Things to remember before the media turns up the "Dems are the same as Repubs" meme

1. Conservatism has failed. The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration as a failure. They failed in Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, they failed. Why? Liberals need to argue that it wasn’t a product of incompetence, it was a failure of conservative governance. As Alan Wolfe put it in a recent Washington Monthly article, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.”

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2. Conservatism is the ideology of the past—a past we don’t want to return to. Liberals need to embrace the culture war, because we’re winning. The story of American history is that of conservative ideas and prejudices falling away as our society grows more progressive and thus more true to our nation’s founding ideals. Conservatives supported slavery, conservatives opposed women’s suffrage, conservatives supported Jim Crow, conservatives opposed the 40-hour work week and the abolishment of child labor, and conservatives supported McCarthyism. In short, all the major advancements of freedom and justice in our history were pushed by liberals and opposed by conservatives, no matter the party they inhabited at the time.

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3. Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too. We’re afraid, they shout. We’re so afraid of terrorists, we have to become more like the things we hate. We’re so afraid, we have to let our government sanction torture. We’re so afraid, we have to let the government spy on us. We’re so afraid, we have to give the president dictatorial powers. We’re so afraid, we just want to rush to the arms of politicians who say they’ll protect us. ...

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A vote for Bush is a vote for reckless, failed, fatal foreign policy which may require a draft. A vote for Bush is a vote to ignore Osama bin Laden, loose nukes, vulnerable targets, and threats from North Korea and Iran. A vote for Bush is a vote for more sky-rocketing health costs, run-away gas prices, more pollution, and exporting jobs. More Bush means more poverty, more rancor and division as he advocates tampering with the Constitution to race-bait, gay-bait and eliminate our basic rights.

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Either Bush can't do the job for America, or he refuses to do the job. Either way, it's time for serious leadership. It's time to end the blame games, the trivialization, the excuses, and the lies. We cannot afford four more years of more of the same. Bush is unfit to serve four more minutes. Bush whines that the job of president is "hard." Let's do him a big favor and fire him next week so he can find a job he can do.

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