Today is traditionally the day of kitties and tune lists and getting tore up with your peeps after a long week at a so-so job, but I just want to make sure everyone’s still as pissed off today as we were yesterday about the official end of our rights protections and the beginning of the police state.
Maybe you believe other issues are as important, or more important, than the torture legislation. In general, I’ve been more pissed off about the lack of action on the environment than anything else, with reproductive rights issues coming in a very close second. Whatever you care about most, though, odds are you won’t be able to get very far on it if the government can just call your agenda “terrorist” and lock you up with interrogators that’ll be able to rape you without real fear of prosecution.
But what are we gonna do about it?
People I respect are still mistakenly calling for moderate response to the Democrats’ laydown. As I wrote yesterday, the entire Dem strategy is a losing effort. They sell out in the short term, which buys them little, and then can’t hold the moral high ground in the long term, which means they can’t ever call the Republicans on their shit. It will never work.
But those of us who continue to vote straight ticket Dem keep them running a close second, and that’s good enough for them to think their strategy is working.
12 Democrats voted for the torture bill, but will the party strip them of their committee seats or send any kind of message whatsoever? Nah. They don’t wanna look soft on terror. But the only people who care about that nonsense will always vote Republican. Based on actions like these, I can only conclude that the party doesn’t actually have any backbone, morality, or liberalism left in it.
Should we really be voting for any party that believes the fabricated War on Terror is the only major issue facing Americans? Can we really keep letting the Democrats get away with this and keep our vote? Doesn’t that make us as complicit as the Democrats?
So many people miss the point of this kind of talk. I have no interest in abandoning the Dems. In fact, I want to do whatever I have to do to take them back. And that comes with a little tough love.
I know the Republicans are the real bad guys; the Dems are merely weak. But yelling at the Republicans and their voters because they suck will always fall on deaf ears. It may not be too late for the Democrats, and if not, we have to scare the sense back into them.
It’s time to form a group of abandoned Democrats. It’s time for us to draw together with a voice loud enough to be heard by our party on Capitol Hill.
I’m on it, people. More soon.
It could be like the DLC except not evil.
By the way, while I will be posting some ideas this weekend, I would love to hear what any of you think we should be doing to get the message across.
This deafening silence scares me into thinking you all don’t so much care about reforming the Democratic party, and I hope that’s not the case…
I care so much I can’t think. What can we do? I’m fucking desperate over here in Akansas. It’s the end of the country.
Joe.my.god has a post about a walkout protest on October 5 — I can’t do the cool link thing, but it’s here
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2006/09/world-cant-wait.html
(Feel free to fix it to a cool link!)
I care. Believe me. It’s just it’s hard to think clearly about what to do about it between bouts of hyperventilating and vomiting.
is there such a thing as a singing telegram, only instead of (actually in addition to, they’ll need to spell out the message, won’t they) singing, they come and kick the person in the ‘nads?
i figure if we all split the cost it shouldn’t be too prohibitive to send one to each Democrat who voted for this thing. for starters.
I think we need to come together with a voice and a name that says we are the real Democrats, the liberals who’ve been forgotten by the current leadership’s obsession with winning over the unwinnable right-wingers. We must show them that returning to their liberal roots is both popular and moral. In other words, it is the right way to regain long-term control of Washington (what they want) while doing the right thing by all Americans (what we want). It is the essence of win-win.
Expect more on how we can do it tommorrow…
I thought you were leading up to something. Can’t wait to see it.
I’m with ya. The truth is, as things stand, I don’t feel comfortable voting for the Democrats, because voting for “the lesser of two evils” is predicated on the assumption that if the Democrats finally get a majority, they’re going to do the right thing. I’ve always believed that before; after 17% of them voted for the torture bill and 100% of them failed to filibuster it, I’m gravely concerned that a vote for the Democrats is a tacit vote for the Bush agenda.
If they are to be excused because we’re so close to midterm elections, will the fact that, within a year, they’ll be staring down a presidential election be used as an excuse to go along with the Bush agenda, for fear of looking “soft on terror”?
I feel less and less convinced that the Democratic Party, in its current state, is prepared and determined to stop Bush’s agenda in its tracks. If they’re not, how can I, in good conscience, give them my vote?
I’m not saying I’m definitely not; I’m just saying it’s something I’m thinking about in a way I haven’t before. And the only people who can convince me that voting for the Dems is the right decision are the Dems–and they’re not convincing me at the moment.
Well, you could take a tip from the Ned Lamont netroots crowd and support a primary challenger against the sellout Democrat-in-name-only of your choice. A little late to do that this cycle, though, and it doesn’t look like that Connecticut race is going to turn out all right (the original intent was what the Club For Growth and the like achieved by running a challenger against Spector — scare the incumbant and make him tack in your direction).
As for the 17%, fuck them up the ass. With a corncob. But I don’t think there’s reason to doubt that this would have never happened under a Democratic majority.
Not good enough. We have to demand more. There’s a difference between not being to stop legislation because you’re the minority party and participating in or hardly lifting an eyebrow over the end of our rights protections. They should’ve raised hell, and they didn’t. Now it’s our turn.
Plus, based on their MORTAL FEAR of looking weak (which, ironically, is why they look oh so weak), I’m not sure they couldn’t have been talked into it. Sad, but true.
http://www.100actions.com/
http://domorethanvote.org/
Tomorrow, I’m doing some phonebanking. I get annoyed at people who vote for throwaway third party candidates, say they won’t vote or that they’ll leave the country (before voting). They are often people who have not participated in direct action or electoral politics before. There’s no guarantee how Democrats will behave if they win back the House or Senate but there is at least a meme out there about having principles and a spine that didn’t exist until this year starting with the Alito debacle. I have a small feeling Pelosi, Durbin, Feingold and others would not accept the status quo in Congress.
I wasn’t referring to people posting here you know what I mean. It’s like the public school system. Improve them instead of starting something brand new like charter schools. Again, the meme is out there about democratic principles. Some Democrats (Bill Clinton getting angry intentionally for example) are realizing it’s the only way to win.
The difference between Gore or Kerry and Bush is like night and day. Gore and Kerry would not have initiated preemptive war because are not a part of PNAC and have no interest in the idea of one world order. Hillary Clinton would not initiate a preemptive war. Cmon. To say there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans is whiny.
They are often people who have not participated in direct action or electoral politics before.
This is bullshit. By saying this, you assume that “direct actiopn” means in support of Democrats. The only way to fight Repug Lites is by not voting for them. If they prove to me they will fight against the Repugs, they have my vote. Very few have done so.
I’m only registered as a Dem because my county only offers Dem or Repub and you have to be one or the other to vote in the primaries, and fuck if I’ll be labelled Repub.
BUT, I ain’t to keen on the Dems, either. (“When given two options, take the third” always runs through my head.) Although I haven’t checked the definition of “liberal” lately, I’m still not comfortable with this worldview, either. Too close to keeping the status quo. And really, in this political system there is no viable third party option.
I’m down for changing things up. My position is that this system is fucked and cannot be “reformed”. We need to start all over, and that takes a lot of time and activism (or not, depending on what methods you advocate).
Solutions to our myriad problems (which may all stem to “civilization” itself) are not cognitively challenging by any means, we just gotta get off the Internet/teevee and do the shit.
For me, the number one question is: How far do you want to take this, surface level (i.e., routine political acts, such as voting), or to the roots (i.e. direct action against this culture, e.g. re-cooptation, dismantlement, etc.)?
For me, choosing between one rich/networked white guy/group or the other rich/networked white guy/group isn’t the path to liberation.
One fairly moderate idea: Daily reading for democratic members of congress.
There are many obstacles that prevent the many ideas & comments that arise on liberal blogs from influencing the minds of members of congress. They don’t have the time or computer literacy required to read blogs. They don’t personally read the mass of incoming faxes, emails & letters. And of course, they think we’re rabid, that our ideas are irrational and are poorly thought out.
As cooperatively as possible, liberal blogs should put the best, most succinct and thoughtful posts before them every day. It has to be on paper and edited so that they do not seem naive, hyperbolic or otherwise unrealistic. At least 5 pages a day, a dozen at most.
It should be a combination of (a) general comments on the current issues (b) responses to conservative talking points (c) details and facts that barely register in the media (d) how we and the general public think of their performance (e) analysis of arguments, actions, measures, legislation, tactics etc. That’s pretty much what is already being produced, but it’s the wrong medium.
The obvious problems are that it will probably look like a high-school newspaper, and in most cases it will not go further than the staffers. However, some of them will read it, and pass that information on. They probably will read comments about themselves, and if other members write in it, then it will have a greater readership. The cost is minimal, (fax would be ok) but could over time steer them to our views and give us greater credibility.
A similar, but somewhat less useful idea would be to send out to the major media outlets commentary on their performance and reactions. Emails from individuals don’t have the same impact as an industry wide review.
Deuc, I know from a few people I know who work for Democratic politicians that they’ve started hiring staffers to monitor the blogs. FYI. So, and this is critical, if we want our politicians to quit pussyfooting on the issues, we need to focus on conveying the image that we care about pushing for change. And that’s not happening.
I keep thinking about how that post I wrote praising Al Gore for coming up with a genuinely interesting, workable idea of killing payroll taxes and replacing them with carbon taxes. The vast majority of the comments were people immediately taking a piss on that idea, a lot of them because they have this generic notion that Al Gore Is An Evil Politician So Who Cares What He Thinks He’s Probably Pro-Capitalist, etc. In reality, if they thought about it, they’d probably realize they’d like to vote for something like that. But it turned into a big ol’ lefter-than-thou contest and if I were Gore’s person monitoring blog comments, my note would be after reading that, “Base voters don’t like the idea.” We hate the conservative tilt to the Democrats but from their point of view, we’re very conservative, unwilling to sign onto new ideas.
So Amanda, do you think that part of the problem could be solved by getting the liberal side to be a bit more open to the ideas of politicians and ignore their socio-economic status?
As a Florida voter, I will face a nauseating dilemma this November:
A) Vote for one of the Dems who backed the McCain Torture Act, Democrat Bill Nelson.
–or–
B) Vote for election-stealing Bush-sycophant Katherine Harris.
Or I could vote for a 3rd party candidate without a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning. Oh my fucking god. Whatever plan you come up with for addressing the conundrum we Abandoned Dems find ourselves in, I am with ya, brother.
It’s up.
San, did I say that? No. In fact, the problem was that no one in the thread noticed that the issue—the big old chunk payroll taxes take out of working class paychecks—is exactly the sort of thing people care about. In fact, it reallly did make liberals sound all hat and no cattle on socioeconomic issues, because they’re too busy strutting to care about minor things like helping actual working class people get more money in our pockets.
Betty, vote for the Democrat and hope that it leads to a majority.
Ah, I see what you mean, Amanda. Then perhaps we need to focus on the smaller issues that matter more in voter’s everyday lives? Or maybe help them come to see that the issues we work on are relevant to everyday life? I know a lot of people who dismiss environmental issues and the like because they think it’s something that doesn’t affect them.
They are often people who have not participated in direct action or electoral politics before.
This is bullshit. By saying this, you assume that “direct action” means in support of Democrats.
You mean Republican direct action? Or anarchist and progressive direct action? I was talking about liberals, Democrats, anarchists, leftists, what have you, who whine instead of voting. Or leftists who voted for Nader in 2000.
You mean Republican direct action?
Ha. Haha. HAHAHA! No.