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Meet the New Dems

How's the reinvention of the Democrats going so far? A Bush Wars translation guide 

weholdthesetruths.org

1: What is it the Democrats need to do, James Carville?

The purpose of a political party in a democracy is to win elections. We're not doing that well enough. And I think that we can't deny that the problem exists. I think we have to confront the problem. And by and large, our message has been we can manage problems while the Republicans, although they will say we can solve problems, they produce a narrative, we produce a litany.... These guys had a narrative — we're going to protect you from the terrorists in Tikrit and from the homos in Hollywood. That's it. I think we could elect somebody from Beverly Hills if they had some compelling narrative to tell people about what the country is....

The underlying problem here is, there is no call to arms that the Democratic Party is making to the country. We've got to reassess ourselves. We've got to be born again.

Translation: Beats the fuck out of me. Could be we need to talk prettier.

2: Who's going to run the DNC?

An AP dispatch last week named Howard Dean as well as "Govs. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Mark Warner of Virginia, and former Gov. Roy Barnes of Georgia. Harold Ickes, a New York lawyer who was a White House aide in the Clinton administration and has close ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has a large following, especially in the Clinton wing of the party. Ickes is a passionate advocate and successful fund-raiser, but his Clinton ties might work against him among Democrats backing other candidates. Other names being circulated: Inez Tenenbaum, South Carolina's education superintendent and unsuccessful Senate candidate; and Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network."

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry "I always would rather dance than fight" Reid has gone on record touting Vilsack, a colorless party hack who, with a little luck, could be another Dick Gephardt someday.

Translation: We gotta find someone who will play ball with the cash clientele. We can't give donors the idea we're going a whole new way here.

3: Where's the silver lining in this latest rout?

According to contributors at DailyKos and other pro-Dem bulletin board sites, it's that some moderate Republicans may jump ship and become Dems. Here's a few excerpts from one such thread:

I will repeat what I have written several times: If you are a moderate Republican, the message is clear. Your party does not want you. But, thanks to the conservative group Concerned Women for America, you no longer have to take my word for it. Their chief counsel has made that abundantly clear.

heck yeah, we want them! incumbents are hard to beat! but more to the point, i think we need to take these seats back to Dem either by changing the candidate's party or by getting our candidate in.

Why wouldn't we want them?  There's nothing inherently evil in fiscal conservatism (see John Kerry's record), it makes sense in a lot of ways, we just happen to disagree.  Heck, even on Kos we've been talking about increased states' rights etc (end red state welfare and all that).  I say, it's good that the moderate of the GOP are starting to see things as they are.  We need to make this more and more about the loonies that are still with Bush, after all this. This is even a good meme, even normal republicans (not neocon/religous wackos) are with us!

I want them too.  I think it's become a matter of semantics - that 'liberal' somehow doesn't equate to 'mainstream'.  The democratic party is mainstream, we just let the pubs frame all the issues in ways that make the it sound like we're on the fringe.

And so on, ad nauseam.

Translation: When the Democrats have absorbed enough alienated Republicans to make themselves resemble even more thoroughly the pre-Bush Republican party, the Democrats will be victorious again--booYAA, Republicans!

So there's your DNC post-election roundup: craven, false, same as it ever was.

Posted by Steve Perry at November 17, 2004 10:56 AM

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