“Elections are won not by converting the opposition but by getting out your own vote, and Scudder’s organization did just that. According to histories I studied at Boondock, the election of 2012 turned out 63 percent of the registered voters (which in turn was less than half of those eligible to register); the True American party (Nehemiah Scudder) polled 27 percent of the popular vote… which won 81 percent of the Electoral College votes.”
“In 2016 there was no election.”
–Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, 1987
That's what happened in America in one of Heinlein's alternate futures. Good old USA voted itself a religious dictatorship because the psychos got their vote out.
And what's scary is that Heinlein might be right if you take a look at the current crop of Republicans...
(More on the Flip)
We have Christian Dominionists who are the FRONT RUNNERS for the Republican nomination. They've already EXPLICITLY talked about amending the constitution. And we've got nothing to counter that.
"Go out and vote for the President OR something awful will happen." How many times have we heard that? Well, it's both right and wrong.
The part about voting AGAINST the Republicans, DEAD on. But the real problem is that you can't get your side energized with half assed slogans and compromise. When you're up against evil that doesn't even PRETEND not to be evil... well, you don't make deals with the devil and expect to come out with your soul.
What have we got to counter the takeover of the true psychos? Vote for four more years of the status quo. Vote for the same thing we've had for years. Trust us, it'll be different this time.
Honestly, you can point all you want to foreign policy, but when it comes down to where the tire meets the road, we're up against people who fundamentally want to change this country. You can't stop that with, "Hey, look at what we did ten thousand miles away in another country." You need a bold, serious vision of what you want America to look like. You need to pull out the founders, you need to wave the flag and say what it REALLY stands for. The flag does NOT belong to the Republicans. We damn dirty hippies have the right to wave it, same as them!
We've got ammo, folks, if we just USE it.
Talk about how the Congress CUT benefits to the soldiers. (G.I. Bill was changed. Because apparently 10 years was long enough to forget about 9/11... except for the co-opting of it for Republican elections.) Talk about cuts to the services for the poor, and the tax breaks to the rich, and DON'T let the damn rethugs claim that a quarter of a million a year isn't rich. Point out the fact that they held up congress for WEEKS with this bullshit Debt Ceiling Crap, and then went on vacation instead of doing anything useful.
REALLY go after Congress. Name Effing NAMES. You want to win? PISS people off! Make em mad at the assholes who deserve it. Go fricking LOCAL if you have to. It's what I had to do. We're trying to get the City of Marina, CA to explicitly refute Citizens United. On just the local political scene. It's not much but it's something we can do NOW.
These local protests are GREAT. Keep em going. But seriously, if you want the BIG game to be won, we need to get the DLC behind us. It's really coming down to put up or shut up time, and they're choosing to do neither. They're choosing to let the Tea Party pick the battlefield, and weapons we can use. Personally, I'm getting SICK of charging a tank with a bayonet here.