Clinton / Lieberman 2008! That’s the Winning Ticket!

[David Zephyr]

According to the conventional wisdom of the Democratic Leadership Council, Al From and a good many Dixiecrats, the way for our Party to win elections is to move to the “center” of the political spectrum. Yes, to win, we are told over and over, we must put aside our differences as Democrats. We must, at all costs, unite and avoid being side-tracked by “divisive” issues like fighting over the illegality of the war in Iraq or whether we should continue to go along with Bush’s “stay the course plan” or becoming entangled with internal arguments about such “non-starter” concerns like promoting a single-payer national healthcare plan for universal coverage. Nah! Unity is what we need.

Today, we read where many of our Democrats in Congress “fear” that the “anti-war rhetoric” by a few outspoken liberals within our Party will “backfire” against them in 2006. The subterfuge is becoming a daily drumbeat: maybe Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Murtha had better shut up and act our two former darlings of courage, Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle.

If the Patriot Act is bothering you and if you are still fuming over the fact that a lot of members of our own Party voted for it, well just get the hell over it, OK? Good grief! How long are you going to wear that cross? What’s a few civil liberties and habeas corpus really have to do with anything important?

If an orchestrated assault against our nation’s historical “wall of separation of between church and state” bothers you, snap out of it! Who do you think you are anyway? Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? They are dead and Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead, come and follow me!” You liberal Democrats better get right with God and listen to Senator Joseph Lieberman who knows a thing or two about the man upstairs which is why he has been so supportive of George Bush’s “Faith Based Initiatives”. And quit calling him “Holy Joe”. That’s not going to win the Bible Belt for us! Whose side are you on?

Let’s all just try to get along, OK? Listen, we can’t do anything about Howard Dean being our Chair, but we’d better all remember that it is only Bill Clinton who really knows how to win elections and its his lead we should all be following.

I know, I know that a lot of well-intentioned liberals got all excited when Congressman John Murtha called on the President to begin pulling our troops out of Iraq and called the war a mistake and a war that we could not win. But Senator Hillary Clinton put Murtha in his place within hours of his making that divisive statement. Hillary made it plain and clear that Murtha doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party and that while she disagrees with President Bush about staying the course in Iraq that she feels that it is important that we stay the course in Iraq.

So let’s just all get over our self-righteous selves and suck in our little concerns about poverty, war, healthcare, children, civil rights, civil liberties and the national debt! We have to “move to the middle” folks. Of course, I understand that the middle is a lot more conservative than it has been in ages, but that’s where victory surely must lie and it also doesn’t require any courage to go there. Not an ounce.

So get with it! We’ve got an election coming up in 2008 and we need to be united. I have been to the top of the mountain that the DLC has shown me and we have a sure-fire winning ticket for 2008: Clinton / Lieberman!