WP: The Democrats Reassess (GOP has been winning battle of ideas)

The Democrats Reassess
Effort to Win Battle of Ideas Includes New Web Site and Journal
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Page A19

This is idea week for the Democratic Party.

On Monday, three veteran party strategists -- William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira -- launched a Web site ( http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org ) with the goal of generating fact-based, empirically tested theories that might help Democrats resolve their policy differences and win more elections.

Yesterday saw another launch party, this time for Democracy, a quarterly journal that also will be available online ( http://www.democracyjournal.org ). The magazine will be edited by Andrei Cherny and Kenneth Baer, two younger veterans of recent party wars. Their goal is do for the Democrats what journals such as Public Interest did for conservatives and Republicans decades ago, which is to bring forward big ideas to challenge what they regard as the tired thinking that grips Democratic politicians.

On Thursday, NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network) will convene its annual conference. NDN, founded by Simon Rosenberg, has recently been in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists, liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists, all with an eye toward tipping the political balance back in a Democratic direction.

Those in the middle of these events share a similar conviction, which is that for too long Republicans have been winning the battle of ideas (and often campaign strategy) in American politics, in part because conservatives invested in what is now a well-funded infrastructure of organizations that have produced ideas, thinkers, publications, strategists, and politicians who now control the White House, Congress and increasingly the federal judiciary....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/20/AR2006062001350.html

they're in charge of everything and the MSM isn't reporting anything else.

and lies are easy to reduce to soundbites; good policy requires a bit of explanation

"It was left to some conservatives to offer Democrats comfort. Historian Francis Fukuyama, who has broken with other neo conservatives over Iraq, said the conservative era may be ending. "It does seem to me that the country is way overdue for one of those big pendulum swings back," he said."

Because they have rolled over onto the elections process in this country and we no longer
have a fair and open voting process available to the American people, our votes have
been outsourced to big business who knows exactly who it wants in power to get the
biggest bang for its buck.

We're finished in November.

But they have a piece written by Will Marshall, signer of the PNAC and co-founder of the DLC. He also runs a right wing outfit called the Progressive Policy Institute. The piece reads like a GOP platform. In some places its worse. I'm all for diversity of opinion in the party but I wonder if the whole site is dedicated to DLC goals.

FROM RIGHT WEB ON WILL MARSHALL:

Like PNAC and the Bush administration, the Progressive Policy Institute has a vision of national security that extends to fostering democracy and freedom around the world in "the belief that America can best defend itself by building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy." It's likely that PNAC itself would heartily agree with PPI's criticism of those who complain that "the Bush administration has been too radical in recasting America's national security strategy." In fact, in assessing the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda, the institute stated, "we believe it has not been ambitious enough or imaginative enough." (2) (3)

Both in articles in the DLC's Blueprint and in media interviews, Marshall has struck out at Democrats who have either opposed the Iraq invasion or who call for the U.S. to pull out before it is commonly agreed that the "liberation" of Iraq is, as President Bush declared on May 1, 2003, "mission accomplished." On the "They Said It" part of its website, the Republican Party highlights Marshall telling the Los Angeles Times: "You hear way too much from the Democrats in this race about turning over the whole mess to the U.N. Well, that's not credible and most people know it. It doesn't have the power to achieve the only outcome we can accept." (4) (5)

CHENEY IS AN ALIEN CLONE! AND NOT THE COOL KIND OF ALIEN! THE KIND THAT EATS POOP!

Say it a thousand times, people figger there's something to it. Apparently. :(

Tell people about your values while you tell them 1,000 times that Cheney eats poop.

And suddenly the media reports that the GOP is swaying people based on their ideas.

With thinking like that, why even bother reading the Washington Post, it clearly doesn't make quality arguments in the normal course of business.

But the "strategists" who lost the last 3 elctions are too frightened to do that- they wont even call Bush or Cheney a "liar"- even though it's a 100% verifiable fact.

So that's what you turn to when you're trying vainly to differentiate your policies from Bushism.

Much simpler and more effective would be to listen to the people. They want out of Iraq. Do it. They want economic security, imperilled by soaring health care costs. Provide it. They're worried about American jobs being outsourced. Stop it.

Assemble all the hacks and flacks you wish, including soulless New Democrat double-talkers who are "in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists, liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists." LOL!

But you'll get nowhere until the party ceases to be the pawn of corporations and responds to the needs of ordinary Americans.

in the people.

this is soo frustrating.

the people want sociliazed medicine, they want real education change -- and they want it paid for.

these are just two real leftist ideas -- and we could very well let corporatists jump in and eviserate the left's momentum by making it appear as though THESE guys speak for us.

it's not at all unlike when the media wants to interview a christian -- they ask jerry falwell.

...just DO IT.

JEEEZUS- when did acting like NORMAL PEOPLE become rocket-science for the belt-way elite?

It's not that they have all these great thinkers and strategists. They own the media and so they control what passes for news. Even this story itself is an example of of how they control things. The GOP's ideas suck and are mostly idiotic.
If you want to see Democrats win the war of ideas give them two of the major news networks and half the talk radio outlets in this country. It's not the ideas it's the megaphone their broadcast from that makes the difference.

And I hope someone is working on getting us a bigger megaphone (Air America is a good start, and DU!). But also, in the meantime, I think we should be going grassroots. We have to be the ones to teach people to think critically, participate more, pay attention, and care about their neighbors and community. In other words, we have to work to build a constituency so that when the megaphone is available, there will be an audience to listen, and when progressive candidates step up, there will be voters to choose them. If the pendulum swings, we want to be prepared to take full advantage.

Since they dont mention it, I'm assuming they are ignoring it.

Suprise, suprise- the "Strategists" who lost the last 3 election cycles still dont get it.

they had to steal the last two elections. Is that really "winning the war of ideas," or is it cheating?

Didn't we run one of these guys off here during the election?

I seem to recall being told that they were "playing chess",
whilst we were still figuring out checkers.

Yeah, gotta LOVE PPI.

...does not mean would should not trust them- right?

;)

They should skip this confernece and spend some time in barbershops, watering holes and grocery & bank lines actually talking to normal people. You know, learn their language and strange routines & customs. ;)

"fact-based, empirically tested theories" Oh crap-more egg-head garbage. GROAAAAAANNN.

I see NOTHING direct about confronting media bias mentioned in their strategy- so this meeting about meetings may as well be pretend time.

So- will FOUR be the charm for the "strategists" who lost the last 3 elections?

Color me unimpressed.

Let's reframe in fascists terms. That's an idea. Empirically validated too.

BUT FIRST- lets have a MEETING about it!!!!

We can use the donations of those crazy Micheal Moore nuts to pay for it!!!!

Six years later they still seem intent on sounding like, and voting with, the Republicans.
Most of what comes out of the mouths of Democrats is watered down pablum delivered with all the sincerity and strength of a quivering eel. All you can say about them, with few exceptions, is that they're not Republicans.