Liberal. Leftie. Democrat. Progressive. Whatever label is appropriate, part of being on the left (and therefore, the right) side of the spectrum is that you have a natural openness and willingness to hear all sides of the argument. You're not like them; you don't want to shut opposition out, control information, or spin facts-you want to make the truth plain and clear so people can see it past their whitewash. But therein lies the problem, fellow progressive, fellow liberal: in the process, you're very tolerant, and very..well..humble. Don't bother with that here.
There's no need for you to be humble here. No reason for you to be apologetic. No reason to hold back your vitrol, your venom. We like it. We're all passionate here, including myself, and not afraid to hide it. We don't put up with the people who tell us to settle down-because no movement ever got anywhere by not being uppity, by not being passionate. I tell it like it is, I'll show you the facts, the articles, the talking points, and expose the agenda for everyone to see; regardless of whose agenda it is, including our own. Our agenda is getting to the bottom of things; posting the stories you might not have heard otherwise, and giving you the kind of analysis and commentary that you should be getting elsewhere. Welcome home.
An amazing thing has happend. The American people have gone to the polls during a war, and rejected that war outright. They’re decided that the war was a mistake, and they want an end to it as soon as possible. As much as the pundits would like to claim that this is something different, a vast number of Democratic candidates this election season ran on the platform that “stay the course” isn’t acceptable, and isn’t a valid strategy for victory in Iraq-and continuing to refuse to level with the American people on the direction, the status, and the purpose of the war doesn’t sit well either.
Democrats, in their new majority in congress, have proven that they can overcome the slander and mudslinging from the White House and Republicans, eg, President Bush’s quote referring to the Democrats: “Their strategy on Iraq is…well, they have no strategy; their strategy is the terrorists win and America loses,” and now have to capitalize on that mandate, on that victory, and show the American people that their trust and faith in them wasn’t unfounded. They have to not just prove to the American people now that they’re not just “not the Republicans,” which in several places was enough to get them elected, but they have to prove to the American people that they’re not afraid to level with them-to tell the truth about Iraq, to make a plan for getting the job done and getting out and for overall success, and they’re not afraid to make the difficult decisions-like bringing parties like Iran and Syria to the table to not just discuss Iraq, but discuss the other issues in the region as well.
The Democrats, in many victories around the country, won with razor-thin margins. That’s hardly a historic mandate. But it’s a victory nonetheless, and Democrats need to prove that they can take the reins of Congress, exercise their oversight responsibilities over the White House’s gallavanting in Iraq, and bring it under control.
Polls open early tomorrow morning, folks, and close early, too.
Get out there, do your civic duty, and make your voices heard. If you haven’t already, don’t be fooled by efforts to disenfranchise you or make you stay home from the polls: Find your polling place, check out a Voter Guide if you haven’t made up your mind yet, (I’m sure you can imagine which direction my vote will take) and make your statement to the people in power on the issues that matter the most to you. Remember where we are, and remember where we want to go, and remember what it takes to get there.
Win or lose, majority or no, we have an election to participate in, and ballots to cast. So make sure you get out there and cast them.
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
In the leadup to the elections, I know I’m pouring it on hot, but I think it’s important to remember what’s important when walking into the ballot box.
Take the following video for example; stop and think-do these people represent you and your values, regardless of what they might say? Pay attention to what they’ve done.
An incredible list of things that the Republicans would like you to have completely forgotten by the time you get to the ballot box, replaced completely with the sense of fear that they’ve been trying desperately to instill in all of us with commentary like “To the Democrats, the terrorists win and America loses,” and so on, like the “What’s at stake” ads.
Here’s a few tidbits from the list:
* Republicans want you to forget that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
* Republicans want you to forget that while the Republican Policy Committee was opposed to the deployment of U.S. Soldiers to Bosnia under President Clinton,they’ll brand you a terrorist if you oppose President Bush’s war in Iraq.
* Republicans want you to forget that they inherited the biggest surplus in the history of the United States when they assumed control of all three branches of the United States government in 2000 when they took power, and turned it into the largest deficit in the history of the United States.
* Republicans want you to forget that they had a plan to attack Iraq drawn up long before 9/11
* Republicans want you to forget that they have people in their party who solicit sex from underage boys – and when they get caught, they just quit and oh darn, Congress has no authority over private citizens so now Mark Foleycannot be prosecuted.
* Republicans want you to forget that they use racial slurs on colleagues’ voicemail. When they are caught, they say they are drunks.
See these, and more, and reference information for each one of these statements, linked below:
If you thought dirty tricks were the end of the issue, you’ve been missing a lot-even the Harold Ford ad wasn’t the end of the racist tactics Republicans are using in this year’s elections. If they can get out the racists, the bigots, and those who have been duped into thinking that by being pro-white and blind to white privilege that they’re actually being “colorblind,” they believe they can make this election work for them.
When you can’t get out disheartened evangelicals-who are busy with their own hypocritical problems, the issue of Ted Haggard being one example-who else does the Republican party turn to? Of course: their old friends the racists, bigots, and hate groups. Observe:
Ah, autumn — a brisk snap in the air, the deep hues of trees changing colors …and Republicans telling you that black men are coming to have sex with your daughters.
All right, that isn’t completely accurate. Black men are coming to have sex with your daughters, Republicans warn, but gays are also going to turn you into one of them, and if we don’t act soon the halls of power will be crawling with sex perverts.
We’ve all heard about the ad directed against Senate candidate Harold Ford in Tennessee, in which a ditzy young woman squeals, “I met Harold Ford at the Playboy party!” and closes the ad with, “Harold, call me!” — and you know what they’ll be doing if he does. But that isn’t even the most racist ad that has been aired in that state, nor is the one that features thumping jungle drums every time Ford’s name is mentioned.
Of course, Ford’s Republican challenger has condemned all these ads against him, like this one, aired by another blahblah for “truth” group:
“His daddy handed him his seat in Congress and his seat in the Congressional Black Caucus, an all-black group of congressmen who represent the interests of black people above all others … Ford’s Congressional Black Caucus secretly prepares and presents their own alternative budget to Congress each year to fund aid to black Americans. Discrimination at its worst … Tennesseans want a color-blind senator, a real Tennessean representing all of us without discrimination.”
Which apparently tries to paint the Congressional Black Caucus as some kind of militant black power group out to subvert the valiant efforts of white Americans to shake off their own privilege and provide equal opportunity to all. Some kind of fantasy world, I know. Still, the group “Tennesseeans for Truth” has subsequently been condemned by the national Republican Party, even though their money happily goes to fund these groups. And in the end, after the point’s been made, the racists are riled up, and the Republcians know who their friends are (and I’ll fill in a gap for you-they’re not Black, unless they can stand them up as token; like the Maryland senate race, where Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele is desperately trying to convince people to vote for him and his far-right ideals just because he’s Black) the Black community gets a half-hearted non-apology apology, usually in the form of “I’m sorry you guys took it that way. I mean, racism would be over tomorrow if you guys would stop being so darned sensitive!”
If this isn’t enough outrage for you, the full extent of the Republican attempt to court the racist vote is plainly documented:
For years, Republicans have been saying they’ve put their past sins behind them and are reaching out to African-Americans. No one has done this with more enthusiasm and less substance than George W. Bush, whose 2004 campaign website featured a “compassion photo album” consisting of dozens of photos of the president with black and brown people. It was always a strategy aimed not at minorities themselves but at moderate whites who needed to be assured that Bush was different than his Republican forebears.
Since then, GOP chair Ken Mehlman has gone in front of one African-American audience after another to offer a non-apology apology for the way Republicans count on the electoral power of racism every two years. In fact, when Mehlman talks about this topic he puts his party in an absurdly positive light. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong,” he told the NAACP last July.
But the Republican Party doesn’t “try to benefit politically from racial polarization,” they stoke and exploit racism and hatred. The “southern strategy,” Willie Horton and the biennial efforts to prevent black people from voting are something more than “looking the other way.” When election time approaches, they just can’t help themselves. The GOP is addicted to the bigot vote, addicted to suppressing the votes of people whose skin is not white. Like every addict, they tell themselves they can stop whenever they want — I’ll kick next year, I just need it one more time to get me through this election.
The Black community deserves better. All minority communities deserve better. America deserves better.
I’m not normally one to parrot talking points, but these tidbits were too good not to put out there. In the end, reviewing media coverage and such, it’s impressive to see how Republicans are stooping as low as ever in order to “scare out the vote” and inflame their base:
* President Bush himself is trying to scare voters with ridiculous claims, saying that “terrorists win and America loses” if Democrats were to take control of Congress.
* In Missouri, Michael J. Fox recently appeared in a heartfelt ad for Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, criticizing the Republican incumbent’s opposition to stem cell research. The GOP smear machine immediately attacked Fox and McCaskill, with Rush Limbaugh even suggesting Fox was faking his symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in the ad.
* In Tennessee, the Republican Party ran racist ads aimed at dredging up some of the worst racial prejudices imaginable. The ads attacking Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford, who is African-American, show a scantily clad white woman beckoning to him. The ad is so bad that some TV stations are refusing to run it, and non-political companies have fired the Republican consultants who made it. The RNC refused to denounce the disgusting ad, despite a public outcry.
* In California, one Republican campaign took a page from the national GOP playbook, which calls for suppressing minority voters at every opportunity. The campaign sent a false and deliberately misleading mailing to Hispanics in the district that threatened jail time for any immigrant — legal or not — who tried to vote.
That’s not the full extent of the Republicans’ dirty tactics. The best part about all of this is that as the media covers the negative campigning and dirty tricks, they’re pretty hard pressed to come up with examples of Democratic dirty tricks at the same time. I’m not saying the Dems aren’t out there playing hardball as well, but nothing on the scale of offensive and out and out mudslinging.
Just a few things to keep in mind when you head out next Tuesday to vote.
Perhaps one of the arguments I hate the most that rages within the progressive community is that in order to appeal to conservative and centrist voters, progressive candidates and progressive values must move to the center, both with their values and principles, and become more conservative in order to win the vote. I disagree with this notion wholeheartedly and out of hand-as long as the conservatives continue to be able to inflame people and frame the issues in terms of their own self-defined right and wrong, then the so-called “center” will always be labeled the “left,” and something to stay away from. As long as conservatives allow themselves to be dominated by and spoken for by hard-right idealouges, the actual center of the political debate will always be labeled the “left,” and people who reside in the political center will either be duped into voting Republican for fear of not being true to the conservative ideal (or worse, being labeled “liberal,”) or cry to both sides to come back to the center.
It’s time for progressives and liberals to stop letting the conservative right arbitrarily define where the “center” is; the right will always set the rules in their own favor, and laughably claim that progressive politicians are too “liberal” and need to appeal to the “center” and “respect their values too,” while simultaneously refusing to budge themselves.
Sally Kohn, writing for Alternet, puts it well:
If you listen closely this election season, you can hear the sound of Democratic candidates scraping their bottoms in a hasty rush toward the center. But the reasoning is unclear. In a political climate where once-preposterous, archconservative ideas are now the status quo, shifting the political center of balance to the middle would only aid that Right-wing tilt. As the center of politics is masqueraded as the new left, the right becomes the new center.
If Democrats seem generally allergic to articulating moral convictions and standing up for what they believe, election season exacerbates this condition. Polls show that three-quarters of Americans support a balanced and humane approach to immigration reform. But neither principles nor polling have stopped Democratic candidates from running in the Right wing direction on this issue.
…
Centrism is not a “third way”, it’s their way — taking Right wing ideas and trying to pass them off as enlightened Democratic compromise. If centrists really think that plagiarizing conservative principles will somehow turn the country in a better direction, they need only study the science of see saws. Maybe centrism expediently wins a few elections, but in the long term, moving to the center only helps to cement our country’s future on the Right, helping conservatives win in the longer-term contest of ideas and leaving the progressive coalition with nothing but splinters. What we need now is brave and visionary progressive leadership and ideas or the political debate will remain imbalanced and our country will remain stuck in the mud.
As a tactical strategy, moving to the middle didn’t help the little girl on the see saw. What makes us think it will help the nation?
An incredibly insightful commentary from an amazingly insightful journalist; Bill Moyers explains why the American dream, shared by all Americans, has been hijacked, and why the middle class American feeling the pinch from the policies of the Republicans work themselves literally to death in the name of individual freedom and a better life for themselves and their children-all while the conservatives laugh quietly at their efforts while money fills their-and their special interest friends’-coffers. Even if the scene plays out differently, perhaps minus the conscious malice, the ends are the same: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. And in between, the middle class struggles to scratch out a living to stay in the middle class.
Bill Moyers explains that the answer isn’t just “more social programs” or “a change in government,” it’s the reversal of a decades long aggressive push by conservatives since the late 1970s and 1980s to roll back public spending on the poor and disadvantaged; what’s required is a return to the “there by the grace of God go I” mentality over the “get a job, hobo,” selfishness that the fiscal policies of the right have always been, regardless of how they try to sugarcoat them.
Perhaps Moyers putsthis point better than I:
I could recite all the evidence, but I am sure you’ve heard it; you see it every day, all around you. Despite continued growth in the economy, real median household income declined between 2000 and 2004. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent while the real income of the richest 1 percent rose – by 135 percent. In 1976 the top 1 percent of Americans owned 22 percent of our total wealth. Today, the top 1 percent controls 38 percent of our total wealth. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent was 30 fold. Now it is more than 75 fold.
Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that’s not the case. According to Census Bureau data, Americans have become progressively less likely to advance up the socio-economic ladder. One study cited by Stephen Heinz concludes, “The rich are likely to remain rich and the poor are likely to remain poor.”
Of course, however, to put the overall issue in a larger perspective, Moyers waxes much more philosophical than I, and hits home with a story with a historical context that’s worth reading:
The isolation of our schools, the crumbling of our infrastructure and the reckless disregard of our fiscal affairs signal a retreat from the social compact that made America unique among nations. Our culture of democracy derived from the rooted experience of shared values, common dreams, and mutual aspirations that are proclaimed in the most disregarded section in the Constitution – the prologue – which announces a moral contract among “We, the People of the United States.” Yes, I know: When those words were written “We, the People” didn’t include slaves, or women, or exploited workers, or unwelcome immigrants. To our everlasting shame America nurtured slavery in the cradle of liberty. But, oh, the very idea of it, the vision of it, the potential power of “We, the People” let loose in that brief astonishing span of history was to change the consciousness of the world. How radical it was – the notion that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is every human being’s birthright – that all of us are equal in the scheme of Providence – that every citizen shares equally in the consent required for self-government in the grand adventure of independence.
There was a time some years ago when in my head I carried on an argument with Thomas Jefferson about this. I quarreled with his assertion about “equality being self-evident.” Where I lived, talent, opportunity and outcomes were not equal. Then, one day, while I was filming a series at Independence Hall for a documentary on the anniversary of the Constitution, it hit me full force: Jefferson had an intimate understanding of the contradiction in his assertion which would give it even greater force down through the years. The hands that wrote “All men are created equal” also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hemings. It’s true: The man whose noble words fired the revolutionary spirit in his generation had a long-term sexual relationship with this slave, and the children she bore him – his children – were slaves themselves. One guest at Monticello was startled to look up from dinner to see a young servant who was the spitting image of the master at the head of the table. Jefferson never acknowledged these children as his own, and as he grew older, he relied more and more on slavery to keep him financially afloat. When he died his slaves were sold to satisfy his creditors – with this exception: Through an obscure passage in Jefferson’s will – one she must have negotiated with him – Sally Hemings was the only slave at Monticello to secure the freedom of her children.
Think about it: Thomas Jefferson knew the truth even as he was living the lie. He had to know the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness. In a PBS series about the Declaration of Independence, the late philosopher Mortimer Adler said that whatever things are really good for any human beings are really good for all human beings – that what the richest parents in the country want for their children – the goods essential for life, liberty, and happiness – is what the poorest parents want for their children. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. So Sally Hemings’ heart burned with the pain of an inaudible cry: Let my children go!
