This is
not a call to rampant procreation (not that there's anything wrong with that). What I am trying to say is that the long-term focus, now that the election is over, should not just be to choose the
super candidate with the
invincible message and mount his or her portrait in the
most beautiful frame. What we need to do is change the way people think on the ground, one by one by one.
Backing up a bit, part of how we do this is reframing. No doubt, when we engage our neighbors and colleagues and congregation members and classmates and drinking buddies, we need to be aware of the power of language and choose our words not just for their denotaiton but for their connotation and association. No doubt. But just sitting in the blogosphere hoping the media picks up the new frames doesn't make them into the new common sense.
We gotta get out there.
Now me, I'm a real introvert. No kidding, I usually avoid talking to strangers. Yet I intend to become more active in my congregation and use that network to spread political messages. I intend to talk politics and subtly attack Bush at the neighborhood pub (as well as the one by my office). I intend to work with an issues-based political action group and also join my local Democratic Party.
The Right put Evangelical Christians and scrappy multilevel marketing folks to work using those skills to win people to right-wing politics. It wasn't some big media ad campaign that put them in the ascendancy in our nation 20-25 years back, it was person-to-person grass roots persuasion.
This strategy is not effective during election season. People have their walls up. Even now, or for the next couple months, personal persuasion will mean little. As winter grows colder (or less warm in the far south) ears will open. By then we can all have learned our Lakoff and refined our talking points. Issues should predminate, with only the sublest direct attacks on Bush. Discussions about broad attitudes are useful as well. Let's target those people we knew to be swingers or leaners, whichever way they actually voted. Let's work on centrist Dems to turn them progressive (or liberal or what-have-you).
I have reached the point where I hardly even care what sort of candidate the Dems put up in 2008. I could get behind a centrist 100% if they are inclusive and don't dis the left. I'm more concerned with making this nation into a place where what that candidate says will seem like common sense.
Please provide additional ideas or more specific ideas as to how we can spread liberalism on the ground, among real people.
And the poll this time is rather unrelated, just a cheap trick to get more eyeballs.