For years, the President we criticized was an enemy to our party, an enemy to what we believed in, and we could be as harsh and nasty as we wanted to. We could call him Chimpy McFlightSuit, call his followers Repugnican, and just vent our frustration with full spleen.
Now, our President is in our own party, and he's disappointing many of us, and what was once painless and uncontroversial now tears us apart. It's not occurred to us all that there are ways you criticize people when you want them to win, and there are ways you do it when you don't want them to win.
As members of the latent content generations, we're used to having our world fed to us, used to waiting around for everybody else to speak our peace for us. But while this is a new world, some of the old rules apply, and one of those rules is, if you want something done right, you'd better do it yourself.
We hate the policy that is up there. Let's make no mistake about that. We hate the Iraq War, and the interminable failure in Afghanistan, which Richard Holbrooke's attributed dying words were about ending. We hate the parasitic elitism of today's economy and tax structure, where the most burdens are placed on the folks with the least means, to grant comfort to the already comfortable.
We hate DADT and DOMA. No soldier should be forced to live a lie to serve their country. No two consenting adults who love each other should be denied their right to a recognized, legal relationship. If you don't consider that marriage in your church, that's just fine. Nobody can force you to recognize it as valid in your faith. Just let us recognize such unions by our secular governments, and have them be given full faith and credit. I support the full repeal of both measures.
The question is one of tactics and strategy. Not merely what we intend to do it, how we intend to do it, and how we put our plans to the test.
Here's my thing, and it's a view I developed over a long history of party-switches, engagement with conservatives on a personal level, and study of communication and information theory: The problem is not getting a bunch of your fellow Democrats to know and believe this stuff, the problem is getting through to people over whom your views and your beliefs do not hold complete sway.
It's not merely a matter of what you want people to believe. Will power can only help you if it backs a successful play, if it keeps you fighting when you're doing things right. Otherwise, it's just energy to beat your head against the wall with.
Get as angry and as committed as you want. If your methods don't work, if your ideas haven't been successfully sold, it's all just going to keep you walking down the wrong path.
No, the real art is getting somebody else committed to your cause, whether it's a more moderate Democrat, or even potentially a right-wing Republican with a weakness for your cause.
The media's got us fooled into thinking that it's merely a matter of aggressiveness. If that were the case, what happened in 2006 and 2008? Nobody could fault the Republicans for being wallflowers.
The difference, I think is that we were engaged, and we were will to compromise somewhat on politics, in order to make gains. We hadn't let our frustrations take over. We also had the benefit of being the outsiders.
Let's not generalize needlessly: many of our Democratic Congressmen and Women came through for us. Our Senate votes in majority to pass the legislation we want. It's not all Ben Nelsons and Joe Liebermans. The House came through brilliantly, time and again. They didn't deserve the hit they got, especially since most of the problem was getting our legislation past the few turncoats in the Senate.
Our problem was, and still is, that many of the establishment Democrats remain in power, and will remain in power. It will take time, or a few key elections to change things.
You want help quicker? We need to force matters. It's not merely enough to win an election. We have to find ways to change the voter's underlying attitudes, or, as might be more practicable, changing their expression of their underlying attitudes.
We have to become a more calm and centered party, while becoming more forceful at the same time. The forcefulness isn't in developing pushy attitudes, rather, in proceeding with the kind of confidence that Republican's unquestioning party propaganda would like to project. If we believe the things we believe, we have no business waiting for the politicians to do us right, to put our issues on the agenda. We need to speek with frankness and earnestness, with compelling integrity, to the needs of our nation. We need to confront our enemies not with brittle contempt, but with the strength of our convictions.
They're scared we might just do that. They're scared that if we get our act together, and talk with people about these things on the level, if our people go out there, and follow up the legislative achievements of the past two years with a concerted popular movement, they will never be able to regain the momentum they once had, not as the party they are now.
They are right to be afraid. And we are right to be annoyed and frustrated with leaders who don't get that. But was better really to be expected of them? Many of these people are the same ones who helped enable Bush and the other Republicans. This is what they know, what they understand.
To get past them, though, we can't afford to go into a corner and sulk over their duplicity or lack of courage. We must make the decision to lead the party ourselves. We cannot count on a generation of Democrats conditioned to defer to Republicans on issues to give us the change we want, the way we want.
Folks talked about FDR saying "I agree with you, now make me do it." to a bunch of party activists, and Obama reflected on that anecdote, too. Why do I mention it? Well, in that time, when people wanted progressive reform, or to express themselves, they made themselves visible. They had demonstrations. You know what the root etymology of that is? To display. To show something.
While numbers in some poll or numbers at a voting booth can have an effect, so can good old fashion methods of psychological persuasion, namely what people see and hear. Views you keep to yourself, opinions posted to web pages where mostly liberals show up to read, and other fairly safe means of pushing one's ideas out there will not suffice. No politician is going to read your mind, much less push your agenda based on that alone, at least not the ones that weren't going to do that on their own anyway.
In this day of digital ease, where you can follow whatever narrow interest you want, it's easy to become trapped in the funnels of special interest. The internet makes it easy to pull apart people into individuals, easy to get bogged down in vocally argued differences.
It takes an act of will, a decision to overlook differences, not to simply follow through on all the pie-fight imperatives, but to consciously consider what, given your options, is your best decision.
See, all the rivalries and factionalizing can make it easy to fall into "us vs. them" arguments, to get caught up in trying to defeat the other side, rather than succeed on your own terms. For all their success in screwing up the Democrat's successes, the Republicans are still pretty screwed up, and politically unpopular as a party. They won, in many ways, on protests votes, votes that were often protests of conditions they helped create and sustain.
If you are just caught up in the rhetoric and the flood of bad news that comes every day, if you just take a passive attitude, you will end up feeling powerless, unable to affect needed change. And then, you will become an agent of your own disenfranchisement, as the compromises and defeats forced on you get taken to heart.
It is important in politics to have a goal in mind, a goal you are dedicated to attaining in whatever way is possible. One purpose of this goal will be to sustain you through defeat. Another will be to create a standard by which you hold your politicians and political organizations accountable. But is also the measure by which you determine what means and what strategies in holding them accountable are justifiable.
What doesn't lead to the victory of our policies and agenda must be set aside, regardless of the good intentions that power it. Within the limits of good conscience, we must be willing to adapt our methods to make forward progress.
Most importantly, though, we must bring to the table an indomitable spirit, one that remains resilient, tough, and robust in the face of Republican Obstruction, and frustration of our policies. If we cannot endure that and maintain our unity long enough to break the back of the opposition, they will win, though the majority of the country will be against them, and they will win again, even if we take Congress back.
We Democrats need to awaken the silent majority, encourage it to shout, to rage, to march down the streets of America, from Main Street to Wall Street. Wall Street was defeated once before by the massing of the power of its citizens, and it can be defeated again, put back in check by the strength of public discontent with its behavior.
We can no longer afford to be too good or too pure not to approach people on the emotional level Republicans approach them. But we shouldn't be so heavy-handed as to just make appeals based on fear and hatred. We need something stronger, something positive in our rhetoric that draws people, inspires them. We need to hold up in front of them visions of a better, greater, society. It's the Republicans, this time, who need to be put in the position of talking about a malaise, wearing the cardigans, trying to force people to endure the hateful circumstances that Americans would rather folks be fixing.
If your response to what I have said is to reply that our politicians should do this first, then my reply to you is, "And what if they don't?" Will you remain silent, waiting until they stop being mediocre spokespersons to speak up yourself? Or are you going to make that conscious decision to speak up for yourself?
They can't shut us all up. They cannot stand against us all forever. They are mortals, they are human beings just like us, and against a concerted resistance on their part, our numbers alone ensure that we will eventually win out. But the more of us speak up at once, the quicker we will win, and the less time we will spend suffering the injustices we so hate.
We need to be the wall that our politicians have their backs to, and the ton of bricks that come down on our opponents. We need to have the will and the drive to continue pushing policy, continually making progress on policy, or at the very least, holding the line if we can do nothing else. If they think they have tough activists on their side, let them see us, when we shake off the chains of the frustrations they've forced on us to keep us bitter and silent.
Democratic Party, Republican Party, Silent Majority, perseverance, courage, self-sufficiency, political initiative, winning attitudes