What's the deal? Almost 5 years here, and a dollar-a-day FReeper and I've never gotten marching orders. Am I missing something? :)I'll be real radical and go way out on a limb and suggest you go jump in the lake.
There, do you feel better now? :)
Posted on 07/28/2005 2:52:20 PM PDT by kristinn
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Against Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them.
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The name of this panel is "Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives."
I was given the privilege of coming before you today, I suppose, because of my expertise on the history of the conservative idea infrastructure.
So it may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.
Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.
As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are un****withable.
It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."
Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.
Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."
They have reason to fear.
There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.
Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."
I won't belabor the point that I believe that the Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.
The Christian right is a political machine. Very little is asked of its cogs: just that they consult the call board on election day, and vote the way it says. It takes enormous effort to get them to do just that, as any of their leaders will freely tell you. Any of Richard J. Daley's precinct captains would have told you the same thing.
It doesn't take much to demobilize a machine voter: Just install some doubt that people who claim to be their champions are not really their champions. If the Democrats had been united against the bankruptcy bill, we could even have demobilized some of these Freepers.
That's the way they did it with us. The stuff about the Democrats being "cultural elitists" spread a nagging doubt. People stopped looking to the call board. Even some of the activists.
The time is ripe to do it to them. A Pentecostal friend of mine just returned from a mission to El Salvador with his childhood church from rural Louisiana. He used to regale me with tales of annual July 4 Pentecostal retreats that were like Nuremberg rallies in praise of the Great Leader. That's over now. The straw that broke the camel's back, he tells me, was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist. They also have vanishingly low faith in Bush's foreign policy, and in the Iraq war.
They're getting demobilized.
That's great. But here's the catch. They have to have somewhere to go. That's where the simple stuff comes in.
Let's talk about Social Security.
The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.
Now think about this: They are drawing on the capital of an entitlement passed 70 years ago.
They'll be drawing on the capital from Medicare 35 years from now. Congressional Democrats won't let them kill it. Because they understand: These programs make life in America fundamentally better. And because these gooses, Social Security, Medicare, lay golden eggs. They manufacture Democrats.
It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.
Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?
It makes a virtuous circle. The most important exit poll finding from last year's election was not about moral values. It was all the people who said they disagreed with Bush on the issues, but they were voting for him anyway because they knew what he stood for.
What I call "superjumbos"—grand policy commitments that span generations—add value by the very credibility of the commitment.
It isn't any accident that not raising taxes is a pledge every Republican makes, on pain of political death. It has not hurt them even though, according to Stanley Greenberg's polls, only 30 percent of Americans call high taxes a very serious problem.
To complete the circle—in the same poll 77 percent called "the state of health care in America" a serious problem.
Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."
Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All. Not, as I found it formulated on the website of even one of the most liberal senators, "access to affordable health insurance."
Simple.
Not easy.
So Democrats, let's get to work.
Sounds like 1) he doesn't believe in free speech, and 2) he's never heard of the Democratic Underground. He's has to have a very "tinfoil" view of things to take a bulletin board for a command center.
Weez got da best here!
#73..just checkin' Ivan :)
I was very surprised that Rick makes nothing of 'Column A'. One would think that the obvious conclusion would be to say:
"So until we identify those guys who think it would be a swell idea of children to try homosexuality for a school project, and throw them out of our great party, we will never get anywhere, no matter how much our economic proposals will benefit the average voter.
What was that, Rick? All your biggest contributors are....OK, I see your problem.
...at...a total...loss...
don't...know...what...to...do.
Somebody PLEASE tell me how to think today! I'm desperate. I'll be here, for hours, awaiting word from the FR Gods.
I'm not worthy....I'm not worthy....
You have not received your ultra secret decoder beeber. You must apply to one of the Mod's as soon as possible. Explain the hugh and series error that has occurred. I am sure they will take the immediate appropriate action.
should this remedy not prove effective, a letter to Helen Thomas claiming you are the Cheney for President Committee Chairman, asking for a donation, would put you in everyone's good graces.
That is the best I can do for marching orders today.
"Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."
The Rats are the true reactionaries in American politics. They yearn for the days before "We the People".
Let's see....
- Union memberships are down from the all time high of about 38% of the workforce to under 15%.
- The AFL-CIO just lost two of it's major memberships.
- The last election busted wide-open-bleeding the notion that a very high turnout of voters would automatically elect the 'rat.
- Rush Limbaugh and talk radio prove daily that libs are useless. In fact, conservatives virtually own AM radio.
- The Internet is chock-full of websites where liberal rhetoric gets hammered daily by conservatives using facts and logic.
- The congressional 'rats haven't come up with a new gullible plan for the masses of asses in over 30 years.
- And with all that staring them in their little rat faces, Freerepublic is their big fear? Hahahahaahahahahah!!
"receiving marching orders"
I haven't received any of those memos....Does that mean I'll be gone on Friday?
That is defident tagline material.
This guy is still trotting out the same stuff that the Demos started selling in the 1890's.
You're an antique. The last of the Victorians.
No you wouldn't! Because you would long ago have left the Democratic party if you believed that. Of course if you are Hilliarity you could say that even though you don't believer it.
What's the deal? Almost 5 years here, and a dollar-a-day FReeper and I've never gotten marching orders. Am I missing something? :)I'll be real radical and go way out on a limb and suggest you go jump in the lake.
There, do you feel better now? :)
Another self-appointed and anointed Washington "expert". I could care less what he has to say.
It's the word "credible" that is the key. You guys lost your credibility a long time ago, and because of this the majority of Americans don't believe a word you say
Oh, I think he meant what he said, "...if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live."
It's because if you vote 'rat, you won't be able to pay another medical bill.
"....was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist".....this is the most revealing line in the whole screed. The Dummies can only see their opportunities in others misery. If we aren't all miserable there's nothing for them "to do for us". Simply an Ivy League liberal mindset. The Pubbies are smart enough to harness their fortunes to others opportunities and facilitate their acheivements. As long as the Ivy League Marxists run Democratic politics they'll be running second.
No, that was "Shock the Monkey" (In college we'd say "Spank the Monkey!")
Well, you'll have to wait a while. I haven't gotten mine yet. (I did learn the secret handshake, though.)
An interestingt example of fatal blindness. The fool jsut can't imagine that anyone would vote as a matter of conscience or spiritual duty. No, in his nasty little utopian world, everyone's a part of one sort of machine or another. That's the essence of the Left - they deny what is best in humanity in order to justify their own sick desire for dominion over every aspect of human thought and endeavor. Remember - they don't merely want you to surrender to them - they want (no, they DEMAND) that you applaud them for enslaving you.
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