retake the House. They have a heck of a good shot at it, though. But if CA-50 showed anything is that (1) Dems can’t afford to make mistakes and (2) Dems need to put a set of ideas, views, plans, whatever to show how they are different from Reps and why.
I disagree with Bull Moose because he is deriving results of the national election based on the CA-50 results. That’s ridiculous. To a greater or lesser extent, local issues do play a role and what resonates in CA-50 may not resonate in other places or not to the same extent. For example, in New York, Hilliary Clinton is going to be reelected by a ridiculously large margin. I don’t hear anyone saying that she’s a shoe-in for the White House in ’08, right?
Marshall Wittmann’s vision of the Democratic party is the Republican Party minus the theocrats. His non stop attacks of the “lefties” who are trying to present an alternative to the Republicans and are the ones who are going to be the foot soldiers is what is wrong. The corporatist neocons of the DLC are not an alternative to the Rethuglicans.
But the lefties, just like the righties, alienate a good portion of the country. That’s why I support centrist candidates-otherwise we just swing from rightie extreme policy to backlash to extreme policy, to leftie extreme policy, back to backlash. Not a good pattern. Sex scandals aside, I thought Bill Clinton hit the right note for America-though there was even a backlash to that moderate democrat. Can you imagine the backlash to Pelosi?
I’m with Ron. Whittmann is an idiot, and I’m not sure he even leaves out the theocrat bit. Whittman even worked for the Christian Coalition.
Kim, if you would have voted for Bilbray due to that gaffe then YOU are what ails is this country, not the polar extremes. It’s gullible fools like yourself who fuel the high-expense negative advertising campaigns that both sides use and destroy our political system.
May I say “if Democratic leaders can’t or won’t come out publically with a solid foundation and plan, why then can’t the left, Democrats, moderates, and Independendents do the same darned thing that Lewis Faracon and one + – million black men that had the guts to stand up and be counted did for a cause or causes they believed in?”
Surely there are at least one million people, whites, blacks, hispanic, Asian, crap, people from every ethnicity, that can afford to take a few days or just one day off from work, depending on distance, just like Faracon and his followers did, and make our voices heard in Washington D C.
It wouldn’t be like going to a foreign land into combat…that takes real guts. It would be just a simple walk down the streets of probably the safest city in the world…Washington D C.
I guess it all boils down to each individual citizen’s opinion of what their nation is worth.
If we can blog the internet then we can clog the streets of Washington for one day…and if the illegal aliens can have the courage to take a day off all over the nation in protest, we surely can muster the courage to take a day off in protest in our own towns and cities. Make these corrupt employers, president and congress feel the rage by our voices in Washington, and our absenses from work.
Or can we?….it does take a modicrum of intestinal fortitude and a bit of organization.
In addition:
Ya know….after the million man march, and all the illegal aliens stood out in national protest not one single group on the left or middle has even suggested we take a day off in protest…not the DNP, DNC, MoveOn, not even local Democratic party organizations….nobody.
It goes to show which among the people living legally or illegally, citizens or non citizen in this nation have balls to stand out in public and be counted…that’s for sure.
If what I’ve said in my last two posts hurts…I say GOOD.
It should hurt.
Elrod- I think we can disagree without name-calling, thank you! Busby was caught on tape telling undocumented workers they didn’t need papers for voting. There’s no way I would have supported her after that idiotic comment. She tried to take it back, but it was too late-apparently she didn’t realize she was being taped. I don’t think it was about negative campaigning-it was about a rookie blunder that probably cost the Democrats the election.
go ahead, keep insulting us, keep calling us names, keep trying to purge us, and see where it gets you.