Here and There

Read this at sfgate.com this morning. I can’t help but think the Democrats are setting themselves (and by extension, the rest of us) up for another couple of years of self-inflicted national misery by catering to Republican advances.

All the GOP has to do is define the campaign, and they’ve won it by proxy.

For the opposition party (a hat the Dems just can’t seem to make fit, despite being stuck with it for a dozen years), you’ve got to be bold, you’ve got to play offense and defense (sorry about the sports/war metaphor). Not only must you counter every sordid allegation of the party in power in no uncertain terms, you’ve also got to be willing to do some defining yourself.

Know Your Audience

People don’t understand that when the government cuts taxes (in effect, giving people a little money back), that everyone except a select few at the top gets hurt. It takes the spin of history to tie record-high trade deficits, record budget deficits, ineffective functioning of entire departments of government, a poorly-funded war, uncoordinated responses to natural disasters, and/or incompetence to tax cuts. Sure, I see it clear as the California sky. It’s all connected. But that message don’t play in the heartland, Harry.

Take a page from funnyman Al Franken, and expose the real deal: it’s the incompetence, stupid. This is much, much easier to show than how some complicated formula involving high math and hifalutin language can lead to a wretched existence for us all.

Expose the lies without calling them such. Expose the misplaced priorities (wait, are there any priorities?).

Then, as tough as it may be, follow up with something like John Edwards’s speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Offer something to replace the current broken system. No grand platitudes about some vague notion of “The United States of America.” Fuck that. We’re divided, and this is war.

Most importantly, the language has to be simple. The ideas have to be graspable. America is dumb now, Democrats. Sadly, you gotta pay to play.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.