Reply #88: well, sorta true

[Lexingtonian]

What you are saying is that the R's are making us appear responsible for all that's going wrong and themselves for all that's going somewhat right for Middle America.

We allow the GOP to do what they do very well which is make elections about us and not about them. We allow the GOP to paint us as being for special interest and thus against the middle class. We fail because we allow the republicans to paint us as being anti-wealth and therefore somehow against the American Dream.

Well, that's not terribly solvable, because in the end that's an appeal to racial classism that isn't going to die out enough in the next couple of election cycles.

We fail because we have not come up with a meaningful response to the moral decay in this country, other than lumping Republicans and Christians into one big pile we call hypocrites without offering an attractive positions on that front. Republicans respect Lieberman because he challenges Hollywood.

This is more soluble and a thing Democrats have been too wary to touch with anything other than asbestos gloves for short instants at a time. The willingness to even touch it is a remarkable change in Democrats that took place across 2004- too late to affect this election, though.

But this is a Modern/anti-Modern clash, really, in which 'traditional' people are colliding with Modern circumstances and thinking- and they fail (in pretty horrible ways, that's true). The major failure lies in Traditionalism (deliberately) not preparing people for the collision, though. In essence we are being punished for not providing easy bridges from one kind of virtuous and constrained form of life to a virtuous and unconstrained kind of life. Unfortunately, that's the problem that faces every adolescent and no adult has been able come up with a workable genuine solution for it. But yes, try is what we have to, and that's the work only good education and the Christian Left/liberal Christians can do with any kind of group scale success.

Hollywood is the allure of Getting Out of the traditional. Hollywood lives and lives well because conservative America is spiritually parasitic and psychologically terribly needy, needs Hollywood more than Hollywood needs it. 'Hollywood' is the epitome of the American Dream you describe and the thing conservatives must most excoriate, both at the same time. It reflects the unbearable paradox to American conservatism perfectly.

Flame me if you must, but liberal rhetoric which opposes the accumulation of wealth/ getting ahead / entrepreneurship / on the one hand and effectively supporting Hedonism and rampant crime on the other, is a real problem for us.

Well, that's not liberal rhetoric per se. That's the rhetoric, adjusted to seem radical through traditional/conservative assumptions that people don't get out of their heads.

It lacks Populist appeal among the voting majority. I am not saying bend over frontwards on any issue or sell-out idealism...The problem is that we are not perceived as the party that protects the American Dream or gives America hope of achieving it.

The right equation would seem to included being ruthlessly tough on Crime; Pro-family and pro-wealth. I think we have our head in the sand on all three.

If we solve those issues with ideas... we win.

The R's have the corner on that market. Where people think in such narrow terms, where their lives are defined by the terms you describe (between the lines as well as in them), you are talking about a way of life any British colonialist in India, Africa, or Jamaica would recognize as that of their middle class. Money as the primary form of secular ideal, criminals and the wealthy/powerful as set (and absolutely distinct) classes, hedonism and strict moral and political and class codes strictly governing what is possible. That's not actual freedom, that's life as a lifelong mercenary.

You have good ideas. You write in a way that makes me hear and see Mark Shields speaking your very words. But Republicans have achieved a 51% or 55% majority share control of the America that still lives in and obeys the colonial/settlement order of life, that defines itself the way you describe it. And they are the people whose corporations and media and state governments and town councils and school boards and police forces and pastor conventions work hard to keep the game in all things one of exploiting and being exploited, ultimately zero sum for all the players in the middle but excellent for the people at the very top of the pyramid, brutal on those at the very bottom.

We can try catering to the scheme, promising incremental change. That was the only Democratic game in the South and the Midwest into the Nineties. The only effect Democrats seem to have had is to put more money into the system, which of course just trickled to the top, and Republicans have simply continued it. What is actually needed for the game to change- and with it, Republican control- is for one tier or another of the government or voters to balk at maintaining this system and force it into breakdown.

So I don't see it doing any good to try to outcompete Republicans on this, their home turf. I'm sorry, but I think our side is going to have to break this scheme down from above- win elections in the cities and whereever else the American Dream starts with being treated as equal by the government. Then to break down the corporations and designs and rules that cleverly deprive American working people of their money and getting quality for their money.

I'd love to believe that average people would do so, working from below. But voters these days- on both sides- evidently keep on lowering their expectations, complain rather than act, and decide their votes based on fears and private priorities and individual inability to cope with the even the good aspect to the world in Modern times, let alone the complicated aspect.