So what doesn't have to be a litmus??
Civil Rights?
LGBT Rights?
Is it only womens rights that doesn't need to be a litmus??
What else can one think of that we as democrats do 't have to support?
If we don't have stances on issues are we a party?
People think giving up rights as not as important as others is a good strategy. It is not. It when we let one slide that we start slipping down the slope and lose the war.
Make no mistake it is a war.
We need to be more intransigent in our views and core principles. That is how we win.
Believe me we lose a lot of votes to racists and bigots. Should we also be willing to forgo others rights besides women to win another district or two??
No. We do not do that. We will have the majority again if we do not alienate women. If you do go down the path and sell our rights down the river. Good luck to you.
When we get the majority we fix gerrymndering. Fix voting rights. Fix black bix voting. Hacking of election.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If a (D) runs in the primary and thinks that LGBT rights are a bad thing but generally support most things that (D) believe should be supported, two things will happen in the primary.
(1) They will lose.
(2) They will win. But only if a majority of (D) voting support them, even if there's same-day registration and 20k (R) decided to vote (D).
If they lose, then another (D) will run in the generals. If they win, they go up against (R), (G), (I), and any others.
If they lose in the general election, then that's that for 2, 4, or 6 years, depending on office.
If they win, they occupy an office holding their anti-LGBT beliefs. But on every other measure, they support general (D) values.
Consider the alternatives: That particular "impure" (D) or an (R). Think it through. Those really are the options, voting really does have a fairly binary outcome. I'm not excluding any options that I can think of, and I've tried to think it through. The (D) candidate appeals or doesn't.
That's how reality works. It would be nice to have what you or I think is the ideal candidate and because everybody's just like us the candidate's just like us and the electorate's like us. It just ain't so--and that's assuming that we're the same on every single issue.
The only way out, to say there's a third option, is for sufficient of the population to be willing to vote for a (D) candidate that's to the left (using a really ambiguous term here, but you get the drift) of where all the announced candidates are. Now, assuming the candidate's local, odds are against that. Or maybe such a candidate runs but is really incompetent and loses anyway. But if that happens, then go back to the beginning and hope one of the more pure (D) have the spine to run next time.
I'm bored with the "they outspent us." We only can make that argument when it's true, then it's the first line of defense decrying how unjust the system is. It's patently false when we outspend them and we lose, or they outspend us and they lose. But we completely ignore those examples. And when we outspend them and we win, well, either we'd have won anyway or isn't it great?!
It is not war. Remember, the first thing we do in war is dehumanize the other. Look at war posters from the Korean War ("gooks"
, WWII ("krauts, nips" , WWI ("huns" . Talk to somebody in 1952 and say, "You know, those Koreans are people, too," and most Americans would probably punch you. *That* was war. It's nice to assume everybody but us is evil, but when people do that in any other context the falseness of the dichotomy is fairly clear.
