MoveOn.org bids to take over Democratic Party

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MrFun



The key is to tell us what we do not already know about you.

OMFG!!!! MrFun made a real joke!!!!

[Sava]

from studying the CNN poll data and looking at other exit poll numbers from NBC and CBS, I conclude that Wesley Clark would have beaten George Bush. The areas Clark would have beaten Kerry in are terrorism and Iraq. People that say terrorism was the most important issue voted like 86% to Bush. The Democrats need toughness... not compromising with conservative values.

[chequita guevara]

Kerry clobbered Bush with those who considered Iraq the most important issue. It was the WoT that won it for Shrub, and he woulda won that no matter who was running against him, given that the majority of people thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was doing a good job. Even if people trusted Clark to do a good job on the WoT, if you think the Prez is doing a good job, you aren't going to switch horses.

[Sava]

perhaps

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sava
whoever said anything about extremes? you can be liberal and not be an extremist, likewise with conservative... the polls I'm looking at look like this...

"politically, would you consider yourself ________"
a. liberal
b. conservative
c. moderate

and I'm not making up numbers... I'm giving the ranges of what I'm seeing from most polls I am finding online...

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

this shows 21% say they are liberal, 34% conservative...

Ok, then the issue seems to be exactly as Che pointed out earlier. Those are exit polls of actual voters verses my numbers which are total population numbers as given by inside politics.

[Sava]

okay

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DanS


34% of the voting public considered themselves conservatives versus 21% liberal. 34% of the vote is a very strong core.

I've seen this figure alot, and it's misleading. 34% label themselves "conservative" but, when asked about specific programs and policies, many more people favor classic liberal programs than conservative ones.

In other words, what you've got is a significant percentage of the voting public that favors health care reform, campaign finance reform, cutting military spending in peacetime, expanding spending on education, keeping at least some forms of abortion legal, and erecting trade barriers if it means saving American jobs -- and yet calls itself "conservative."

What that indicates is just what MoveOn suggests -- conservatives and the GOP have been very effective at controlling the discourse, very effective at convincing people that "conservative" is a code word for their own ideology -- when, in fact, that seems not to be the case. I've said it elsewhere: the Dems need to stop playing defense and start defining the terms of the debate -- and defining themselves.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
MoveOn is just a website with anti-Bush flash crap and other rabble-rousing stuff.

And just why is that a bad thing?? Remember, almost half the people who voted in the last election, voted against Bush. (I mean, you don't really thing anyone actually voted FOR Kerry, do you?)

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
I've seen this figure alot, and it's misleading. 34% label themselves "conservative" but, when asked about specific programs and policies, many more people favor classic liberal programs than conservative ones.

Even more important...just what does "conservative" mean??

The classic conservative was pro-balanced budget, anti-large government, pro-local government person. Bush has turned this on its head. He's running the largest deficits in history, growing the federal government at a frantic clip and is usurping the traditional roles of local governments.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Even more important...just what does "conservative" mean??

The classic conservative was pro-balanced budget, anti-large government, pro-local government person. Bush has turned this on its head. He's running the largest deficits in history, growing the federal government at a frantic clip and is usurping the traditional roles of local governments.

Exactly. But what the GOP has done is
1) Demonize "liberals" as people who want a 100% tax rate, suspended sentences for all felons, and mandatory gay marriages for everyone who hasn't yet had an abortion...
2) Said to America, "see, you're not a liberal..."
3) and then said "...so you must be a conservative, like me!"

I don't blame the GOP for this. I blame the Dems for letting them get away with it.

[Shi Huangdi]

I think the elections of 2000 and 2004 underestimate the current strength of the GOP. Yes, both elections were close, but the thing people miss is the GOP outperformed how you expect it would do given the circumstances.

In 2000, Gore had the advantage of 8 years of peace and propserity behind. The economy was so good that there should have been a strong advantage for the incumbent party; instead a virtual tie was seen. In 2004, the opposite was true. The economy was widely percieved as being poor, and we were in a bloody war based on questionable pretenses. And yet Bush was able to prevail. The Republicans winning in spit of an adverse political climiate is indicative of their strength as a party.

Ohio is perhaps best demonstrative of this. The Economic circumstance in this were particularly dire, Kerry campaigned on a message of economic populism and of reviving the State's economy. The Democrats had a strong turnout effort in Ohio's cities. And yet, the Republicans were able to prevail in that State nonetheless.

Democrats should also be careful in thinking that they simply need to focus more on populism and communicating that message. Gore in 2000 ran on a populist campaign "The People, not the Powerful" Kerry in 2004 did the same thing, going after Bush heavily on his tax cuts, on health care, and unemployment, even trying to tie in values and patriotism with his populism, saying tax cuts led to underfunded homeland security.

I think the Democratic problem is in many ways a geographic one, the problem of "Red America". It's not that nobody believes in Democratic values and in liberalism. There is a strong core of support for them in the Northeast and on the West coast. But if you look at the States that Bush won, they are all pretty much socially conservative, and for the most part States you would normally expect to go Republican. In addition a number of Kerry's states: MN, MI, WI, PA were close and might have gone to the Republicans under less favorable circumstances for them. Kerry was helped by the fact that the region with the greatest number of swing states, the Great Lakes Region, suffered a particularly bad regional economy this election.

Right now, a Democrat needs to consolidate his own states and pick off a few GOP-leaning states to win. Long term, they will need to find a way to swing some GOP areas towards favoring Democrats.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Especially highlighted IMO in 2004. For Christ sakes it was Bush people. Now granted Kerry is/was/and will always be a Douche Bag, but unlike any other campaign the Dems had money galore, internet backing, and an almost slavishly devoted press. The fact that they still lost says more volumes than anything else.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Right now, a Democrat needs to consolidate his own states and pick off a few GOP-leaning states to win. Long term, they will need to find a way to swing some GOP areas towards favoring Democrats.

Too right. I've been advocating the Dems concentrate on their issues that are important to White working class voters (55% of the electorate), sometimes known as "Reagan Democrats:" (a) an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, (b) quality public education, (c) affordable health care, (d) secure retirement and (e) a clean environment.

It's also misleading to look a "blue states and red states." The real dividing line is blue counties and red counties. Last election, of the U.S.'s 3,000 counties, Bush won 2,500 and the Dems won 500. But the Dems do well in the cities; the Reps do well in the country, so the total numbers of votes in each are about the same. The Dems need to get more "countrified" ... but I'm not sure how we do that.

[MrFun]

Ask Obama how he appeals to rural people in Illinois.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Here's the deal with the center: "center" is not an ideology, like left or right. People in the center tend to want things off both the right and left menu -- for example, they tend to want lower taxes, but also to want fairly extensive government services.

If you want to boil it down even more, it comes to this: Centrists tend to believe that *both* the left-wingers and right-wingers have good ideas. It's just that they don't have *all* the good ideas. IOW, pick and choose, combine and govern. It's that old adage — everyone gets a little bit of something, but nobody gets the whole cake. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, a certain number of folks want the whole cake and, by gosh, if they have to steamroll everyone in their way to get, then so be it.

Gatekeeper