JayB

"Anyone who has convictions that differ from my own and votes accordingly is stupid." Who are the parochial ones, again? I am just sorry that you forgot to cite people who still believe that protectionism and state ownership of productive resources will lead to an increase in employment, political freedom, and prosperity in your list. Imagine, after all of the empirical evidence that the past century has provided to challenge such beliefs - there are still people who can't remove their ideological blinders, asses the evidence, and think critically about these matters...

Yeah - I am way off on this one. My bad.

He put up the names of the dead soldiers on day-two, after displaying their images in a George Bush Collage on day one. This is both incredibly distasteful and disingenuous, as most of the guys in the fighting units loathe the guy at least as much as OBL, and wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire - and I can't imagine they would countenance him using their memory to further an agenda that seeks to both disparage and undermine the cause that they died promoting.

I think these are only inconsistent if one confuses physical equivalence with moral equivalence. I am against the state imposing restrictions on abortion, and am against the death penalty in practice because it is too flawed and expensive. However, I am at a loss as to how someone could claim that the two acts are morally equivalent with one another.

Pax saves the day. " Gertrude's statement is in response to the play-Queen's repetitive statements of loyalty to and love of her first husband." This quote really was apt here though. It's quite often tossed out there when someone seems to be denouncing something so vigorously that one suspects the charges have credence that the target wishes to deny, or has a personal association with the object being denounced and wishes to conceal it by means of a vociferous denunciation.

Speaking of Funny: Republican Operatives in Disguise

A restatement of the obvious from "The Economist" The great Democratic crack-up Nov 4th 2004 From The Economist print edition Hillary may not be the best person to put her party together again. But she is better than the rabid left NOVEMBER 2nd, which will be remembered as the blackest of days for the Democratic Party, did not dawn that way. Democrats had thought that the stars were aligned in their favour—a problem-ridden war in Iraq; a president with iffy job-approval ratings; a sputtering economy; and, on the day, a huge voter turn-out together with exit polls that showed John Kerry with a clean sweep of the battleground states. By early next morning elation had turned to despair. The battle for the future of the Democratic Party had begun in earnest. How is this battle likely to shape up, and who will be the warriors? Mr Kerry and his running-mate, John Edwards, are destined for the terrible limbo that the People's Party reserves for its failed champions. Mr Kerry's fate will be a little easier to bear than Al Gore's: he has a fabulously rich wife, a brace of mansions and a seat in the Senate. But he will draw bitter criticism for running an ill-conceived campaign. Mr Edwards is well on the way to becoming a man with a brilliant future behind him. What did he add to the Democratic ticket other than a boyish smile and a well-honed stump speech? He failed to deliver either of the Carolinas to the party (even though he was born in the southern one and represented the northern one in the Senate). He has no clear ideological constituency. Now, unite us Nov 4th 2004 Four more years Nov 4th 2004 United States US Election 2004 Hillary Clinton is the big Democratic winner from Tuesday night's debacle. Mrs Clinton is very much the front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2008. By then the country may be desperate for respite from Republican rule and the Iraq war may at last be over. She has plenty of credibility with the left because of her record (particularly on health-care reform) and her sex (remember that the majority of voters in the Democratic primaries are women). But she has moved to the centre since becoming a senator for New York: she has been careful to support the Iraq war and has found herself a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Clintonistas control most of the party machinery, from think-tanks such as the Centre for American Progress to get-out-the-vote organisations such as The Media Fund. And her husband is one of the best political operators on the Democratic side. Yet Mrs Clinton can expect no coronation. The left of the Democratic Party is spoiling for a fight over what it sees as the party establishment's instinctive centrism. The left is convinced that the problem with Howard Dean was not the message but the great screamer himself. And they are equally convinced that the best way to beat George Bush is to fight as hard for the left of the political spectrum as Mr Bush has fought for the right. They believe that Mr Kerry's campaign caught fire only when he decided to confront the administration over Iraq. And they argue that the left needs to build a network of supporting institutions—from think-tanks to pressure groups—that will be able to drag their party (and the nation) in their direction. For them, the internet-based campaigns of groups such as MoveOn.org are harbingers of a rebirth of left-wing politics that will return the Democratic Party to its radical populist roots. First, decide which end has the head The Democrats certainly need to engage in a vigorous debate about the future of a party that has been in relentless decline for the past 50 years. A machine that once enjoyed a huge advantage in voter registration is almost at parity with Republicans; a party that once lorded it over Capitol Hill is now a minority in both houses of Congress, as well as being locked out of the White House. Worse, the defection of the white working class to the Republicans has left behind an awkward alliance of the upscale and the downscale—of educated elites (with a few billionaires thrown in) and ethnic minorities. Moving the party farther to the left is unlikely to do the job. Democrats need to learn how to relate to a culturally conservative country. Mr Kerry made some feeble attempts to do this by claiming that he was a champion of “conservative values”, and by donning goose-hunting kit from the L.L. Bean catalogue. But this did not disguise his (Swiss) boarding-school roots, or the fact that his party is dominated by urban professionals who have little in common with flyover America, or his party's failure to come to terms with American religiosity. Supporting partial-birth abortion may be fine in France, where only one in ten people say religion plays a very important role in their lives, but not in America, where six in ten people do. If the Democrats have never been entirely at home in church, they also often seem ill at ease in the suburbs: the world of family homes, anonymous office parks and stores the size of football pitches. In 1996 Bill Clinton proved that Democrats can win the suburbs by focusing on issues such as crime and education. Since then they have been in retreat. The danger for the Democrats is that they will shrivel to their metropolitan heartlands. They may be tempted to emphasise cultural issues, such as gay marriage, that galvanise educated professionals but have little resonance in the suburbs. And they may even be tempted to progress from Bush-bashing to sneering at middle America. Mrs Clinton may not be the ideal candidate to put the Democratic donkey back together again. But she is better than the Michael Moore left that flourishes so luxuriously in college towns. (What happened to the much-ballyhooed youth vote in this year's election, anyway?) And she will bring two big advantages to her party. She is extraordinarily disciplined, far more so than her husband. And she has a Bush-like ability to bring out the worst in her opponents. Conservatives may rule the suburbs at the moment. But will they woo security moms if they come across as misogynists who want to keep a strong woman down? Hillary's time may yet come. But, for the moment, the donkey is riderless.

Stone Gardens in Seattle supplies lead ropes, and lets you suspend your monthly payments for 3 months out of the year. I suspended for June-August. Worked great.

Well - the I was fully prepared to pay homage to my infinitely more literate brethren on the Left if one of their champion posters could come through on that one but I'll learn to live with the dissapointment.

"indeed, i am sensitive to my being compared to a fascist nutcase without you providing evidence to support your assertion." My bad. Just for the sake of clarification, is it the fascist part, or the nutcase part that upsets you?

The only dissapointing aspect of your response was your failure to cite the source of the quote, much less the context. Where is the crestfallen emoticon?

Well - seeing as how anything that you view as reasonable will be rejected by 95% of the electorate for all of eternity, one would think that you'd try to find a guy that embraces at least a part of your agenda and pitches it to voters in a manner that doesn't consign the ideas to a Larouchesque slagheap of political non-starters. Do keep it up though comrade. considering that i'd have been mostly happy with kerry just shows that your attempts at marginalizing anybody who doesn't give into your "dems have to go conservative to be elected" for what it truly is: hogwash! i note that you are the second one of our very conservative posters who attempts to pin the larouche tag on me. are you people concerting with one another to label vocal opponents or do you share the same trait commonly known as stupidity? for you ought to be able to assess readily from my discourse that i consider larouche a fascist nutcase. as far as you are concerned however, i can tell you are a manipulative scumbag. have a good day asshole. Tisk. Tisk. Bit sensitive on that one are we? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.* Just throwing the LaRouche reference out there as a prime exemplar of a fringe candidate with zero electability, actually. The unfortunate thing for you, however, is that the fringe candidates who espouse the same principles as you are so far off of the map that I can't even think of an example to cite. Just give me the name of the Socialist Equality Party's latest candidate for office and I will gladly subsitute his name for LaRouche whenever I need a quick example of someone espousing ideals that would have had them laughed out of Havana 20 years ago for their sheer implausibility and datedness. BTW - That's Mr. Asshole... *I will faint in my chair if you can cite the reference without Google...

Well - seeing as how anything that you view as reasonable will be rejected by 95% of the electorate for all of eternity, one would think that you'd try to find a guy that embraces at least a part of your agenda and pitches it to voters in a manner that doesn't consign the ideas to a Larouchesque slagheap of political non-starters. Do keep it up though comrade.

I think that if the Dems had been able to construct a Franken-Candidate with Lieberman's convictions and Edward's charisma and rhetorical skills the election would have gone their way.

I don't think its an either or issue, actually, nor do I think that those two qualities are mutually exclusive. But if the Dems persist in believing that they are, then they will persistently lose national elections. End of story.

Quite the truculent echo-chamber you've got going on in here.

Bingo. Bill Clinton fit the bill perfectly. If the Dems actually want to start winning national elections, they should subject the candidates to the "beer and fried chicken" test. Sit them down at a dinner ostensibly designed to discuss policy issues, and bring in some Kentucky Buckets and sixers of Bud. Anyone who is a vegetarian or recoils at the idea of consuming fast food should be escorted off of the premises. Anyone that spreads a napkin on their lap, dissects the fried chicken with their cutlery instead of eating it with their hands, and pours their beer into a glass instead of drinking it right from the can should be disqualified immediately. Those remaining have will carry the coasts no matter what, and they actually have a chance of carrying some of the states where Republicans traditionally win by a narrow majority. I would also suggest listening to today's episode of "To The Point" on NPR for some remedial instruction on these matters. Until the Democrats can find someone with a carriage and demeanor that resonates with voters in the Red States, they can count on losing them every time. However, I hope that the Democrats follow the prescriptions laid out here by the true believers, who seem to be of the opinion that appealing to values that resonate with middle America and common decency are antithetical to one another. Dean/Chomsky 08!!!!!!!!!

Ralph - I am well aquainted with needs that are not presently being met by my elected representatives, being as I now reside in Jim McDermott's congressional district. I share your pain. BTW Off - now that we both get the joke - I should add that I don't know who the female person in the blue dress is - but I am reasonably certain that she would not find the banter concerning what was presumed to be my anatomy all that amusing since it actually belongs to her, and think that it might behoove a couple of gentlmen like ourselves to take her image and the accompanying commentary off of the present thread....

I am actually the one with the Glasses. The person in the blue dress with her hand on my costume-gut is a woman - so I am not sure how the rural voters having a go at any part of her anatomy would affect their current sexual predillections, but those certainly are interesting thoughts, Off. I was dressed as some-one-who-looks-like-the-typical-Seattlites-image-of-a-Red-State-voter. Great costume.

You'll get a lot of mileage out of this sort of rhetoric in Ritzville. Seriously - bring the video camera. I know a 130-lb, black-turtleneck sporting "Labor Activist" who is probable available to assist in the crusade...

"Metro" defines Portland and Seattle's ideological tendencies in more than one way. If Bush really wanted to carry the cities all he would have to do is letter-bomb the two cities with gift-certificates to Urban Outfitters and Restoration Hardware - redeemable only upon voting Republican. This would result in a political about-face so abrupt that it would make the French of the Vichy era seem positively stalwart by comparison.

One day I would get over the reprogramming and, in a trancelike state induced by staring into the foamy convolutions of the soy-foam sitting atop my fair-ptrade certified triple skinny latte' , turn off the Ani Difranco CD, peel off the "Stop Plate Tectonics"esque bumper sticker, and add a lift-kit and mudders to the Volvo and seek out my people in the hinterlands.

I invite all of the proponents of this idea to tour through any of the non major-metro areas in CA, WA, and OR and spread the gospel. Please bring a film crew and share the footage. The footage from the truck stop in East Yakima should be priceless....

You will have to rule out anyone living outside of a 50 mile radius of Seattle or Portland. Maybe you can pull a Quebec/Berlin maneuver and create your own little city-states, complete with Great Wall of China style battlements and fortifications to keep out the non-late' swilling, docker-and-Simple-shoes-and-vintage-shirt+vintage-glasses-and-goatee, etc, etc, etc demographic. Maybe one day the populace within the walls will sponsor anthropological expeditions - complete with native guides and pith helmets - to State Fairs, auto-rebuild shops, and whatnot to study the subhumanoid exoitica that thrives beyond the perimeter....

So someone who lectures to us about needing to go to war yet has never been on the frontlines is any different? My anecdote was basically an illustration of the point that the Democrats need to learn to appeal to the people that they are ostensibly out to protect and legislate on behalf of if they are ever going to win another presidential election. An effete missionary from the ivory tower that spends half his time railing against the US [e.g. the "labor activist" in the above example] is not the guy to send onto the factory floor to persuade the workers to support one's agenda - even if it will ostensibly benefit the workers when enacted. This is analogous to what the Dems did with Kerry and the electorate in the South and the interior. Again - Clinton seemed to recognize this reality, and his electoral successes reflected the utility of this approach. As far as the millitary is concerned, I think the troops have spoken on this one. Kerry did serve - but his conduct after the war and his running commentary on the effort that they are risking their lives to prosecute, not to mention the remainder of his platform - did not resonate very well with them - and they voted accordingly.