« SCE to Aux | Main | Sometimes Friends Must Tell Each Other the Truth, New Site Look, Blog Spam »
December 11, 2004
Direction of the Party
Tommorrow morning Rose and I are heading over to the Wyndham at Disney to listen to several of the candidates for DNC Chair speak. Among them will be Howard Dean, which we are quite excited about. It will be interesting to hear the various candidates discuss their visions for the future, and for the party. Which leads me to my next thought...
There are several articles floating around right now about whether we should be fighting an economic war, or a cultural war. David Sirota writes in the American Prospect about how economically progressive candidates have won in very Red areas by having a good economic message. Ed Kilgore counters by pointing out that the candidates to which Sirota refers are much more culturally conservative. I think both of them make fair points, but my conclusion is different then what either of these two draw.
If the Democrats are going to regain control of anything, we need to regain the Middle Class and the Upper Middle Class. I'm talking Small Business Owners, Soccer Moms... suburbanites. And how do we do this? We promises of tax breaks, the end of corporate welfare...and a guarantee that we'll protect public schools. We're fighting a culture war, and yet many of those who align with us culturally are voting Republican for econonmic reasons. If they get people to vote against their economic interests on cultural grounds - so should we. The divide between red and blue America is quite real, and us pretending that reduction in health care costs is going to trump the "God Squad" is naive. Instead - we should get back the people who are terrified Democrats are going to drive up taxes 9000%. The people who vote Red, yet live in Blue areas. We need to campaign on maintaining the walls between church and state, keeping healthcare out of the hands of legislators, litigators, and corporations, and we need to campaign on issues that affect the middle.
We lost in 2004 by only 2% of the vote. We can get that 2% back and then some by fighting this war their way, on their turf - culturally, and mean.
Posted by MikeSager at December 11, 2004 11:33 AM
Trackback Pings
To send a Trackback, please use:
http://www.carpetblogger.com/cgi-bin/mt-whattocheck.cgi/86
Comments
Post a comment