The Special Election for the House seat in NY-20 0n 3-31-09
If the goal is to elect MORE and BETTER Democrats in this party, if the goal is to ditch leaders like GOP hacks like John Beohner and Mitch McConnell, as well as Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Evan Bayh in the establishment, if the goal is to shake up the status quo, then the road will have to pass through NY-20 on 3-31-09.
For better or for worse.
Please, follow below the fold . . .
Isn't that the whole point of this whole Democracy business? Aren't we supposed to participate, not just once every two years or when it is our district, but every day, because we can, and we are free to do so. You know, the whole freedom thing. If they really wanted us to vote we wouldn't have had to fight for the right to do so. This is how we maintain our rights and freedoms, not only by fighting for them, but by fighting to maintain and use them. You know this stuff already, you are reading blogs and writing on them, so you know what this whole participatory democracy thing is all about. That is how you defend your freedom. That is how you take back the power, and make your Government work for you. We know how to do it. Now let's make it happen.
I will not lie to you. I do not live in the 20th District of the State of New York, although I am a New York resident. I could find many reasons why this election should not concern me. That is not important to me. Checking the status quo is. James Tedisco is the status quo, and a Republican, which is enough of a reason for me to actively work against him. That is how I am taking on the system in this fight. Don't you want to fight? After 8 and 40 years of this crap, you have every reason to do so.
If Scott Murphy fails to live up to his promises after he wins this election I will certainly be one of the first and loudest to call him out on it. That is how this whole system works. That is how you take on the system. No politician gives a shit about the people who vote against them, it is only the people who may potentially vote for them that our professional political class will care to hear. That is how we will demand change, and that is why we are seeing the pride of the Blue Dogs and the ConservaDems now. It is because they do not fear us.
They have forgotten already, so quickly, that it is We The People who give them the power of office, and we can just as easily take it away.
Until the GOP is totally marginalized in general elections the GOP, the Blue Dogs, the ConservaDems and other elephants in Blue clothing will continue to betray our trust and side with our opponents whenever it suits them to. Until the Blue Dogs and ConservaDems are primaried out, or, within an inch of their political lives, they will not fear us enough to act in our best interests. We have to force them to make our best interests what is in their best interest. If Politicians think that they can hide behind the failed ideas of fiscal conservatism because a liberal democrat can't win in such and such district we should work to make terms like fiscal conservative as politically toxic as Mark Foley. The incompetence and lethargy of members of congress like Sen. Maj. Leader Harry Reid and Senators Joe Lieberman and Roland Burris will be continue to be played to as if they are legitimate and respected politicians and not the incompetent sniveling weathercocks they are, but this will only go on as long as we permit it, and the only way we can force them to act otherwise is by putting the fear of God into them. We can do this with the same efforts we use to elect our officials, by writing and calling and contributing against them, bu,t we gain even more power over them when we write and call and contribute for them first. This makes them respect us, and it makes them fear us.
One of the biggest risks we run is not that the GOP will return to power, but the risk that the Democrats will become the Republicans.
By voting in politicians we gain power over them, not vice versa. They have no power over us other than what we permit them to have. If we do not vote them in (Bush) we are not responsible for them, yes, but if we vote them in (Obama) they are responsible to us. Even then, they will only act responsibly towards us if we force them to do so. If you do not vote you have no power. I can not say that enough. If you vote and your candidate loses you do not lose all your power, just your influence over them. But, when you vote for them and then threaten their career you can exert power and influence over them. By this, we must threaten to withhold our vote if they should not consider first our interests. Do you honestly think we couldn't light a fire under Harry Reid's ass if he really thought the Democratic voters in Nevada would turn their backs on him and withhold their votes and financial support? Of course it would, Harry Reid would fall to his knees faster than a dog scratches the flea that is biting him, because the GOP voters in Nevada will never vote for Harry Reid. This will never happen until the democratic voters in Nevada get off their asses and start YELLING AS LOUD AS THEY CAN! This would make Harry Reid accountable to us. This would give us political influence and power over him. This is the only way we are going to make BETTER happen. Before we can really make BETTER happen, we have to work on the MORE part.
Too many politicians try to make us love them, when really we only want to respect them, but, at the same time, not enough voters demand that our politicians respect us, and that is why they no longer fear us.
Well, I would rather be feared than disrespected, although I think it is better to love, and to be loved. That is not what I am after. I want the respect of my elected officials. In fact, I demand it. The only way to earn that respect is through fear, and the only way to make them fear us is to give them no other alternative.
You see, you give them that ultimatum when you work for them, when you vote for them, and when you campaign along side them. That is how you earn their respect. You make them fear you when you threaten to with hold that support, when you threaten to work against them, to vote against them, that is when they will fear us, when they remember that without us they have no power. Without us there is no power our political leaders can have, and, in order to have that power, we must give it to them. In the same way, we can take that power back. That is how we can keep this a Government BY THE PEOPLE OF THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
The main reason, IMHO, that the GOP is as batshit crazy and unappealing to intellectuals with consciences as they have become, is because the GOP no longer fears or respects their base. The GOP knows they have an unwavering loyalty among the obstinate asshole core of their base, and that gives them license to treat them like shit and lie to their faces. It works like a relationship, if your Politician does not respect you they are more likely to treat you bad, and they will not change until you threaten to leave them. Every Politician has the potential to become a bad politician, it is up to you to demand the respect you deserve. Even then, they may be abusive assholes and try to make your life worse, just as the GOP in recent months has turned into the ex-husband from hell, whose sole intention now that we've left them is to make our lives as hard and painful as possible until we go running back to them. And this, all while America is still trying to put the pieces together after our last failed relationship with GOP. Haven't we learned? Sadly, many of us have not. That is where we come in, the netroots, the bloggers and the voters and the volunteers, all of us. We need to build a wall between us and the GOP so they can never rise to power and hurt our country like this again. This is why we should support candidates like Scott Murphy and other young Democrats. This is how we will achieve the MORE part, one election at a time.
The reason the GOP is as abusive and offensive as they have become is that they no longer fear losing their base. The reason we on the left are having a hard time with our traitors bipartisans like Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh is that they are more afraid of the GOP or Obama than they are of us. We should work on this, hard and daily, until they know who it is that they should fear. We should be raising money for Democratic primaries right now. This is how we will work on the BETTER part, but it is a long and slow road, and we must stay on it step by step, lest our establishment Blue Sheep go astray.
As time passes we will thin the flock of the establishment Blue sheep, and if we maintain electoral majorities ( which we likely will, due to demographic changes in the population of future voters, sans more of the same from wimps like Harry Reid, etc ) we will have to develop new leaders from within the youth of the Democratic party. This very well could be a new face like Scott Murphy, or it may not, but it is up to him to act in our interests, and it is up to us to give him cause to do so. If he bucks our interests we know how to respond, but we will never know unless we act on a little faith and give him the chance.
In order to work on the MORE part, a small leap of faith is required. I hope that Scott Murphy is true to his campaign and represents the voters in NY-20 well. If not, I will be the first person to light the torches in calling for his primary. If Scott Murphy knows I am not going to vote for him, why should he give a shit what I say? I will have no power over him, and he can just write me off. If I not only vote for him, but threaten to withhold my vote and my support, if I threaten to rally other voters like me against him, well, now I have power over him, and isn't that the whole point, to take the power back? The way this game called Representative Democracy is played, is by We The People and then through them, and that it only works if we play it all the way through? If not, we get ignored at best, or, in the worst possible scenario, you end up getting screwed over by the very people you elected. This can only happens if your elected officials do not respect you, and in order to respect you they must fear you.
I say we put our overwhelming support behind new candidates like Scott Murphy and other young Democrats, not only to beat Republicans in elections and achieve the MORE, but to have people in the wings behind the Reid's and Bayh's, the Pelosi's and Murtha's, so that they to can be threatened with the fire, and filled with the necessary fear of the aggressive democrat that they have long forgotten. If we build up the young Democrats and apply the pressure of primaries to them, we can grow the progressive base that our party needs for the future on the local, state and national levels. In that way we can achieve the BETTER half of our mission as Kossacks. With even more effort we can move this party to the left, we can move the Overton Window to include radical ideas like ending Marijuana Prohibition and respecting all marriages in this country, but in order to do this we must work hard and long, and we all have to work together.
The problem with the Democratic Leadership is that they fear the Republicans, when they should be afraid of the Democrats.
In order to achieve that, we have to gain power over our Politicians, and the only way to achieve that and make them respect us is to work to vote them in, and then demand the respect we had when we ceded them the power, else we take that power back.
So yeah, I am going to Campaign for Scott Murphy, and I am going to encourage you to do so as well. I will fight for Scott Murphy not so that he may hold power over me, but so that I may hold power over him. In doing so, I am taking on the system, and taking it over, one step at a time.
For information on how to help elect Scott Murphy to the seat open in NY-20, please check out some of my previous ( and more serious ) diaries, or any of the excellent diaries recently written by Seneca Doane, devtob, Arjun Jaikumar or Democratic Congressman Eric Massa (NY-29), or any other among the number of outstanding diaries on the Special Election for House District NY-20.
To learn more about Scott Murphy, visit scottmurphy09.com
As our fellow Kossack Buhdydharma encourages us in his sig, we should YELL LOUDER. Well, I say, not only should we yell louder, WE SHOULD YELL SO LOUD THEY FEAR US, AND UNTIL THEY CAN NO LONGER IGNORE US!
The path towards more and better goes on. Which way we go, how far and how fast, is up to you.
Thank you for your time,
MoT