How can we prevent our grassroots from stagnating if Kerry wins?

[mot78]

Let's look at this scenario:

It's February 2005, President Kerry has just been in office for two or three weeks now. THings in Iraq are just starting to improve, even though it's still a mess overall. Kerry has managed to revive the Kyoto Treaty and various other treaties discontinued by *. The Dow also breaks 11,000, climbing from a November low of 9,000. With recent sucess from our President, we decide it's time to lay down our arms and rest, ending four years of strife and action. Democratic websites (includding this one) slow down in traffic dramatically, as Democrats are no longer "angry" about America's state of affairs, and we regress into the complacency of the '90s. meanwhile, Rush, the Freepers, and Faux are steaming mad, and a barrage of organized attacks on President Kerry begin that make Whitewater and Impeachment look insignificant at best. Repugs in Congress also manage to hold up much of Kerry's legislation.



.....My question is? How can we prevent this from happening if Kerry is elected? Just because we have a Democrat in the White House again, doesn't mean we should call it a day. How can we keep the left energized enough to question the RW? Do we need to make * into our Emmanuel Goldstein until 2008 and blame him for all of our problems like the Freepers do with Clinton? Or do we need to attack DeLay and Frist more often, since they will be the biggest enemies of Kerry, and not the BFEE?

[Alerter_]

1. the media will return to celebrity trials and ignore the war

which Kerry expects to last most of his first term. As long as there are no more rape/torture stories with videos and pictures, I bet America will get used to the Iraqi deaths and lost US troops. For a while at least.

[mot78]

2. Coming up next, little rich white girl goes missing!

...and later...if we have time....hundreds of people dying in Iraq.

[sophie996]

3. act locally

identify the seats up for election on school boards, city councils, county supervisors, etc., state assembly, and get progessive candidates elected. we need dialogue at the local level, f2f, to get people educated, thinking and engaged.you can't expect voters to fully understand the issues on a national level if they haven't had some exposure.

a possible starting point: banned books week, September 25–October 2, 2004. http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm

[mot78]

4. Great idea

In order for us to avoiding getting complacent, we need to be active, especially when we see a RWer messing with us on the local level.

[trof]

5. The RW takeover began with Nixon.

We didn't recognize it until Reagan.
It intensified under Clinton.
Their job from day one of his administration, was to get him out of office by means fair or foul.
The full onslaught has come under Bush*.

Kerry might give us enough breathing room to re-group and fight back.
Damn right, start on the lowest local level.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[Pastiche423]

7. Kerry has grassroot supporters?

[mot78]

10. Yeah, and they didn't drink the "he's corporatist, DLC/PNAC" Kool-Aid

and Pastiche, I'm tired of seeing you only post in threads relating to whatever troubles Kerry may have. I've never seen you post in places like the Lounge.

[Pastiche423]

11. The Lounge?

GMFAO!

As the saying goes...

If you don't like what I say, don't read my posts.

[JI7]

14. yes, i did some grassroots work for him

[Tellurian]

8. "we decide it's time to lay down our arms and rest."

We can't!

We can never rest, not as long as Republicans exist.

If they are forced to regroup for another four years, rest assured they will be plotting and planning against us from day one. Hopefully, we can chalk these last 12 yrs up as lessons learned...

And NEVER, NEVER, allow the Republicans the latitude of POWER ever, again!

[OKNancy]

9. I'd be even more excited

because I would feel like something could actually be done. I'll feel especially good if the Kerry coattails put a Democrat in the Senate from here in Oklahoma. It's so depressing if you want to call and complain about something or to ask for help...and you have to call a Senator or Representative out of state or out of your district.

I'll be pumped! ....oh, and the gloat factor would be sweet too.

------
I thought of something else. This is a bit shallow, but think of the class Theresa will bring to the White House. Art and music and culture.....just like Jackie. That would be thrilling to me.

[eridani]

12. Don't think this will happen

The self-organized volunteer bases of Dean, Kucinich and Clark are already looking around for other local and national projects.

[Rosco T.]

13. Just make sure we have T-Shirts with Shrubya's face and "Never Forget" n/m

[monkeymind]

15. good question

no answer

[bemildred]

16. Democracy For America (formerly Dean for America).

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/