These are hard times. The weather's bad and the economy awful. Obama has lost his mojo and 14 million Americans are unemployed. Many Liberals are discouraged and fearful about the 2012 election. But there's plenty of time to re-energize, so long as Liberals remember who we are and what we are fighting for.
Liberals are the largest group of registered voters. The most recent Pew Research poll on political preference indicates that 16 percent of registered voters are "solid Liberals" who support "across-the-board Liberal positions." (This compares with 11 percent of registered voters who are "Staunch Conservatives" labeled as "Highly engaged Tea Party supporters.")
The Democratic Party has millions more potential voters than does the Republican Party. Pew Research reports that supporters of the Democratic Party are 40 percent of registered voters: solid Liberals -- 16 percent, "Hard-pressed Democrats" -- 15 percent, and "New Coalition Democrats" -- 9 percent. In contrast, Republicans are 25 percent of registered voters: the Tea Party radicals plus 14 percent who are "Main Street Republicans. The Pew poll sees the 2011 US political world as 40 percent Democratic, 35 percent Independent, and 25 percent Republican. Moreover, 14 percent of Independents are characterized as "Post Moderns," "Moderates, but Liberal on social issues." Liberals should be able to mobilize a majority of registered voters -- Democrats plus Postmodern Independents.
Liberals believe the US economy should work for everyone, not just millionaires and billionaires. Our challenge is to get this message across to American voters.
The 2012 election will feature two dramatically different narratives. The Republican message is: "Government is the problem. Reduce taxes and government and the economy will magically blossom." Liberals need a strong counter message, such as that of Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream movement. Rebuild the Dream proposes a new social contract with 10 elements: Invest in America's infrastructure. Create 21st-Century energy jobs. Invest in public education. Offer Medicare for all. Make work pay. Secure Social Security. Return to fairer tax rates. End the wars and invest at home. Tax Wall Street speculation. Strengthen democracy -- by ensuring fair elections.
Liberals care about the welfare of average Americans and staunch conservatives do not. Recently, activist Carl Pope compared Tea Party radicals to the Taliban, "... just as the Taliban, when they took over Afghanistan in 1994, had an agenda entirely disconnected from the welfare of the average Afghan, the dominant strand of conservative thinking in Washington today couldn't care less what happens to the average American."
Liberals believe America's strength is its diversity: E Pluribus Unum, "Out of many, one." We believe in justice and fair treatment for all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religious affiliation. That differentiates Liberals from staunch conservatives -- who are Christian and White -- and means that we can form alliances with many groups.
The Pew Research poll notes a fundamental difference between "solid Liberals" and the other two groups that lean Democratic -- "Hard-pressed Democrats" and "New coalition Democrats": "both of these last two groups are highly religious and socially conservative." To the extent that cultural issues -- such as abortion and homosexuality -- dominate political discourse, these groups can be peeled away from the Democratic bloc to vote Republican. In his classic, What's the Matter With Kansas? journalist Tom Frank detailed how Republicans redirect economic discontent to explosive cultural issues. In 2012, "moral purity" will be a major Republican theme -- particularly if messianic Texas Governor Rick Perry becomes the GOP candidate. The Liberal challenge is to ensure that jobs and economic fairness become the dominant political themes, not "How can we make the US a Christian nation?"
Liberals believe in holding politicians accountable, starting with President Obama. Recently labor organizer Amy Dean observed, "[In 2012] Our role cannot once again be to simply elect the lesser of two evils. It must instead be demanding -- as a condition of our enthusiasm, our financial donations and our ground forces in any campaign -- a massive investment in jobs." As the largest group of registered voters, it's time for Liberals to use our strength to get tough with President Obama and other Democratic politicians.
In summary, Liberals are the largest group of registered voters. In 2012 we should be able to mobilize a strong majority of voters. Liberals have a strong message: we believe the US economy should work for everyone; we care about the welfare of average Americans. We believe America's strength is its diversity; we believe in justice and fair treatment for all Americans. These are hard times, but there's too much at stake for Liberals to wallow in discontent.
Complain all you want about Barack Obama, but he's a fundamentally decent man who values average Americans. Maybe he's made compromises that you don't like; maybe he's been beaten back by Republican supply-side religion zealots in some issues that he should have won. But you have a binary choice - one vision or the other. Whatever you do, go down and vote for every Democrat you can find and put your stamp on America's future. If you pout in your house, you give tacit approval to the Tea Party, because that's what runs the Republican party these days.
Living in Maryland, I am fortunate, I have Barbara Mikulski who IMO is one of the few Dems out there that really gives a damn about the people of Maryland and the US. My rep is John Sarbanes, and again, a good caring person. Liberals in other states, even ones with Democratic Senators and Representatives are not as lucky.
I will go to the Democratic Primary and I will vote for any Democratic candidate besides Obama, but if Obama is the Democratic candidate for president, I will hold my nose and vote for him because a Bachmann, Perry or Romney would be exponentially worse for this country.
"Liberals believe the US economy should work for everyone, not just millionaires and billionaires." - Again not all republicans are billionaires so this position is not exclusive to the dems. I think there are more "Liberals" who have had enough of the BS that is being shoved down our throats by Obama and the Democrats than you would like to think about.
Keep breathing your exhaust Bob 2012 is coming.
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And a vote for Obama is a vote for "austerity", for more caving to the right and to corporate dominance over our lives.
As are all votes for incumbent Democrats -- They dance to the tune of the head of the party and the party elites that control them: The DLC and its other groups like The Third Way and No Labels.
It is great to be a liberal and espouse policies that only work out in the mind of people like yourself and the intelligentsia. Please show me one policy of the past that has worked-and when you do please use facts instead of verbal virtuosity that has not meaning other than creating more misguided emotional divide and class warfare...
I leave you with this quote-"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill
Warm regards,
Michael Winters
see: http://governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=7&p=4
You libs are out numbered nearly 2 to 1. With an even split of "indies", you lose badly. Read it and weep.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148745/Political-Ideology-Stable-Conservatives-Leading.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines%20-%20Government%20-%20Political%20Parties%20-%20Politics
Fine, stay at home, but damned sure don't call yourselves patriots. You wont deserve that title.
Define "get tough". We have only one weapon to use in our get-tough arsenal: voting. And if Obama ends up being the Democratic (ha-ha) nominee, what's the point? We will get four more years of Republican policies, sappy speeches and unconditional surrender. I am weary of the rah-rahs telling we Progressives to get going or get tough or get out the vote or whatever. Tell me what good it will do and maybe I will fall in line. If Bernie Sanders will challenge Obama, I am all in.
For the “right” to spend other people’s money, run other people’s lives, and engineer a society based on their own cravenly misbegotten ideology.
For the right to pay off political supporters with tax dollars in corrupt collusion between party and public employee unions.
Too gutless to be real socialists, “liberals’” are “fighting” to continue leeching off of the success of capitalism, while resenting and bemoaning their entire dependence upon it.
Moreover, “liberals” are so gutless that they feel compelled to adopt the very term that denotes liberty, while their very aims are to subjugate every aspect of freedom to the collectivism of social democracy, while bastardizing language itself to create new “freedoms’, “positive” ones to replace the actual freedom they really seek to destroy, which they choose to characterize as “negative” freedom, rendering the very medium of political discussion useless.
In other words, to expand the evil of government, itself.
Almost.
You should sue your school board. They failed you miserably.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Unless you have been asleep since before the left disingenuously adopted the term, "Liberal" after destroying the term progressive early in the 20th century, you have no excuse for so asinine a statement.
Many, many, many liberals will now just stay home...what's the point if their hard work just gets us more of the same.
95% of Soviet citizens preferred Breznev to Stalin (or... at least, feared him less)
"approval" would be another thing altogether...in Russian OR English
tm
This experiment gone terribly wrong will end in January 2013. Not a second too soon.
It would help if we had a liberal or even centrist President to motivate the troops. But he isn't, and we don't. I will vote because I know it's critical. But I also know human nature, and with no leadership there is rarely any way of rallying those troops.
I agree with you in a way, but translating it into reality is the nut we have to crack.
The President's campaign has just about settled on the 2012 campaign slogan.
"Re-elect Obama: Often Not As Bad As Those Other Guys"
What d'ya think?
The President's advisors chose it overwhelmingly over their second chioce...which was
"Don't Blame Us...We Voted For Hillary Too"
tm
Liberals thought they were buying the real thing when they voted for Obama. Now we know that was just a lot of rhetoric to win. So now what do we do? The chances of there being a legitimate Progressive/Liberal challenger to Obama and the Tea Party is slim to none. And that's really too bad. We need a dog in this fight and we don't have one.
Any outside "Progressive" candidate who goes into the Whitehouse with the idea of cleaning up Washington will quickly suffer the same fate as Jimmy Carter. He will have no support and no leverage to get anything through Congress and will be followed, after one term, by something much worse than we can currently imagine.
My suggestion is to change party affiliation for the primaries and insure that the Republicans nominate the most vile possible candidate then vote in a decent Congress in the general election.
Obama is not perfect but if you "Progressives" take your balls and go home, splitting the Liberal vote, try getting used to saying President Perry and Senate Majority Leader McConnell while you're pick out a privatized Social Security broker.