Tag Archives: Democrats

Dammit Democrats!

Dammit Democrats, you screwed up what should have been a landslide victory once again! What in the hell is wrong with you? Never mind, you don’t know what’s wrong unless you establish a committee to create a think tank to determine what’s wrong.

I figure after almost 49 years on this planet and having been registered and voting Democrat for the past 30 years, I’ll give you my insights as an outsider. Do I expect you to listen? No, but it’d be nice if you did.

First, you have got to stop being so damned nice all the time. I recall the first time I noticed that, as a whole, the party is too damned polite. It was during the election between Michael Dukakis and George Bush, Sr. While the GOP was throwing every bit of muck and garbage they could at our candidate, the party kept playing nice. Taking the high road when you should have gone after any weak spots you could find, and there were plenty. Then, when Gore ran and, once again, the party went flat. Same with Kerry. Yes, there is the hacking scandal to blame in part for the current mess, but there’s more to it than that. Which brings me to my next point.

Second, the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and middle class. We’re the party of FDR and JFK! Have we lost sight of being able to not only fight for the rights and welfare of the poor and middle class, but to also communicate with them? The folksy manner of George W. Bush and the populist rhetoric of the current president-elect should remind the party leadership that great ideas don’t mean a thing if you cannot communicate them to folks that may only have a high school education or less. FDR, while being a wealthy man, was able to do this through his demeanor and weekly fireside chats. He used larger words with caution and relatively sparingly. Yet, words are just a part of the issue.

The GOP has campaign offices set up all over the United States all year long and even in non-campaign years. They are visible in almost every small town from coast to coast. Our party shows up around campaign time, then goes away after the election. When the average person can walk past a GOP headquarters 24/7, 365 days a year, but only see a Democratic office during a campaign cycle, what message does that send? It send the message that we are around for you to elect, but no other time. That’s egregious! Set up offices like the GOP does. Be active in communities. Support and raise up candidates who are viable and active members of their communities and not just names. I know when I tried to run for a state legislative seat where I lived in Florida, the local Democratic party seemed resigned to defeat because the incumbent was one who held the office for quite a few years. They wanted people to go door-to-door with petitions for other offices, but didn’t see how a high school English teacher could be a viable candidate. I wasn’t a name. I wasn’t wealthy, so why help? How many other contenders are there who are staunch Democrats who are working class people who don’t receive support from the party that he or she should to even have a chance at contesting a seat? I think there are more than the party leadership thinks.

Third, and this goes along with the second, get out there and talk to people. I think pollsters are relied on far too much and the people far too little. If we are the party of the people, then we need to know what the people think. What affects their lives. What will help them live a good life, send their kids off to higher education or a good job? The things that truly matter to most rank and file voters.

Fourth, celebrate our diversity as a party. We are not a party of one race or one socioeconomic class. We need to communicate that better. We’ve had the greatest opportunity these last 8 years with President Obama in office to show off our diversity. He did many things to help, from the Affordable Care Act to seeing that marriage equality became the law of the land. We didn’t capitalize on that enough, plus we didn’t combat the negative rhetoric about those items enough. We allowed the GOP to incite fear over both of those items far too much. We could have shown how both would help all Americans, again by going to the local level where there were people who saw these things as either government intrusion or as being somehow against our values as a nation.

Fifth, we need to go back and find our roots as a party of the people. There are new generations who don’t recall the victories of our party that helped all Americans. They don’t realize that fair wages, good working hours, vacation/sick time, and other social net programs were due to the efforts of our party in particular. We witnessed a resurgence in our values and roots in the campaign of Bernie Sanders. He, while historically an independent who sided with Democrats on most issues, excited the younger voters. He didn’t do this through his name or by being the preferred candidate of the party, but through listening to what was needed in our country. He reached out at the grassroots level, much like President Obama did, to listen and act for the people as a whole. Hillary had the experience, but Bernie had both the experience and the passion. What’s more, he excited the passion in the largest voting block in our country. (For the record, I supported both candidates in the primaries and supported Hillary once the primaries were over). Hillary tried to excite the voters, but that’s not her style. There’s nothing wrong with her style, but given the opponent was well-known for his loudmouth and willingness to do whatever it took to be elected, her strengths became weaknesses in the eyes of some voters. Besides, the GOP had enough alleged muck on her to sabotage her efforts. We played into their hands, in effect. (This goes back to my first two points).

Finally, the Democratic Party needs to stop being so damned centrist on every issue. We need to embrace our progressive side on some things and our more conservative on others. Instead, we sit on the fence too damned much. There’s nothing wrong with being able to take a conservative position on one issue while taking a progressive tack on another. We can be fiscally responsible, but still find ways to pay for social programs, for instance. We can fix our infrastructure by putting people to work, for instance, though work-fare programs where people who are able to work are trained to do so and given a job to receive their check. Yet, we can also care for those who truly cannot work as well.

We have a lot of work to do to win back both the Congress and the White House, assuming the incoming administration doesn’t sell us out to the Kremlin and set our country back hundreds of years or creates a Fourth Reich out of our country.

How the Democrats/Greens lost this Election and What Can Be Done to Fix It

The results of the mid-term elections were dismal for America. They were dismal for the Democrats and Greens. Let’s face it, they simply sucked harder than an F-5 tornado in Oklahoma. So, what went wrong? How in the heck did the extreme right-winger whip our collective rears and take control of both houses of Congress as well as the governorships of states? They used their usual tactics of fear, voter intimidation, and their mouthpiece, the Faux News Network. (No, I’m not saying their proper name. It might even be best if we simply give it a term used by J.K. Rowling and call it “the network that shall not be named). As Democrats and Greens, we know their tactics by now and should have been able to stop them. So, why didn’t we and, even more importantly, what can we do to fix this mess that our country is now faced with having to deal with?

First, and this is something I’ve said for years, we talk a great game, but cannot run one. If you go to most cities whether they are large or small, you find a storefront that says Republican Headquarters. It’s a year-round business for the GOP/Tea Party to stay in the public eye and force feed their rhetoric to the masses. When it comes to the Democratic Party or the Green Party, or any other party for that matter, their presence is only just prior to an election, then they disappear until just before the next election. That’s not going to cut it nor is it going to win votes. If we want to stay relevant or even become more relevant, we need to be out there all the time. 365 days a year. If we do not go away, then people cannot ignore us. We have to actively campaign at all times and in all places. We cannot rely on our old support system in the unions as they are being squeezed out by the policies of the far right. They are becoming irrelevant to today’s younger voter.

Along those same lines, we have to muster the vote. It’s not enough to have voter registration campaigns, we have to get those who registered to vote out to vote. Although I have not checked the recent numbers, I believe I heard that voter turnout was somewhere around 35-40 percent. That sucks. People do not feel it matters if they vote nor who they vote for as they feel that decisions are made by a shadow government or by corporations anyhow. We have to show them that it matters. We have to bring up what the opposition is doing and has done to undermine real American values. We don’t do that enough. Perhaps we have to physically take people to their polling location to get them out to vote. Why in the heck aren’t we doing that across the United States? We have to make certain that those who we helped to register to vote, but cannot make it to the polls, get absentee ballots and get them mailed in to cast their votes. What we fail to realize, and why we do I have no idea, is that the conservative seniors vote. They have nothing else to do, but watch the network-that-shall-not-be-named and vote, at least when their not driving around on their golf carts or taking tole painting classes. If we don’t get out the vote for every election, then we face horrible things like this last election brought upon our country.

Next, and this part might be somewhat crude, we have to become better at attacking our opposition than we have been in the past. The far right pummels the airwaves through television, radio talk shows, and the internet with their vile rhetoric. They make up stories to scare the American public into voting for them. They do this by using words such as communism, socialism, and liberal, which many people have no freaking idea what they really mean in the first place because they are not included on a standardized test. They play to the ammosexuals by saying that we will take their guns away. They play to the fundamentalists by saying that prayer and God will be taken out of our schools. (Yeah, right. If that’s the case, then two problems exist. First, is that assumes that students will not silently pray on their own. Next, is assumes that God is not omnipotent if a polticial party can cause God to not exist). Ironically, they play to the poor by fooling them into believing that trickle down economics actually works. It doesn’t. The wealthy could care less about the poor or the middle class, just so long as they do their bidding and accept their meager paycheck while paying for crap that the company now makes overseas using sweatshops and slave labor. Where is this so-called liberal media? Why isn’t there a network that is always on the attack against ultraconservative ideas and rhetoric?

Third, the Democrats (and Greens) need to define themselves more clearly against their opposition. I would hazard to guess that if you asked most voters to tell you what either of these parties stand for, then you would get a plethora of sometimes conflicting answers. The time for namby-pamby centrism is over folks. Screw the idea of compromise! The GOP sure as hell did that once they got control of the House and they sure as hell are planning to do this since they have all of Congress now in their greedy, corporate-funded hands. We need to bring out voices like Elizabeth Warren and Warren Sanders. We need to cultivate people to run for office who are able to speak well, back up their speech, and fight harder to win rather than just to make a good showing. We need candidates who will sometimes stop being so damned polite and call a liar a liar and back it up with facts and the other person’s record. Corner their asses and make them defend themselves. We need to stop kowtowing and backing down from a fight as we so often do. Yes, we want to all love in harmony with our neighbor, but sometimes dammit, we need to be more warrior like and less like doormat.

Fourth, as we have learned in this last election as well as most elections held since the 80s, we need the funds to win. As much as we might like to say that anyone can run for office and win, it’s a money game. Many good people who want to run for office simply do not have the money to afford to run for office. This includes the time they need to take off from work to campaign, the airtime they need to run advertisements, the money to pay staff, create flyers, etc. It costs a great deal to combat those who gain their funds through backroom deals with corporate executives and the ultraconservative wealthy. Rather than simply throwing our hands up and saying that the corporations and wealthy will always win, we need to build our campaign financial warchests through taking small, non-corporate donations. Heck, even having bake sales would help. Doughnuts for Democrats or Granitas for Greens, whatever it takes to get the money to compete against these corporate funded conservatives. Look at the Occupy movements as an example of how to raise awareness, get funding, and get out the vote.

Finally, we need to show that our candidates will listen to the people rather than corporations when it comes to running our country. We have people out of work. We have people homeless. We have people who are hurting in so many ways. We need to listen and act to help them in real, concrete ways rather than just talk about it or form a committee to look into it. America needs action rather than inaction. America needs real compassion for one another on so many levels. We see this occur in small ways already, such as soup kitchens and food pantries run by churches and civic organizations. We see it in neighbors reaching out to each other in times of crisis. We need politicians who do this daily rather than just during campaign seasons. We need people who are not career politicians nor lawyers running our country. We need teachers, bricklayers, cab drivers, garbage collectors, anyone who feels it is their civic duty to represent everyone that the office they wish to full will represent to be able to run for an win office. We need to then hold them accountable to do just that and not be afraid to call them out if they do not and demand why they did not. We need to ask our questions and get real answers rather than settling for political rhetoric and feel good statements.

We can take America back, I hope. We can still salavage what may be left of our country after this past election. We cannot trust those recently elected to the majority to do this as they will continue to be beholden to their corporate string holders.

Wake the freak up Democrats and Greens! Take a day to lick your wounds, then fight like hell to save our country!

Election Time-Get your Dem-butts off the couch and vote!

It’s the end of August. Some schools are back in session as Summer draws to a close. Vacation time is ending or will soon be ending for families. Relaxation time is over. However, there is a great deal of work needing to be done as one thing is looming on the horizon that can affect everyone, Election Day. I know, I know, the last thing you want to hear is someone else bashing candidates while stumping for theirs. I do not plan to do that. However, before you cheer too loudly or even think of walking away from this bog post, please hear me out.

This Election Day is very important to the future of the United States, probably more so than most as there are problems that are occurring and have occurred over the last few years that still need fixed or at least have significant action taken upon them. Yet, if you paid any attention at all, then you will see that the current state of affairs in our nation’s capital is not working to make or even attempt to make the changes needed to help our county move forward. One party in particular, with its sub-party faction, has held the United States hostage. It has even threatened to shut down as well as literally shut down our government.

Before you get in a fuss and say that shutting down the federal government is not such a bad thing, please allow for a couple of questions from me to you for your pondering pleasure.

1. Do you like to drive on smoothly paved and otherwise well-maintained highways?
2. Do you like knowing the soldiers and sailors are paid?
3. Do you like knowing that the veterans who have returned from combat are receiving the care they need?
4. Do you like it that those receiving Social Security and/or Medicare/Medicaid due to age or illness are receiving their checks in order to survive?
5. Do you like visiting national parks?
6. Do you have children who attend college or university and receive student loans or grants-in-aid?
7. Do you like knowing our borders are secure?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then you should not be so happy about the possibility of a federal government shutdown because these things do not operate at full capacity or at all if the federal government shuts down. I know for a fact that the US Border Patrol worked without pay during the last government shutdown. That hurt their families, but it also hurt our economy.

The United States Government employs over 4.4 million people, including those in the Armed Forces, but not the approximately 66,000 who work in the legislative branch and the federal courts. Add to that the millions of corporations who hold government contracts and the workers they employ. When the US government shuts down, the US essentially shuts down. People who are not working do not spend or at least do not spend anything additional than for the basics of life. This hurts the economy to the point where those not working for the federal government also lose their jobs. Just think about last year’s government shutdown and what it did to the economy. Heck, just think about what it may have done to you or someone you know that was detrimental to their lives.

I bring this up because, in spite of what individuals in Congress have said to the contrary, they are prepared to do this again to get their own way (at the taxpayers expense)if they win enough seats in Congress. It is already bad enough that the House of Representatives is filled with a majority of those who were responsible for the last government shutdown, but they want both houses of Congress so that they can shut it down again.

We, the people of the United States of America, cannot allow that to happen. We cannot.

However, it likely will happen if the Republicans and their Tea Party sub-faction win a majority. They have said as much as recent as last week when Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky suggested that if the Republicans win a majority in the Senate, then they would threaten and likely shut down the government once again to get their own way (http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/08/21/3474287/senate-candidate-reiterates-support-for-shutting-down-the-government/).

The last government shutdown, according to ThinkProgress, “reduced economic output by 0.25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 and cost about 120,000 private sector jobs in the first two weeks of October”(http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/08/21/3474287/senate-candidate-reiterates-support-for-shutting-down-the-government/).

In this same article, it states that “McConnell told reporters that the country could expect more shutdowns in the future, pledging to attach a host of Republican policy priorities to must-pass spending bills if the GOP takes back the senate in November”(http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/08/21/3474287/senate-candidate-reiterates-support-for-shutting-down-the-government/).

The only way this can happen is if Democratic voters and those allied with them do not get out and vote. America needs to have more truly progressive minded people in office if it is to prosper. The economy is on the mend, another shutdown could jeopardize that and drag our country back to where it was before with high unemployment and the disasters that accompany it.

One problem with getting out Democrats to vote is the recent passing of state laws requiring identification to vote that goes beyond the basics. These so-called voter fraud prevention laws have been enacted to actually cause more fraud to occur in the form of those being denied their right to vote even if they voted otherwise for decades. Do a search of those denied to vote in last year’s elections and possibly even primaries and see how this is affecting an American’s right to vote.

If you are reading this and are a Democrat (or Green, or anything except tried and true GOP), please work to get out the vote. Unless the Democratic candidate is truly worse than those opposing him or her, vote for them. Heck, vote for them any way. A bad Democrat is still better than a “good” Republican. Seriously though, get out the vote. Tell your kids to vote, absentee if they must. We cannot allow our country to be mired in the same crap that it has faced in the last couple of years. Even if you do not like Obama or his policies (and even I disagree with some of them), vote for a Democrat unless you have a strong candidate that can win from another party (Green, particularly).

We must take America back from the corporate greed that is the driving financial backing of the GOP/Tea Party candidates. The Koch Brothers and their allies should not be the ones in control of our future. We, the People of the United States of America, should be in charge of our future and, frankly, Democrats are the answer to helping that to occur.

Thank you.