"Democrats should run as outsiders"???

[Toots]

This from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/carville-and-greenberg-bu_b_22553.html

The latest strategy memo and poll from Democracy Corps founders James Carville and Stan Greenberg just landed in my e-mail inbox -- and it's a decidedly mixed bag.
On the upside, it's encouraging to see them acknowledge that the war in Iraq is "the largest contributor to the public's mood for change" and that "voters supporting a Democratic candidate for Congress are mainly motivated by the Iraq war."
The problem is that this information isn't offered until pages 5 and 6 of the ten-page memo. Talk about burying the lede.
Instead, Carville and Greenberg's grabber advice, delivered in the memo's opening graph (and the e-mail tease), is that Democrats should "run as outsiders." Huh? That's the elevator message that's going to carry Democrats to victory in 2006?
Even more troubling is the way they frame their muddled message. On the third page of the memo, which is described as "a kind of manual for running the tough campaign that can make the most of the current mood," the duo offer a list of eight "mutually re-enforcing actions" that will allow Democrats to "maximize their change vote." "Address Iraq" (which they lump together with the economy as the "dominant issues for voters who want change") is the fifth item on the list. Fifth... coming in after suggestions to run "as an outsider seeking change" and to "show your agenda for America -- on energy, health care prices, American jobs and congressional pay raises." Yep, in the Carville/Greenberg pecking order, congressional pay raises trump the war in Iraq.
These two are clearly rehab-ready "domestic-issue-laundry-list-aholics." They know they've gotta stay off the stuff (if the last three elections isn't bottoming out, what is?), but they just can't help themselves. Old addictions die hard (remember, these are the same guys who pushed John Kerry to focus on domestic issues, ceding national security -- the dominant issue of the 2004 campaign -- to Bush and the GOP).
<snip>

[acmavm]

1. Yeah, I just read the e-mail I got too. I am confused about something and

that is what the hell ever happened to Carville? Outsiders? NOT HARDLY. They damn well better be showing that they're more in touch and more concerned with Mr. and Ms. Average American or they'll stay on the 'outside' of the power zone looking in.

Seems like these two has-beens plan on riding the political gravy train all the way down to the end of the line. With thinking like this, it's apparent that they should have gotten off a couple of elections ago.

[OzarkDem]

2. Dems are in danger of being outflanked

by the GOP running as "reform" candidates against their own crooked party. Didn't that just happen in CA 50?

[Warpy]

3. First, dump the New Democrat platform

This article is right, what isn't muddled and platitudinous is aimed at yuppies and not at rank and file Democrats. It's a dog and a loser and why we're shut out of all 3 branches of government.

Second, realize that Clinton was right and it's the ECONOMY, and this economy SUCKS for anybody who has a job instead of a career, and even for people who have careers vulnerable to offshoring. Address the WAGE issue, that's the real wedge issue, and will shatter the GOP alliance between the rich and the stupidly greedy.

Let the other party paddle around trying to fan the flames of hatred and bigotry, it's what they do best. Staying on a coherent message of economic justice for working people in terms of living wages and protection from predatory countries is the winning message.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Hey, that might have legs! (with one exception)

Staying on a coherent message of economic justice for working people in terms of living wages and protection from predatory countries<companies> is the winning message.

:think:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Democracy. An exercise in PR, salesmanship, and ignorant voters.

Instead of..


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

or,

"A government of the people, by the people, for the people.."

We get a bunch of salesmen, strategizing how to bamboozle the people with the usual pap geared to appeal to their greed, fear, and gullibility.

They system is corrupt and they continue to make it more so.