Blurred Messages from Democrats ("Winning is everything")

Published on Thursday, January 13, 2005 by the Boston Globe

Blurred Messages from Democrats

by Joan Vennochi

Here's the new Democratic Party slogan: We stand for nothing but victory.

Or, as Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The New York Times: "Some people argue about old Democrats and new Democrats. I'm a Vince Lombardi Democrat. Winning is everything."

Inspirational, isn't it? That should lure those Red State voters to the Democrats' side.

Emanuel, a former senior adviser in the Clinton administration, was chosen to direct the Democrats' effort to recapture the House in the 2006 midterm elections by the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California,

Pelosi is also encouraging former Representatative Tim Roemer of Indiana to seek to replace Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Roemer, who is Catholic and antiabortion, has a 94 percent rating from the national Right to Life Committee. Pelosi has a 100 percent prochoice voting record, as rated by NARAL, a national organization devoted to a woman's right to choose abortion.

Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, describes Pelosi's support for Roemer as a way to illustrate the party's new "big tent" commitment. Said Brazile, via e-mail: "As a party, we have a large tent, but our basic values will remain. The Democratic Party's problem is not what we stand for, as much as how we communicate our values. Roemer's personal views will not alter the Democratic platform on choice."

Put aside the practical matter of how the party plans to communicate values through a prochoice platform and a prolife party chairman. This is a way to win?

Continues: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0113-22.htm

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Question: How can a party keep their 'basic values' while conceding those values are somehow 'wrong' and must be changed to please those who don't share those values?

but then, the DLC, New Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats have always sounded like Repuglicans to me.

Maybe it's time to read the writing on the wall and put these folks into consulting positions and get leadership that represents the intersts of the party's traditional core, the rank and file working person.

Nah, that might actually WIN elections...

....The party leadership SEEMS to be saying that our values will remain intact but that we're a 'big tent' party willing to alter those values to please those who don't share them.

We either have 'values' or we don't. It's not a value if it can be changed for political opportunism or to fit what the opposition expects of us.

..all in the name of winning.

Memo to the DNC, the public actually recognizes honesty.

"The party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt does not have to stick with FDR's blueprint, exactly as drawn up by FDR. It does not have to genuflect to every interest group and pass every litmus test a group puts forth.

A Democrat running for office can cross a union picket line when the union is asking for something unreasonable; disagree with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision to defy the law and marry homosexuals; and vote against the medical procedure known as partial birth abortion.

But the new position has to be explained with reason, clarity, and courage, not presented as a flailing effort to adjust positions to polling. The middle ground is the ground of reason, not confusion, particularly on so-called values issues."

"How can a party keep their 'basic values' while conceding those values are somehow 'wrong' and must be changed to please those who don't share those values?"

This is not what they're saying - they're saying that both sets of values can exist within the party - that you can be "pro-life" and still be a Democrat. It's not mutually exclusive. They are not saying being pro-choice is wrong, as you suggest. That is a complete misreading.

...if they contradict each other. You can't be pro-choice and anti-abortion at the same time. At least you can't without sending the kinds of mixed messages that have contributed to the recent series of Dem losses.

It's doublespeak and trying to ride the fence to please both sides at the same time. What will most surely happen in the end is that neither side will be satisfied with what seems to be values that change with the wind.

But it's about more than abortion and 'choice'. Democrats are sending these same mixed signals on many issues....the Iraq war being a prime example.

a Republican? And if "pro -choice", a Democrat?

That if you're personally anti-abortion it's against your rules to be progressive in other areas? Hmmm... I wonder what Dennis Kucinich would think about that?

And if you're a Democrat - you can't support the war in Iraq? Or if you're a Republican you can't be opposed to it?

That everyone must share your value system in order to be considered a member of your political party?

...has decided (as a party) to support a women's right to choose...they must stay with that position until there is a mandate within the party to change it. And yes...I'm saying that if someone is pro-life (anti-abortion) they'd probably feel more comfortable in the Republican party. They're certainly welcome in the Democratic party...but they shouldn't expect their views to prevail.

What you're suggesting is that moral relativism should guide the party and not a set of principles and values.

and that the democratic party shouldn't be soiled with the votes of Americans.

I am sick of people prattling on about values they are not willing to compromise. Wake up. Thanks to the election, you and your values are beneath the contempt of those in power.

You don't have to compromise your values, dude---you and your values aren't even on the radar screen of anybody who counts.

So you save your righteous indignation for your natural allies who have the bad luck to come to you and ask for a joint effort to defeat Bushism. You can't get to the republicans so you kick the democrats and feel better. The powerless taking it out on those that would empower them. Disgusting.

That's not at all what the author is saying.

If you change a value in order to compromise...it becomes something less than a value. It becomes a commodity...to be traded or exchanged in an attempt to win elections.

But for every 'pro-lifer' you please with compromised values...you lose a pro-choicer tired of conceding important values and principles in order to please those who don't believe in a women's right to choose.

And how can you 'compromise' on something like election reform and illegal wars?

It's not about 'righteous indignation. It's about believing in something beyond winning and standing up for what you believe.

You don't CHANGE your values in a compromise. You don't LOSE them in a compromise.

All one does is recognize that you can't achieve all your goals at once. If the position you espouse cause the loss of the election, then you have to choose between two things you value.

But that assumes that anyone gives a crap about winning. Apparently not. To say that it's about believing in something beyond winning is laughable, since winning never seems to enter into it at all!

We have a party of people with absolute beliefs that they can't shut their yaps about for five minutes, and there isn't a person in power in the federal government who cares. Well, that's the comfortable thing about complete and absolute irrelevance: if we mattered one bit, well, somebody might ask us to compromise instead of steamrolling us on every damn issue there is. That's an attitude better suited for an order of cloistered monks than a political party.

...five minutes. Many wanted him to shut his yap...but he wouldn't do it because his VALUES and PRINCIPLES weren't for sale.

We'd still be living in caves if your attitude prevailed. Thank God it doesn't.

in Congress did it. If King were an idiot, he would have withheld his approval unless the Civil Rights Act were just to his liking. Which, of course, it wasn't, having left out fair housing laws. Even King, a preacher and not a political party, knew better than to refuse half a loaf.

Anyone who wants to be a voice crying in the wilderness can have at it. But a political party is not a monastic order withdrawing from the world to purify itself.

arrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh !!!!!!!!! make it stop ... please make it stop !!!!

what the hell is going on with these idiots ???

i've spent the last two days trying to explain to people why Mr. Rosenberg's pathetic endorsement of the "war" is NOT OK ... at a time where healing the party should be job one, some insiders are pushing a candidate (to reach out to the party's anti-war majority ????) who said:

Rosenberg: the war is good ...

then, the great editorial (you barely beat me to it !!) you posted highlights more dissonance:

Kerry: life begins at conception but i'm pro-choice ...

we're fighting to protect a woman's right to choose, block anti-choice Supreme Court nominees and protect Roe v. Wade and Pelosi throws her support to Roemer ... and what dissonance does that offer ???

Roemer: antiabortion, has a 94 percent rating from the national Right to Life Committee ...

the war issue ... does the Party has its act together here? does this sound somewhat familiar ???

Democratic Party: the war was wrong and there's no evidence we can succeed but we have to stay in Iraq and keep fighting ...

CAN YOU HEAR YOURSELVES ???????????????????????????

the Party's first job is NOT WINNING ... you are conducting business the wrong way and it's why we keep losing ground ... you have to define your values, not your candidate FIRST ... and then you find the most qualified people, the most committed people to fight for those values ... WHAT YOU DON'T DO IS GIVE POWER TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR VALUES ... they can't possibly be successful representing your cause ... we have to be fighting for something, not fighting just to win ... the Party is NOT credible to many outside the Party and even to many inside ...

We cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again and deserve to lose.

The article posted says nothing whatsoever about the NDN or Simon Rosenberg.

i did ... sorry but i didn't realize i was constrained to things mentioned in the article ... i thought i could bring in other points i wanted to make ...

i'll try to be more careful the next time ... really sorry about this ... thanks for setting me straight ...

...beating ones head against a brick wall. Why is it so hard to understand that Bush 'won' because he didn't send mixed signals like 'some' Democrats. He's crazy as they come...but he stayed on message and didn't try to play both sides against the middle. His 'no compromise, no prisoners' approach to politics needs to be adopted by Democrats and applied to their own values and principles.

Values are NOT a commodity. Let's stop acting like they are...

OK ... maybe i'm starting to understand this ... we need to be a big tent ... we support pro-life AND we support pro-choice too ... am i getting it now? and here's the essential point, it's not that we don't stand for ANYTHING; it's that we stand for EVERYTHING !! pretty good, eh? now i'm starting to get it ... i was letting my narrow views of right and wrong get in the way ... OK ... it's so "freeing" to no longer be constrained by just one side of an issue ... from now on, i'm an "everything goes" guy !!! i'm an "everything goes" Democrat ...

here's my first contribution ... an idea for an ad to attract more people to our "everything goes" Democratic big tent ...

you take a well known Democrat, any well known Democrat will do ... you paint his right side red and write on it: "pro life" ... you paint his left side blue and write on it: "pro choice" ... then you stick a rod up his butt and start twirling him around really, really fast until he becomes a whirring purple blur ... maybe at the end, an announcer could come on and say: "we're Democrats; we're purple; we don't stand for anything; we stand for everything ... become an "everything goes" Democrat today" ...

i'm confident this will attract more voters ...

get in the way.

There are pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. The narrow ideological view here IS yours - you would dictate that everyone in your party subscribes to your view of what's right and wrong in this world. You're a "party" of one. With your exclusionary politics you would win - how many elections? None?

That's not a very good way to get your polital voice heard. You need to win to get heard - and in order to win you need to get votes - and you get votes by building alliances with other people with whom you agree on a majority of issues - and who you may disagree with on others.

You seem to want morality from politics - politics isn't about morality - it's about winning. If you want morality, go to church.

i love that ... i really do ... make a great campaign slogan ... maybe you could make up some signs to display at the next Democratic convention ... call in lots of TV cameras to help you spread the word ...

"We're Democrats ... What we're about is winning ... We are NOT about morality" ... We don't let our values get in the way of victory" ... did i get your message about right ??

you, of course, have misstated my position to serve your own needs ... how did you do this you may be wondering? you suggested i have a "narrow ideological" view ... of course, you couldn't have known that i sold my soul in the last election in an effort to get Kerry elected in spite of his hideous position on Iraq, an issue I care about very deeply ...

your argument is void of substance ... i make no call for ideological purity ... what i do call for is not endorsing polar opposites on the same issue ... if a Party condones pro-life and pro-choice, they will lose ... you think you have a winning strategy because you're a "big tent"? it's hypocrisy and voters see right through it ...

and it's not at all about subscribing to MY ideological views as you stated ... i'm not quite sure where i advocated that the Party and everyone in it requires my official welshTerrier2 approval label ... the posts I've made here were about the wrongness of taking both sides of an issue, not taking MY side of the issue ...

building alliances is fine ... compromise may be necessary to achieve success ... but to say that morality does not have its place in politics defines a Party that stands for nothing and that's a recipe for, well, you might call it "minority status" ... that's what the "win only' crowd has achieved, isn't it? or do you think we puritanical moralists have rigidly constrained our candidates' abilities to campaign effectively?

added on edit: i liked this so much, i thought i'd paste it back in here again:

We cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again and deserve to lose. ... could the "pale color" be "purple" ?? ... you know, the one you get when you mix too much red with the blue ...

"His 'no compromise, no prisoners' approach to politics needs to be adopted by Democrats and applied to their own values and principles."

You?

how is our Party platform formed now? what is the purpose of having a platform? can every Democrat participate?

here's one idea: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1488164

...it has been a work in progress for years, decades, centuries.

This sounds like the argument of the New Democrats. Every time they're warned that they're abandoning their base...they insist the base is whomever they say it is. And now we hear the same argument about values and it becomes whatever the leadership and their interpretation of the polls defines it.

Ask anyone on the street what the Democratic party stands for and expect a different answer every time. Women's rights? Who the hell knows anymore? Worker's rights? Nope...they abandoned unions long ago. Election reform? No again.

Many rank and file Democrats have recognized the problem with their party. The problem is the leadership and they're sure in hell not going to get rid of themselves. So I guess it's up to us.

When the Democrats were the party of the segregationist south?

Maybe you get a different answer on the street because the Democratic Party is a lot more diverse than you realize. Who "the base" is depends on where you are. The base that puts Evan Bayh in office is a different base than the one who puts Teddy Kennedy in office.

That's what the leadership has to deal with - crafting a message that plays equally well in Indiana as Massachusetts.

I'd be a Republican right now.

The "differences" are minimal and in the details, not the substance. The candidates are virtually indistinguishable and feed from the same corporate trough filled by the same corporate moneybags.

But, it keeps up the facade of this country being a "democracy".

doesn't make it true. Its a bald faced lie. The world would be a very different place today if Gore had been (s)elected in 2000 instead of Bush.

Let's see, he would have dismantled the corporations? He would have dismantled the military/industrial complex? He would have put the US military under the command of the UN? He would have instituted socialized medicine? He would have undone welfare "reform"? He would have nationalized the media?

How much different would the world be now, oh great seer of what might have been?

Iraq. Wouldn't have happened.

Huge deficits, trade and budget. Wouldn't have happened.

Social security "reform". Wouldn't have happened.

America hated everywhere. Wouldn't have happened.

At least two anti abortion supreme court nominations. Sure to happen, wouldn't have happened.

American military volunteers ground up and spit out. Wouldn't have happened.

I bet there are families of 1300 some Americans who think that's enough for now.

we would have reduced the number of uninsured Americans, we wouldn't even be having a converstation about privatizing social security, we'd have a real prx drug benefit, a real patients bill of rights, there wouldn't have been a major tax cut that only benefits the rich...The list goes on and on.

...in the White House. But again we can trace this problem back to the current leadership. It was obvious to many voters that Gore could have kicked George's ass in 2004. You had millions of voters ready to seek 'retribution' for a stolen election and THEY wanted Gore to run again.

But the party insiders and the New Democrats didn't want him to run again after he began to create a very exciting populist campaign that focused on issues that neither the neocons or the neodems wanted exposed in the public forum. The New Democrats not only wouldn't admit that he won in 2000...they joined with the Right to prevent him from running again in 2004. Despite all the evidence to the contrary staring them in the face...they insisted that Gore was too 'populist' to win against George.

Things could have been much different if the party had backed Gore a second time. The people would have backed him...but the party insiders wanted to run someone that didn't deviate from the New Democrat talking points. The rest is history.

as the person I responded to said they are. We need party reform. I'm on record that we need party reform.

...but I can agree that the parties aren't the 'same'. But many Democrats are worried that the parties are becoming similar in ways that are dangerous...not only to the future of the Democratic party...but to America itself.

...it's just that it's a bit harder being the 'party of the people' and the have-nots versus the party of corporations and the haves.

We started 'losing' when our base finally started noticing that the party wasn't representing them any longer.

For the sake of argument...let's say the Democratic base are those who traditionally vote Democratic...such as:

Blacks (or African American if you prefer)

Women

Workers

There are many groups other than these three...but let's start here for brevity's sake.

We saw Blacks turn out in record numbers to vote for Gore in 2000...even more than voted for the 'first black president' before him. The Dems count on this vote every election cycle but how much longer can they count on this vote now that election fraud and civil rights abuses seem acceptable to both parties?

Remember that Women and Blacks got the 'right' to be considered equal and vote just a few decades ago. Women had to fight just to be considered equal with men, own property and have a voice in whether to choose abortion.

And for workers...the golden age of unions, collective bargaining and safe working conditions is not only over...but is reversing itself. Industry has regained the power they once had in the industrial age...when sweatshops and long hours with few or no benefits was the norm.

So who will the Blacks, women and workers blame for the loss of their rights and benefits? Intitally they will blame those who willfully took those rights away...the Republicans. But eventually they are going to blame Democrats for not standing against those so blatantly taking us back to a time when only the wealthy had rights and everyone else worked for them.

Dems began to lose their base in the 90s...with welfare 'reform', weakening of unions and unfair and certainly not free trade laws.

More of the base left the party after the 2000 election...when the most transparent election fraud in our history took place and the leadership told us to 'accept it' and move on.

And now after another round of EXPECTED election fraud...even more of the base is wandering off to find a party that will represent their and America's interests. Many are so discouraged that they will join with the half of America that doesn't vote at all.

The Democratic party has a choice to make: either support the traditional base or find your party in the minority for many decades. Remember...the 'winning' Republicans spent a very, very long time as the minority party. Democrats are looking at that same fate if they ignore what's right in front of their face.