But I'm not only interested in presenting a progressive side of the equation.

We have to get down in the mud and combat the Republican thugs for using cultural issues and values while not living them, using language that will turn these evangelical voters away from voting for these Rovian bots. Terms like morality and values have to be used against the Republican Party, and the ideas they expose have to be framed as ignorant and full of prejudice, so that people will not get a free ride on their vote in their consciousness.  

There's a certain amount of people that are going to vote hate, and they'll vote hate no matter what, but let's not let them get away with it for free.

This has nothing to do with why we lost.

We lost because of our TACTICS, not becasue of our stands on the issues or the quality of our candidates.

They are willing to do anything to succeed, we are not.

They lie, steal elections, challenege voters, publish phony polls, sell a phony narrative thru the corporate media while we strive to be accurate and play by the rules as we wish them to be.

Unless we change our tactics we will lose forever.

The cultureal issue is a local issue in the sense that it has to be formulated locally.

Our main problem is tactics and the fact that our leadership has done nothing but compromise.

Our leadership is too gentelmanly to call them liars when they lie and the public are manipulated by their propaganda and by the coporate media.

If we fixate on cultural issues and candidates and if we do not change our methods and tactics we will continue losing.

So I landed on an approach so simple that I think most will skip right over it once they read it. But as a former director of brand development, that's the kind of idea I always found to have the most power in the marketplace of ideas.

I think we need to rebuild the Democratic Party platform on the simple idea that we are the Party of Freedom, with a platform focused on the Rights endowed upon us by our Creator, and the Responsiblity that comes with them.

I love that phrase from the Dec of Ind--it is so iconic and so powerful that most Americans think its in our Constitution. And I think we could own it. Dems have always been champions of civil rights and personal freedoms; tying that part of our party's history more clearly to both God and the creation myth of our country gives it resonance beyond just the abstract idea of freedom (though that is powerful too).

I think we could make a powerful argument that we want to protect your God-given rights, while the other team wants to take them away in the name of their God. Or that they want to give corporations more rights than they allow you, but since yours are endowed upon you by your Creator, why are corporations given more rights than you are in their legislation? Etc.

It sort of makes God the wedge issue--did God give us these rights. or did he/she give BushCo the right to take them away from us? I think many if not most Americans would take the word of the Founding Fathers over W's.

I think it would appeal to Libs and moderate Repubs and I also think that a significant part of the evangelical vote could be split off accordingly.

We do need to answer attacks, especially attack on American values such as human rights.  Gay issues are not the issues of special interests; they are civil rights issues.  Marriage is a religous institution, and the churchs should do whatever they want.  However, we cannot deny the rights of Americans, supposedly endowed by the creater, to those with whom we have disagreements.  I believe this was the sort of thing that Dean had in mind in Vermont.

If we're looking for a primer on values, I suggest we look to the populism of FDR, Howard Dean, and Obama.

Kerry's health care plan is going to become a bigger winner as more companies abandon their employees health care plans or raise premiums.

Iraq and the middle east will probably become a deeper quagmire and bigger disaster over the next two years.

The environment and Bush's record is going to go furthur downhill. No drastic policy changes are required on this issue.

Throw in a couple of easy to understand social justice issues and you have a campaign. If it gets any longer than this post we will lose again.

We don't need to try and educate the whole damn country on forty different issues. Keep it simple. If that doesn't work, simplify, simplify, simplify.

Mady

How are you going to fight that?  And that's how they won, in case you hadn't noticed.  That's how they will continue to win.

Fast forward to today, Which party do these descriptions now fit? The republicans have succeded because they have become "the big tent". Social liberals, social conservatives,Pro-life, pro choice, libertarian, Fiscal conservatives, fiscal "big spenders" all have a place in the republican party.... The democrats however today are much more narrow in scope,where are the pro-life dems? Dems who are Centrist in political leanings? The answer is they are leaving the party because the party no longer welcomes them.

It seems to me we have a choice. Either broaden our base, or resign ourselves to decades of political oblivion. I've seen alot of talk about continuing the fight, fine!! I agree, but the fight is to regain the center of american politics, not to try to pull the country to the left. I am as worried about the far right wackjobs as anyone, but only a little less worried about the wackjobs on the left. And america, as divided as it is, has spoken. When given a chioce between the left and the right, it will choose the right. As democrats,   (moderate, bleeding heart, progressives etc),Would you rather have a right wing Govt. you hate? Or a centrist Govt. that you had a part in electing? That is the question the left must decide before the next election. The DLC recognized this, the election and re-election of Clinton proved this. The lesson has been there all along, let's get to work!!!  

They have two or three pro-choice office holders. Aside from Arnold I can't name a single one, but I know there are a couple. We don't need to go pro-life, we just have to abandon partial birth. Do the same thing the Republicans do. Vote against it and let the S.C. clean up the mess. Of course, this probably won't work after the second Bush appointment.

Who are the fiscal conservatives? If there are more than a half-dozen fiscal conservatives in the Republican party they have been very discreet lately. I think Kerry picked up the fiscal conservative ball and ran with it. If Democrats keep hammering fiscal conservatism for the next two years I think they can make some real headway in 2006.

On tactics: yes, we have been too gentlemanly. Kerry didn't want to use the word "lie" even when invited to do so at the third debate. Kerry often emphasized that his administration would tell the American people the TRUTH. He sometimes pounded the podium on the word. By IMPLICATION we were supposed to draw the conclusion that the Bushies were lying. Edwards' response to Cheny's three-month long river of apocalyptic puke was that Cheney was fearmongering. D'Uh!? To repeat the obvious is not a counterargument. But those are the rules of civil engagement. That's how gentlemen play the game. Well, that's fighting your house fire with a squirt gun. Exhibit "A" -- or is it "B" or "C" -- Kerry was not going to dignify the SwiftBoat bastards with a comment. As if to say, "Who in their right minds would believe that shit?" Simple point in the current environment: a lie unanswered sticks. And that one, in particular, awakened in the mind a ruinous question that Bush picked at until it became an open sore: would Kerry fight for the country if he wouldn't fight for himself? Game. Set. Match.

In the exposition of lies, we're going to get NO help from the MSM. Their job, apparently, is the maximization of their profit through the sale of solutions for yellow teeth and erectile dysfunction. And nothing rivets the attention of the consuming public, apparently, than a good public brawl. So, to hold the attention of their audiences through the next round of commercials, it's in their interest (so far) to present "each side" as if they were morally equal and each segment of their "news" as the next "round" of the brawl. This is essentially Jon Stewart's argument, made to "Nightline" and "Crossfire" and anyone else who would listen to him. For his effort, he ought to receive the country's highest civilian medal.

So the MSM is in league with our cultural obsession with entertainment, and tens of millions marinate in the sludge spewn by Drudge, Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity and a hundred copycats. And our answer is, what? Air America? The country is being burned to the ground and we have squirt guns. Would that Soros (perhaps) would pump a few hundred million into daytime radio. I have wondered if Obama wouldn't serve the country better behind a microphone four hours a day, five days a week, than in the Senate.

Smarter heads here and elsewhere have already noted that Bush's victory is the harvest of many seeds planted by some very determined people over the course of the last few decades. It will take a while before we have the infrastructure we need. But -- we need it. The thuggish right has been the only group making any noise in this country for 25 years. The ground game we put together for this election, including genuine cooperation among progressive groups, is but a small -- important -- start.

A small tactical point in the meantime: we can't sell our vision -- and I second Jerome's listing of key elements of it -- in ads bought in the last three months before an election. The MSM will not help on their own initiative, but they will take our ads. So: one major buy a week from every progressive group in the country, beamed into the south as well as the coasts and the midwest, on our issues and perspectives until our kids are grandparents. We're in this for the long haul. And it will be a LONG haul.

On the culture wars: one (longish) point. There is an important synergy at work between the tactics of the thuggish right and their cultural frame. In a phrase: They killed us on moral grounds. The middle and left think of this as an irony -- sanctioning murderous tactics on moral grounds is an irony, isn't it? And in enlightened company, anyone exposed to an irony as grotesque as this is supposed to laugh and give it up, aren't they? The illusion that the middle/left must face is that this (obvious?) irony can be appealed to in making an argument to the thuggish right. The synergy between their murderous tactics and their cultural frame is NOT ironic. It is LOGICAL. As Von Harnack said of the Catholic church a century ago (and he was talking about my church): Out of mercy for souls, it must be a repressive institution.

To draw out the doubled problem: they are not only required to kill us (on moral grounds) because God wants their victory, but that victory was played out on a stage set by moral concerns. Iraq isn't a war. It's a moral concern. Game. Set. Match.

An appeal to the "facts" or "the evidence" barely dents a "logical" circle like this. One of Clinton's best received lines as he was out shilling his book was that his administration governed successfully because it was based on the evidence, not on theology. But he was singing to the choir. Much as I loved Suskind's piece in the NYT, it was written to evoke a recoil in horror. His miscalulation, in my judgment, was that only the choir would sense the need to recoil. "Look what those people DO?" is not a transformative argument in this environment.

Much as Clinton might hate to admit it, his administration WAS governed by a theology. The precise point is that it was/is a theology that takes advice from the facts, the evidence.

Much as the middle/left might hate to face this -- it's not polite to talk about religion in public, is it? -- we are going to have to propose a theology that actually makes an argument to the theology of the thuggish right. Our agnostics and atheists may feel the need to sit this one out as we develop this part of our strategy, but they will sense the usefullness of this part of it being written, not least because any decent theology will defend the rights of agnostics and atheists, and because they will sense that it is one piece of a larger support system which defends their reading of the issues.

The clear and distinct advantage we have here is that there is available to us a theology which is vastly better than that of the thuggish right. It undergirds Jerome's 10 point platform. We're not all going to have to get PhDs in Rahner, Sobrino, and Ruether. But we're going to have to enlist those who do have them. And there are many ready to take up the cause. Most reputable Catholic theologians are furious with the right tilt among their bishops. (How many Catholic votes did we lose this year? Three million?) Most reputable theologians -- Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim -- are not only not fundamentalists in their interpretation of their scriptures, they are a ready resource for a progressive religious interpretation of culture. We need to form explicit alliances with them if we have a snowball's chance of breaking through the conservative religious shell.

We got killed on moral grounds -- a particularly deadly synergy of tactics and cultural frame. Let's deal with that.    

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January 6, 1941

"All the issues Democrats like to run on--education, the environment, the deficit, energy independence--would be vastly more powerful if united under a single theme. Clean up your mess. Take care of your children. Pay your debts. Stand on your own two feet. It all comes down to responsibility."  (here's the link: http://slate.com/id/2109128/ )

Democrats have got to start speaking the language of values. Barak Obama already knows this.  Read his speech from the the convention...he talks about unity, tolerance, moderation, fairness, justice, optimism, God, faith, and compromise and understanding between citizens of red states and blue states.  Even the GOP acknowledges that this guy has got a powerful message.  Further eveidence: He did extremely well in the "red" rural counties of Illinois last night.  We need to follow his example and show Americans that Democrats share and honor their values, while Republicans expolit them.

As for the issues of security, Irag, and terrorism, I'm sure that by the end of next year Iraq will be revealed as a complete debacle. And we'll see, unfortunately, that bin Laden and Islamic terrorism have grown stronger and more deadly under Bush's watch. The Republicans have been given enough rope to hang themselves, but we've got to be there to tie the noose.  

I strongly recommend getting Thomas Frank's recent book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" and giving it a very careful read.  It is very painful for Progressives and Liberals -- but necessary.  Put simply, we've alienated too much of the working class base, and become untrustworthy.  But yea -- it can be reversed.  To an extent, we did it in Minnesota on Tuesday.

The problem began years ago -- but in 2002 the Republicans feasted on the hype after Paul Wellstone's memorial, and on election day we lost a slew of seats in the House and Senate.  Kept the Senate by 2 seats, we were down 15 in the House, and elected a Ideological Twins of Bush to all but one State Constitutional office in a 4 way race where minor parties deprived us of the chance to win.  Pawlenty won with 43% -- but minor parties took 14 points away from the DFL even though they are not rightists.  On Tuesday we won 13 seats in the State House back -- mostly moderate women candidates running in Suburban districts that Bush carried in the Presidential race.  We have one race being recounted -- but now the DFL has either a 67-67 tie, or is in the minority 66-68.  Races were won on fundamentals, school funding, transit, sound financial practices, Health Care, and an odd issue Pawlenty had put forward, should we solve our deficit problems by stealing the Indian Gaming Biz from the Indians.  (Pawlenty threated them with bringing the big boys in from Vegas as competition if they didn't hand over 25% of assets.)  The Campaign used tactics such as, "Is it Christian to again steal the White Buffalo from the Indians?"  That is precisely what I mean by taking ownership of the Moral Argument.  

Anyhow what happened Tuesday positions us to do well in 2006. We may even have two marginalized Republican State Senators ready to cross over and make the majority in the Senate four.  And I should add that many of our candidates recruited their Campaign Managers out of the Dean Campaign last spring when it folded.  They are getting rave reviews.  And to be honest if we want to have a say in redistricting after 2010 -- we have to hold Governorships and State Legislatures.  It took the Republicans 20 plus years to game their present outsized House margin -- we have to be in a position to undo their damage in 2010.  

HAVE THE BLASTED WHACKED OUT EVANGELICALS

WITH THERE LIBRARY OF TIM LEHAYE "LEFT BEHIND

BOOKS"  WE NEED TO SIT DOWN WITH THE FEMINISTS

AND WE NEED TO RETABLE ABORTION...EMPHASIS

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY AND EARLY MORNING PILLS

FOR YOUNG WOMEN IN NEED AND GIVE ABORTION

DECISCION BACK TO THE STATES...I KNOW THROW

ROCKS AT ME...BUT WE CAN WIN ELECTIONS AND

DO MUCH BETTER FOR THIS COUNTRY WITH OUR

VISION....ABORTION OFF THE TABLE SOMEHOW

SOMEBODY PLEASE LETS THINK IT THROUGH.

Losing an election and then calling the majority bigots just isn't going to work.

The problem is that we have had less and less to say to working people the more our Democratic coalition is defined by the ideas of our upper class donors.  And believe it or not, while health care costs are a big problem, many working people are skeptical of the ability of the American government to run a better, less expensive system.

So we go to working people saying don't be bigots, vote your pocketbooks.  But a) people who are bigots don't think they're bigots, so they feel patronized; and b) our economic message is muted (the national party supports free trade, Kerry said little about the minimum wage, etc.)

Here in Illinois, we now do much better in some of the wealthiest precincts of the suburban North Shore than we do in most working class towns and cities around the state.  That doesn't happen because "we're right on the cultural issues, but we haven't framed them properly."  It's because the white lower middle class doesn't get excited by our economic solutions, and so hears little to get them to vote against their cultural biases.

    The Republicans have become masters of the Politics of Resentment, of displacing voter anger onto the issues that work in their favor. They've succeeded largely because the Democrats cling to an oversimplified utilitarian view of politicial behavior, i.e., if people feel economic pain they will automatically support the party that promises to relieve the pain. We should all be aware by now what a false assumption that is.

     The only way to frame economic issues in a way that resonates with the voters is to LISTEN TO THE VOTERS.  Some political figures have their own antennae for popular economic concerns. Obama has them, as does Edwards. Bobby Kennedy had them shortly before his death. But most progressives aren't so well-equipped.  They need constant feedback from the voters to stay in touch with their concerns. The big challenge for progressives over the next few years will be to create and sustain the means for obtaining feedback and ACTING on it.  

I'm as shaken as anyone by the last few days.  Your right on the money when you say that the conservatives are simply in the majority.  Here's why, I think:
We're just fighting the wrong battles.  It really is "just" a culture war, and our hearts haven't been in it. We've let the conservatives get away with believing that it's OK to be intolerant, OK to hate, OK to steal and lie.  When I was a lad, some thiry years ago, if someone came around a college campus with their keen haircut and pictures of aborted fetuses and anti-gay bible quotes, we'd simply laugh them out of the place.  We made sure that it just wasn't cool to have these beliefs.  
I know this sounds trivial, this talk of what's "cool" but somewhere along the line, we became tolerant, starting thinking that everyone has a right to believe what they want, and THIS IS JUST NOT SO.  
When the Christian conservatives started feeling brave and came out of their holes and going mainstream, we responded by saying "Well, everyone has the right to religious belief," and this mistake enboldened them.
There was a time, not long ago, when religious people in this country were (quite rightly) considered a little nuts, a little potty, and if they came out to the street corner to preach, they were laughed back into their holes. But we HAD to be nice. We HAD to be tolerant.  Baloney.
Yeah, people can believe what they want, but when they start to try to influence the way the rest of us live, it's time to remind ourselves that THEY'RE TALKING TO INVISIBLE BEINGS!
Look at the map of election results. Let's be honest.  The red states are the ones where people are mostly stupid.  Take Kansas.  Where else could Sam Brownbeck become anything but a drooling nut sitting in the park?
Where are the engines of our culture, movies, music, fashion, art?  They're in the blue states.  We've ALWAYS been a minority, but we USED to use our cultural leverage, our educations, our superiority to beat the stupid back.  Now, we're all sweet.  Some of us got scared as we got older and even started going to church ourselves.  Now we're paying the price. We've let these nuts believe they're allowed to VOTE!  I'm dead serious, a little ridicule can go a long way toward putting the conservatives back into their bottles.  Conservatives are in fashion now.  Greed, fascism, hatred are all bare-breasted covergirls on the magazine racks of our national culture.  It's time to make it extremely uncool to disagree with us.. again.

we need to frame this tough issue and many others in ways that appeal to principles shared by all americans.  right now, they see us as "pandering to the gay lobby" rather than standing for something we believe in, and that's our own fault because we don't stand for anything affirmative on the issue.

WE MUST ALL BECOME THEOLOGIANS IN A WAY AND

CALL WHAT THEY ARE DOING FOR WHAT IT IS

HERESY AND BLASPHEMY...AND MAKE IT STICK

BECAUSE IT IS TRUE....THEY ARE THE PHARISEES

AND SANHENDRIN AND I USE THAT AS EXAMPLE NO

ATTACK ON JEWS INTENDED...ITS TO POINT OUT

THAT GETTING FILLED UP ON SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS

BREEDS ARROGANCE,EGO,POWER, AND CONTROL.

WHAT TIM AND BEVERLY LE HAYE TEACH IS

HERESY...RECONSTRUCTIONISM AND SCARING PEOPLE

TO JESUS..NO LOVE THERE.

BENNY HINN YES BENNY HINN AND TBN THE

PROSPERITY GOSPEL IS PURE HERESY AND BLASPHEMY

IT REALLY IS A PONZI SCHEME ..HISTORY PHARISEES

USED IT BY JACKING UP PRICES AT THE TEMPLE AND

MAKING THE POOR PAY AND FEEL GUILTY.

WEDGE ISSUES SOMEHOW ABORTION IS MURDER

BUT INVITRO VERTERILIZATION IS NOT...ALSO A

VERSE IN THE BIBLE SAYS "NOT TO CALL ANY BROTHER

A FOOL A MURDERER"  GIVE IT RIGHT BACK AT THEM

POINT OUT HOW THEY ARE MAKING WHOLE CLOTH OUT

OF A VERSE BUT YET IGNORING ANOTHER VERSE.

PAT ROBERTSON ANOTHER RECONSTRUCTIONIST

AND FINALLY THEY ARE RIGHT IT DOES NOT

SAY SEPERATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN THE

CONSTITUTION...BUT SOMETING TRUMPS THAT

JESUS SAYS " RENDER TO CASEAR