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Edited on Thu Jan-07-10 10:42 AM by tblue37
country's consensus opinion, the movers and shakers from the right wing (big money men--bankers, leaders of industry, old money, etc.) started planning to retake the country for their own power. They consistently poured money into buying up media outlets, establishing think tanks, supporting career paths for bright young people by paying them to write papers and such so they would become the "experts" called on by broadcast outlets to discuss the issues of the day and so they would be co-opted and their loyalty would be to the interests of the moneyed powers, etc. They did this for 40 years.
Even when they were "in the wilderness," as it were, they didn't take their ball and go home. They kept at it, putting their money and their support into their long-term goal.
And they succeeded. America is a center left country, but the media, largely owned and directed by the RW moneyed interests, endlessly repeats the lie that America is a center right country, and people end up acce3pting that as truth even though it is clearly false.
They control the debate and the terms of the debate. Even when they are "in the wilderness," as they are now, the RW is able to persuade everyone, including many progressives, to swallow their lies. And unlike the RW, progressives will take their ball and go home. Instead of continuing the push from one election to the next, progressives tend to try once, and if at first they don't succeed, they give up.
The best thing about Howard Dean, who is marvelous in so many, many ways, is that he looked to the long term. Although Dems were out of power, he still insisted on putting money and effort into the 50-state strategy, despite the nay-saying by the powers in the party, like Rahm Emmanuel and others.
Right now, it is hard to get the story of any success told to the American public, because the money on the left doesn't really support any long-term effort to move the consensus opinion the way the money on the right did in the early 1960s and thereafter. But we "little people" showed in the last election that we can raise money and push grassroots efforts if we want to. But now I read that 40% or more of Dems say they are not likely to vote in the next election, while 89% of Republicans and 68% of Independents are likely to vote.
Progressive Dems need to get involved and stay involved at the local and state level, as well as at the national level. The Republicans groom and push through candidates for city commissions, school boards, state legislatures, etc. That is their pipeline. They groom people who them burst onto the national stage as viable candidates. Meanwhile, Dems have trouble even fielding candidates sometimes.
Here in Kansas, our Democratic governor, who was originally a moderate Republican until Sebelius tapped him to run as her lieutenant governor in the last election, has said he won’t run for another term. There are a zillion strong Republican candidates for the post already—but we can’t find a Dem to even run in the race yet! In Michigan, the strong Dem candidate for governor has withdrawn his name. We need to be grooming and supporting candidates from the ground up. But for some reason, progressives seem to lack the stick-with-itness of the RW when it comes to grassroots enthusiasm.
We need to vote, and to do so not just in national elections, but in local and state elections as well. Those positions have a direct impact on our quality of life, and they are also the pipeline for national candidates. We also need to take control of our party machinery at the local and state level, even in non-election years. In most cases, by the time an election rolls around, we have already lost the opportunity to field a truly progressive candidate, so we are forced to vote for the lesser of two evils.
And since we don’t own the media the way the RW does, we need to do more at the grassroots level to get our story out. For example, the corporate media will NOT tell the story about how ACORN was unfairly smeared by RW mouthpieces and the media and then illegally singled out by Congress, so we have to get the story out there about their vindication by two impartial official investigations.
And we have to persuade our progressive friends not to stay home on election day.
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