Are you ready to be a pawn in the new favorite past time of the rich and famous — rigging the American electoral system so that Big Money gets to make American Democracy it's play thing in order to inflate their egos even more than they are and to squeeze the middle class for every last drop it can, as sacrifice to the Wall Street Money Gods?
I am tired of being a pawn in this grand electoral vote rigging scheme.
Aren't you?
Dems need to wise up and act like Dems 24/7/365 ... enough of the equivocating, watered-down message based on fear, fear of losing. Voters instinctively doubt someone who doubts themselves - if you come off as someone who is trying to hide something, you emit a bad smell.
Put the middle class at the center of the Dem party -
1. economic populism (raise min wage, expand medicare, fair pay, investments in infra and gov R&D, taxes/budget focused on 99% not 1% - perhaps also focused on small business and not big business, on Main St. and not Wall St.)
2. safe/healthy families/communities (healthcare, strong public education/universal preschool, gun violence prevention, climate change solutions)
3. Cut foreign adventurism/military budget to fund middle class agenda, streamline military strategies/tactics and build international coalitions to help bear the costs of blood and treasure in maintaining global security
If you make it crystal clear to the majority of voters that you truly have their best interest at heart (the middle classes interests at heart), and are not beholden to big money, Wall St. and the 1%, then you neutralize the inevitable fear-based attacks that crop of in the 6 months before each and every election, attacks that are meant to drive older voters to the GOP. Those voters won't be vulnerable to those attacks if Dems are strongly on their side for medicare, social security, raising wages and providing healthcare for their children.
Putting this agenda at the center of the Dem party would also help calm fear and anxiety over a world that seems to be spinning off its axis at times - give people a sense of stability and security by focusing on a middle class agenda. Grow a base of stable people and let that base emanate into communities, into school boards, into workplaces, into places of worship, into every corner of our lives ... stable and secure people and communities help create a more stable and secure world.
Make the Dem party/agenda a literal force and bulwark for stability and security.
... and a middle class focused Dem party gives it a positive message by default - you don't need to come up with gimmicky "unemployment is 5%" message while everyone also knows wages are stagnant and their benefits are being cut.
A middle class focused agenda means a positive message 24/7/365.
That positive middle-class focused message will give a wide spectrum of people a multitude of reasons to vote for Dems - you cast a wide net to attract people of different persuasions.
That postive message also will neurtralize the negative messaging and fear based messaging that always is part of every election and which always muddies the water, turns off voters, confuses voters and makes it much more difficult for any message to break through the cacophony of issue-based messages screaming at people through their TVs, computers, radios and phones.
Keep it simple, stupid ... it's Main St. over Wall St., stupid.
That simple, crystal clear message would cut through all the bullshit - guaranteed.
If the Dems don't rally around that .... I hope someone else does.
... anything other than a middle class populist message combined with a people-focused, grassroots campaing is going to get swept up into the business as usual two-party-that's-actually-kabuki-theater-for-the-1% system we call the American electorate process:
Is there a way out? Yes, but it's a very tough path. Plutocracy has a way of spreading like an epidemic until democracy itself is abandoned. History shows the wreckage of democracies killed from within. And yet America has rallied in the past to push democratic reforms, notably in the Progressive Era from 1890-1914, the New Deal from 1933-1940, and the Great Society from 1961-1969.
All of these transformative successes required grass-roots activism, public protests and demonstrations, and eventually bold leaders, indeed drawn from the rich but with their hearts with the people: Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Yet in all of those cases, the mass public led and the great leaders followed the cause. This is our time and responsibility to help save democracy. The Occupy Movement and the 400,000 New Yorkers who marched for climate-change control in September are pointing the way.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Here's hoping Hillary is reading Jeffrey Sachs .... I'm ready for Hillary to pull a Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and go progressive.
But people need to show her they are committed to a progressive populist middle class message - we need to prove through activism we are beating a path for Hillary to follow.
And if not Hillary, than someone else.
9:05 AM PT: Related to this diary, I suggest reading the diary below ... wise up Dems, wise up:
http://www.dailykos.com/...