One of the biggest problems with the leadership of the modern Democratic party is simple. They take advice from Republicans.
I mean, seriously, this should be obvious. They're your opponents, they don't have your best interests at heart. If Republicans are saying you need to do something, then chances are the best thing to do is the opposite. Especially if the Republican in question is George W. Bush.
But it's not just Republicans giving advice. There's pundits and think tanks and reporters offering advice. You have to know good advice from bad, and not just take it all.
See, that's the thing. A lot of the public, rightly or wrongly, sees the Democrats as "weak" and "flip-flopping" and so on. There's grains of truth to that, part of which I blame on people who confuse tolerance with agreeing with somebody. Tolerance means you allow other people to disagree with you and be different from you without trying to kill them or treating them differently in hiring or riding buses or things like that. It doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say. You tolerate the Republicans attempts to destroy Social Security, as long as they do it through normal political channels. If they can convince enough people, it happens, that's the POINT of democracy. But that doesn't mean you don't try to stop them! You're allowed to oppose things and have ideals you stand up for, and even *gasp* think your ideals are right, and better than somebody else's, because if you don't think your ideals ARE right or good, why have them?
So, when Republicans and pundits start braying about how Democrats should have an "alternate plan" for Social Security? Tell them we've already got one. Social Security IS the alternate plan. "Oh, but you should be open minded, keep all options on the table," some say. Why, when the options we've been presented with SUCK? Bush hasn't even presented his plan, why should the Democrats present one? Bush only insists on having "private/personal/whatever the spin is this week accounts", which are going to be cut out of Social Security. That's a bad option, that'd lead to the destruction of Social Security. So why be "open-minded" about it? It sucks and it's crap. Especially when significant majorities of the public are against Bush's accounts? But even if they weren't, sometimes you have to go to the line and fight, even if you'll lose.
Crap like
Joe Lieberman's opportunistic press release about the bankruptcy bill doesn't help. Yeah, he voted against it, AFTER he voted for it. The first vote was for "cloture" which is when the Senate stops debating the bill, and Joe voted for it, when it only needed 40 Senators to vote against it. There were 34. And then he voted against it afterwards, when the Republicans could pass it on party lines, and spewed the crap about "not a balanced bill." Well, fucking duh. But this way, he can posture in public about voting against it, while showing donors he voted for it, I guess.
The whole "voted for it after I voted against it" thing worked against Kerry because a) Bush has a great media machine, b) Kerry did a horrible job of explaining it. Seriously, when he was challenged by Bush etc about voting for the war in Iraq, and then arguing against it, he shoulda just said "I voted for the war in Iraq based on lies. I voted for it because I didn't believe the President of the United States would go up before Congress, the UN, the nation, and the world, and lie about Iraq's weapons capability. I was wrong." (Ignoring, of course, the fact that it was obvious the Bush admin was lying, if you looked at all) That woulda put Bush on the defensive, instead of Kerry playing defensive the whole time. Attack politics works when there's basis for the attacks.
Liberals want to be liked. Liberals want people to get along. We figure people are all rational and caring and want what's best for everyone, if we show them the option. This isn't always true, though it often is, and we need to decide which is more important, being liked or being able to do things. Although, when you think about it, Republicans aren't going to like liberals, pretty much whatever happens, and betraying your principles to be liked pretty much ensures nobody will like you, so there's really not much of a question, is there?
And I don't know how Howard Dean came to be associated as this huge evil liberal bogeyman. Even among Democrats. Like this article called
A Prescription for Senile Liberalism subtitled " Less Howard Dean, more FDR." The biggest reason for Dean's popularity was he was willing to get up and say the things many liberals (and yes, moderates) had been thinking, in public. So, for some reason, this guy spends the first half of his article calling names. He calls Dean names, calls liberals names, and so on. I think, really, the guy wants to be a Republican, except the Republican party has gone batshit insane. On the other hand, I agree with many of his suggestions, and some are things I've been pushing for a while. Things like rebuilding and upgrading infrastructure (roads, power, sewage, communications... do you realize how much of our infrastructure dates back to 1970 or earlier? He's especially naive, I think, on education, where the problem isn't "Much of the egregious stupidity in our current education system--bilingual education, for example--stems from 1960s liberalism and its unwillingness to impose rigor on anyone, including children." The problem of schools probably deserves its own post, but the over-over-over emphasis on testing, the abysmal pay rates of teaching (which keeps many people who would be teachers from becoming teachers, if only to pay off student loans), poorly equipped and maintained schools, too few teachers, creationists who've helped push evolution out of many science courses, etc, etc, and etc. I could go on. So, while he has some good ideas, he really should focus on them, and leave off the name calling.
There's another reason, though, that people think the Democrats are "weak". Foreign policy. And it's not really because the Democrats are some uber-hippie liberal pacifists. Though there are some, they're not the majority. The problem is they're compared to the Republicans, and people will usually see somebody who's ready to fight as "stronger" than somebody who avoids fights if possible. Even if there's no good reason to fight, and there's better ways to solve it. As long as the Republicans remain bomb-happy bullies, then there's people who're going to see them as "stronger." That's one competition not worth winning, I'd say.
There's also, y'know, the Republican party's 50+ years of trying to paint all Democrats and liberals as communists, anti-American, and what-have-you, that's probably part of it.
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