I think we need to understand the red states to win again

They have the SAME concerns we do about SS, the Iraq war, health care and the deficit, etc. as we do, you can see it in the polls, but when they vote GOP, they are part of the powerbase, even though they are voting against their own best interests. In many respects, with low electoral votes per state, they must vote in a bloc to be heard.

More red staters are dependent on SS than us blue staters and have way more to lose if it is privatized. Most red staters work for minimum wage or are farmers and many have no health care. I could go on and on about how in some respects we have been working our butts off to help them with their issues, but we've missed something BIG.

They don't hear us and are not connected to us, at least not the majority who voted for Bush. Say what you want about a stolen election, but the profile has been pretty damn consistent since 1980, before Diebold. We delude ourselves by looking for the cheating, though I don't deny that there was some of that. however, that's not why we lost. It's something more elemental than that.

It wasn't Kerry either. He fought like a lion!

Could it be humility? Could it be the common touch? Is it that we blue staters are just a touch arrogant about our superiority? Our education, our WEALTH?

The truth is, the folks who voted for Bush are living paycheck to paycheck and should be our natural constituency. It's just that we talk TO these issues but we don't feel them (yeah, I know there are alot of us currently unemployed, but WAY more of them have been negatively impacted by Bush's policies). We ask, where is the anger? Where is the outrage??

To dismiss them as stupid homophobic bigots is again to miss the point. Maybe we need to learn a little humility. Maybe we need to look at the teachings of Jesus (note I'm a Catholic agnostic)even though the Bush administration doesn't practice them, they are PERCEIVED as "HAVING" them. I think we need to understand why 80% plus of people who considered moral values important voted for Bush. We need to understand what "moral values" means.

We also need to go back and determine what it is to be a Democrat. Is this an easy message to articulate? How can we become relevant again? Should we have listened more closely to Dean and Kucinich?

Well, that's all for now, but after this election and my deep disappointment that Kerry is not our Prez, we need a moment of reflection as to what it is we stand for. We must bridge this gap between the blue and the red and we have two years to figure it out. The sooner we start, the sooner we become relevant again. And by the way, we won't get there by pretending to be republicans.

There is so much common ground that has been lost because that evil-incarnate Rove has masterminded a divisive path for the election and the country.

We need to establish mutual respect red-to-blue, and vice versa.
And that is done by listening.

I was afraid I was going to get flamed! I live in a safe state, Northern CA, can't get much more blue than that! I watched the returns last night with uncomprehension, then I turned it off and went to sleep (kinda).

Woke up depressed, then angry, then confused. I had to take a three hour drive to Santa Clara for a tax seminar, listening to AAR the whole way, plenty of time to think.

The answer is we don't get it, whatever "it" is! That is our task, and we have just a tiny bit of time to figure out the dynamic and strategically place candidates where once we figure out what we're about, can get the most result in the mid-terms.

But my point is, many of the red staters are just like you but vote for Bush. Our power elite are NOT poor, but honestly want to help them. Again, I am seeking for a way to synthesize the message to them that we are just like them! That's why they connect with Bush, even though we think he's an idiot, they totally relate to him!

We have to get to the root of who they are. They are THERE and they are a voting bloc. Dismissing them will not win us any votes! We know they have been played by the GOP. We are bigots too. The harder answer is not to play to their bigotry but to their own self interest in a much smarter way.

of course everyone has their bias--we are human beings. Remember this: forget the bullshit about Kerry being liberal. He ISN'T. The whole of this Congress is to the right of center. And the current Bible thumping bigots are extremists. Trying to be kind to extremists and seeing things their way isn't going to work.

Talk about abortions, gay marriage, the war in Iraq, Homeland security, health care, the environment, SS, outsourcing or any of the other hot topics, but as Democrats usually do, IGNORE the basic reality of what holds the middle of America together.

We all know that Americans have racist feelings - some more than others - but if there is one thing Rush Limbaugh succeeded in doing it was giving public voice to that closeted racism. Suddenly those who felt that they were supporting black urban "welfare queens" didn't feel "alone" anymore. They had a spokesperson who could rail on and on about "blacks whining" and government-supported programs. What they did not realize or care to acknowledge is that far more whites receive welfare benefits than do blacks.

Until the Democratic Party publicly answers these false allegations of "welfare fraud" and the demonizing of ALL blacks as welfare recipients, these lies of Limbaugh's will lie fallow and continue to quietly and invisibly fuel the antagonisms that middle America feels. These lies have to be publicly debunked, not once but over and over just as Limbaugh feeds this racism over and over. Democrats can continue to run from this reality but all the issues stated above serve merely as smokescreens for the true voting patterns of middle America. When you saw that wide swath of red running across the map of our country, you saw the wide swath of people who believe Rush's racist lies and Bush's false promises. These are people who will willingly sacrifice their sons and daughters to a war built on a lie, they will take cuts in salary, because what they really want, even more than the end of Roe v. Wade, is the total dismantling of the Civil Rights Laws. But, as usual, when I try to initate a discussion of these truths, most posters choose to ignore them and continue to talk about all the other possible reasons that we lost the election.

IMO, Bush is the greatest "Welfare Queen" of all time.

If you have not already read the thread entitled "Are We Ready to Starve the Beast" posted by someone other than myself, I would suggest that you might do so.

namely, "Their way doesn't work!" Clinton, for all his faults, knew how to talk to red state people. Blowing them away with one's knowledge of facts and figures doesn't work. Giving them the nuanced truth doesn't work. Pointing out the obvious is what works. Voltaire was wrong about that.

However, his real blunder was not dealing with the swill boat liars immediately by hitting them with a libel suit the day that book came out. Winning the suit wasn't the point. Giving a team of rabid lawyers subpoena power to dig up stuff the Bush election team wanted hidden was the point. Forcing the swill boat guys to spend their money mounting a legal defense was the point. Answering the lies was the point. Winning a case was beside the point. Although veterans who had seen combat were largely pissed off by this filth, the generation after Vietnam who saw peacetime service if they saw it at all bought the whole thing. That 34-49 cohort went overwhelmingly for Idiot.

I would suggest that whoever wants to run for office in the future study Clinton's speeches for how to sell the message to red staters. I would also suggest that they realize that junkyard dogs don't go away if you ignore them. You have to meet them head on and deal with them.

Warpy wrote: namely, "Their way doesn't work!" Clinton, for all his faults, knew how to talk to red state people. Blowing them away with one's knowledge of facts and figures doesn't work. Giving them the nuanced truth doesn't work. Pointing out the obvious is what works. Voltaire was wrong about that.

Here's how Hitler and Goering said to talk to the masses of farmers and salt of the earth types with their capacity to engage in critical thinking. And it's obvious that Karl Rove and Bush are following this game plan.

“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out....The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter six, at a time just before he invaded Poland.


"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, From his cell at Nuremberg Trials 1946
- from Nuremberg Diary by G M Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)


“Everything will be measured by results. The victor is always right. History ascribes to the victor qualities that may or may not actually have been there. And similarly to the defeated.”
— Karl Rove, White House strategist just prior to the Iraq invasion.

"Only a fool feels compelled to point out the obvious."

He was wrong. When you're surrounded by fools, it is essential.

Sorry you misunderstood. I suppose I should have supplied the quote in the original post.

having grown up in a union family i am aware of the necessary rough and tumble required for economic equality. somehow we are going to have to tie in economic equality with morality and make it a more important feature of morality than sexual morality.

i gotta' tell you warpy, i was stunned at the kerry camp's poor initial response to the SBVT ads. had i been kerry i would have challenged o'neill to a duel.

If you think the selection of Kerry had nothing to do with it because he fought like a lion then you just don't get it.

Kerry presented himself as the "better Bush." Don't Democrats see the fundamental problem with that?

"Yes, I agree with the war on terror, but I will do it better."
"Yes, the troops need to be in Iraq, but I will do it better."
"Yes, I think single-payer health care is a bad idea and I agree that health care ought to be in the hands of private corporations but I will do a better plan."
"Yes, I think that corporations should control government but I have a better plan to give them tax breaks for incentives."

See a pattern here? If the Democrats can't call it by its true name of FASCISM, then the Democrats are part of the denial process and it is no surprise that the poor working people continue to be bainwashed by the corporate "democratic" fascism.

Dividing people into "red" and "blue" states is a fundamental tactic of the two-party dictatorship and results in our kinder and gentler corporate American brand of fascism in which the people actually believe there is a democracy when they don't get to choose who is going to be the candidates after the corporate party leadership team gets throught with them.

Did anyone think that the Democratic convention had the least sembalance to real democracy? Didn't you see how the complete coreography was nothing more than a Nurmemburg Rally?

The two factions of the ruling corporate party have divided up the political field and give us the opportunity to engage in sham elections fighting over "moral values" and "culture issues" while they continue to slice and dice the world.

At this point in time the shining example to the world of real democracy is Venezuela not the USA.

Gregory Wonderwheel

We HAVE to figure out how to win the hearts and minds of the red staters. Remember we are fighting the battle for ALL of us, not just New York and California.

I know where you're coming from, I have seen this conservative tide building for twenty plus years and have used similar words in fear. Well we're here, and given their power base, we MUST find a way to reach the hearts and minds of the red staters. It is easy for a STRONG and FORCEFUL, however deluded and dangerously wrong, leader to take alot of good people along for the ride to destruction. I think it is our duty to not let this happen.

Focus on issues that we are united on, and what not. Everyone needs health care, that's a moral choice, etc...

That idea got shitcanned quick, and he got demagogued off the stage by John "how dare you tell us sothern folk what to do on a sunday" Edwards.

Is in order. I live in Texas, where the textbook purchasing process is controlled by the fun-dies. Liberally minded educators need to take the long view. I'm suprised for example how much currency the idea of 'creationism' has in the bible belt. Alot of people in the South have been raised in substandard educational systems where students aren't taught to think critically. Bush's base is just that -I know it's inexplicable to us, but he would have to commit an act of bestiality live on the network news in order to lose this base. They are that afraid and superstitious and they think liberals are anti-family, unpatriotic and anti-business. I own a small business, have three beautiful daughters who(bty), do very well in school and I love this country not so much for what it has become - but what slim promise it still has. I've said it before that there needs to be a supplier of educational materials for minors that isn't slanted to a right wing agenda. Our children are depending on us.