If you were czar of Democratic Party strategy, you would:

[jpgray]

Poll question: If you were czar of Democratic Party strategy, you would:

Poll result (15 votes)
Go for message discipline and purity at whatever cost, then look to build a majority over the long term	(3 votes, 20%)	Vote
Go for a majority first by any means necessary, then look to move things left over the long term	(3 votes, 20%)	Vote
Declare both those options to be terrible and unrealistic.	(5 votes, 33%)	Vote
Do something far better, and kindly deign to explain it in this thread.	(4 votes, 27%)	Vote

[jpgray]

1. Kick for better sample size (edit: oh, it started halfway down the forum due to DST)

[dkf]

2. Focus like a laser beam on jobs jobs jobs.

Everything follows from there.

[jpgray]

3. Who do we train this laser upon?

[dkf]

4. We need to incentivize hiring any way we can.

And we focus on business of course.

[jpgray]

5. By raising demand, yeah? How do we raise demand to provide > 150,000 jobs a month?

[dkf]

7. Tax credit equal to the amount they would have collected in extended unemployment

Plus a payroll tax holiday. They could only get this credit for employees in excess of current hires. This would be valid for two years or when the unemployment rate hits 8%.

[jpgray]

8. Politically, that would need to be a GOP proposal to work

It's bizarre--even tax cuts and credits will be pilloried for their deficit-adding qualities if they come from the Democrats. Witness the stimulus, right? This is only to deny credit where it would be deserved, but it's strangely effective.

[dkf]

9. Yet isn't it neutral because we wouldn't be paying the unemployment?

The social security holiday would be pretty minimal too.

[paulflorez]

10. YES! Dems need to be about JOBS!

If they focus on jobs, then GOP attempts to make 2011- 2012 about HCR will come off as beating a dead horse, and not even an important dead horse.

HCR was important in 2009 - 2010. 2011 - 2012 will be about jobs. Dems need to get job creation as high as possible and get unemployment to start ticking down. If Americans see unemployment ticking down, it will make a huge difference. Dems will need to sell sell sell the jobs agenda and sell sell sell any noteworthy progress like high monthly job creation and ticking down of unemployment. They also need to call Republicans on their shit. GOP will try to claim credit for any progress even though they won't get a simple job related issue accomplished, Democrats need to call them on this.

[PufPuf23]

6. I didn't vote in this survey but have a comment.

The problem is that neo-liberals and neo-conservatives and their respective lackeys have co-opted the parties for class war and violent empire that has chose survival of the fittest in an over-populated and degraded planet ecology. Both neos are sides of a 21st century corporatist and globalist fascism that leads to inefficient social and biologic ecologies.

Most of the people are pawns or excess.

Conscious or not, Obama has been a facilitator.

I think we need to get back to our communities, out of war, and work on clean and efficient energy.

I could share some radical thoughts but I am not the radical in fact (too old and health-limited anyway).

[mmonk]

11. Create a true opposition party.

[paulflorez]

12. I don't think 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive

If you choose a few progressive goals that are populist as well (no tax cuts for rich, repeal DADT, shrinking too-big-to-fail banks) in the short term, then you can win a majority and push additional progressive goals in the long term.

Angle, O'Donnell, Buck, Raese all lost because they were too "pure.". Do we really want to emulate that side? I think the "pure" ones who slipped through the cracks will get kicked out for being too far from the center. You can't get too far from your base either. It's a delicate balance.

[Jim Sagle]

13. I'd start here:

New Deal 2.0 | A Project of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute

It's all there, in these two sites. The ideas, the scholars, and the history we built once and can build again.

[JVS]

14. Work to build class consciousness while destabilizing the existing national political system