Re: How Democratic Party can get back in the game

Greg Sagan's piece in this morning's AGN made some good points, but I take exception to other parts of it.

Sagan asks whether or not Kerry's failure to reach out to middle America is the fault of candidate or the party, and later asserts that Kerry "blew it." I disagree. If major fault lies with anyone on our side it is the Dems who picked the "safe" candidate in the first couple of primaries that set the tone for the others. I don't know anyone who had Kerry as their first pick. He's a stuffy, preppy millionaire and does little to counteract that image. Bush is every bit the wealthy, Ivy League-educated elitist that Kerry is, but he comes off like Tom Arnold, and a lot of the dopes out there bought into that. After 9/11 and the 2002 elections things were looking pretty bleak for the Dems and Kerry took back a lot of ground.

We've been bashing ourselves a lot over the past week. What did Kerry do wrong? What did we do wrong? What did we miss? I have a thought: What if we did a lot of things right? Instead of pointing a finger at ourselves let's point a finger at the people who gave Bush a second term despite his astounding record of failure, because when it comes down to it, it's their damn fault. Some voted for him simply because he is Republican, others because they are jerkoffs who believe in his jerkoff policies. How many voted for him because their preacher told them to? How many voted for him because they are just plain stupid?

Sagan states that the Dems need to start defining themselves instead of letting the Repubs do it for them. I couldn't agree more. Dems have been painted as a party of snobs, elitists, hippies and Hollywood celebrities. Kerry's status as a wealthy New England aristocrat certainly didn't help matters. We need to demonstrate to the country that the vast majority of us are average working Joe's and Jane's and one of the best ways to do that is to get more us involved in running for office. Where is it written that the only people who can represent us are lawyers and wealthy business men? Not only do we need to make our own definitions of liberalism and progressivism, but we also need to do to right-wingers what they have done to us. We need to define them as the borrow-and-spend, bigoted, freedom-hating conservatives they are.

Sagan then suggests that Dems abandon the defense of the minimum wage. This is wrong for two reasons. First, I don't think we should concede anything to the Repubs. You give them an inch and they take a mile. You extend your hand to them and they will bite it off. We give them nothing from this point forward. Secondly, any kind reduction in the minimum wage is going to cause an increase in the number of America's working poor. It will do nothing to slow the jobs moving overseas. The jobs being lost these days aren't minimum wage jobs. They're professional and union jobs that paid well above the minimum. The minimum wage may be the only safety net that keeps people from starving even though they work 40 hr/wk at some McJob.

I don't know if I agree with Sagan's assertion that Dems should "give up the low row in campaigning." The fact of the matter is negative campaign ads work. Look what it got Bush. We should fill 2006 with the most vicious, black-hearted attack ads in the history of politics.

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