COLUMN: A Progressive resolution list
When it comes to my personal New Year’s resolutions, I feel completely content recycling them year after year along with my paper and aluminum cans. This year my goal is to get in better shape, just like it has been for as long as memory serves. This January, I wish that I could make resolutions for the Democratic Party for 2007 and get it into shape.
Fox News and the conservative noise machine would have us believe the reason we won the midterm election was because conservatives had abandoned Bush or even that Bush simply is not conservative enough. It is clear to me now that America has invested in the Democratic Party more out of the disgust that only scandal and unpopular war can bring.
While beaten, the core of conservativism lives on, and the moderate conservative will not swing to our side unless we make good time of the next year or so. Most of my Progressive friends attribute the failure of the Democratic Party locally and nationally in recent decades to the conservatives’ clever usage of red herring issues and mildy witty bumper sticker lines.
Liberals would believe their values are much too complex to reduce to AM radio talk show sound bites, and, therefore, they take upon themselves the absurd task of trying to communicate their position on a billion tiny issues.
In the end, it leaves us looking like long-winded, intellectual elitists and generally scattered. The men and women who watch politics and have a passion for it will find the truth, battle on political blogs, defend policies with logic or tout the party line. The rest of America can’t be motivated enough to vote once every couple of years. Progressives need to learn how to condense their issues into concrete ideals in terms of values.
Conservatives ring that same tired Christian bell time and time again, and voters gravitate toward them time and time again, even those voters who have everything to lose financially from their economic strategies, while Progressives defend religious freedom and support the hardworking American instead of serving the corporate aristocracy at the expense of the honest worker.
The reality is that Democrats support the public interests of working Americans, personal liberties, society as a whole and a strong economy. Framing your issues in terms of values does not weaken their logical premise; it simply puts you on equal footing with Republicans. Then, once emotion has been taken into account, people will examine the issues logically as well. In a perfect world, every voter would know the issues, would have studied them wisely and would work toward a stronger and brighter future.
As Dale Carnegie said in reference to persuasion, “…we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
People vote Republican because they are looking for a principled individual to lead them and influence policy and because they don’t have time to research every social, political, foreign and economic issue and examine the voting records of each candidate.
We don’t have to change our position, just how we present it, and it’s really surprising how easy it is to do. Bush has made countless mistakes, and it’s presented a precious opportunity for the Progressive movement to reinvent itself and go mainstream. But we have got to dismiss the myths and address Iraq and beat the Republicans at their own game.
Democrats cannot rely upon Bush’s unpopularity in 2008; he’s not running for re-election. Democrats will need to make some changes and play their cards right with Iraq. But hey, I’ve got high hopes.
Class dismissed.