Environmental activists were told that our issues weren't on the front burner for the Democratic Party during the 2004 election. You guys lost anyway.

The strategy you recommend amounts to throwing away whole blocs of your base in order to chase little slivers you think you might be able to peel off of the GOP's vote.

Instead of blowing off your supporters, how about articulating a clear vision that includes everyone? It's not impossible: you just have to have the gonads to piss off a major donor or two.

Let me start with my quibble with your post Benny G. Studies have shown us that terrorists (including the 19 that hit us) tend to come from middle class families, tend to be educated, and tend to not come from particularly radical families. Other than that, let's get to the meat of what you're talking about.

I think that what we need is for our tent to have some definition. It's not important that we are pro-choice when it comes to reproduction and not when it comes to schools. It's not important that we hold strong against corporate interests that want to be able to run more profitable businesses regardless of who gets fucked in the process. The thing I want to know is WHY are we those things?

To me, this party has always been about the American Dream. Why do we care about reproductive choice? Because how can we tell women they are full and participating citizens and then not give them control over their bodies? I appreciate the seriousness and emotion around this issue, but at it's core this is about saying to women in this country, we trust you to make your own choices about what's best for your life. Can you be pro-life and still believe this? If so, what question can we ask, what proof we can demand that you believe this?

Why do we care about protecting citizens from corporate interests? Not because we want to see corporate interests perish or wither on the vine. Not because we have a problem with profit or people making money. I think John Edwards said it best when he said that we value the work that creates wealth, not wealth for it's own sake. How does it value work to let corporate CEOs get away with a slap on the wrist when their actions cost hundreds or thousands of people their life savings, their pensions, their jobs? How does it value work to tell Americans that in this age of predatory credit lending, if you fall on hard times you have no safety net and you'll pay for it until you die? How does it value work to say to people who have been permanently damaged by negligent behavior, either corporate, medical, or otherwise, you have no recourse to compensate you for what you have lost?

Now with that being said, I'm reminded of the feud between the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club and the Harvey Milk Democratic Club in San Francisco. This fued, that began over some slight in 1973, was a major obstacle for the gay community organizers as the AIDS crisis was spreading and killing all over the Castro in the early 80s. Because these two clubs could not be on the same side of any issue, they each proved to be a foil for the other. Want to hear the position that the baths are a hotbed for disease transmission? Ask one club. Want to hear that that opinion is the equivalent of homophobia and puritanical sexual views? Just ask the other club. Maybe having this voice unified would have done nothing to reduce the impact of AIDS, but on the off chance that it could have, we cannot allow ourselves to walk down that road again. The points that you bring up Benny G, are well taken but if we give up the things that graces us with a little bit of the vision thing, will we be strong enough to put forth a plan to deal with the rest of these issues?

"We should allow Dem leaders to compromise on non-core issues (eg the Class Action bill, the Bankruptcy Bill, the judicial nominees)"

"non-core"?!?!?!? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!!!!

These bills specifically worsen the exact problems you complained about in your post...

The Class action bill limits citizens ability to seek damages from large corporations.

The bankruptcy bill allows the wealthy more protections from bankruptcy and provides less protections for poor people victimized by predatory lending or suffering from balooning medical costs and lack of health coverage. Translation: Ken Lay and his buddies can claim bankruptcy after they pay their fines but the courts and Enron shareholders can't touch their multi-million dollar houses!

Conservative Judicial nominees are solidifying corporate personhood and other little perks for large corps such as protecting their rights and personal freedoms, such as the right to pollute and lie (free speech).

If there were ever core pieces of legislation that contribute to the widening gap between rich and poor and an otherwise dysfunctional economy, these are it. Melting ice caps and terrorism which you also mentioned can both be attributed to the growing corporate abuses of our environment and the resources in foreign countries.

So you wanted responses, there you go. Benny G, I know you have good intentions, but I think you need to rethink how everything fits togeter in the big picture. Your stated values and legislative priorities for Dems just don't match. Hope my reply challenges you... But I sometimes wonder why I even try.

that subject line is way too easy to take out of context. maybe i'm the only one with a 5th grader inside my head but come on...

The problems we face are not touched by the bankruptcy bill, the class action bill or a string of insane judicial nominees. These are small issues, i would argue tiny.

The class action bill will have a negligible effect on the ability of consumers to sue corporations. All it does is kick a certain subset of cases up to federal court. The judicial nominees are small potatoes. We were really staking out ground for the supreme court fight anyway. The bankruptcy bill is a damn complicated thing and i think reasonable people should be allowed to disagree over it.

All that though, combines to mean very little in the face of what i think is really going on, and its the same thing thats going on with Dean's comments....distraction.

My real concern, the thing that keeps me up at night, is that we are making no progress. none at all. and yet all we can show for it is adherence to pricniples which have gained us little. the point? we need new principles.

core=
privacy
equality
human rights

alrighty then then how's this PG heading? (forgive me for the last one, i just thought i was following the norm for communication on this blogsite: youthful angst expressed with crass language and sexual innuendo)

ok, agreed that we need to recraft and express strong democratic principles, agreed that we are making no progress, and quite agreed that the main debates in our public discourse today are distractions to keep us from paying attention to what really matters. while america consumes itself with a fight over gay marriage, religion and jacko no one pays attentnion to the exploitations of the 'corporate ownership society': iraq war, neocolonial imperialism (again why is no one talking about CAFTA on this site!?!?!?), and the killing of our environment.

so what to do about it??? this leads me to another rant about your original posting...

with your slight on folks who "think protest is a super duper effective way to create change" did you mean to berate their aspirations? (peace, equality, justice, human rights) or were you merely discounting the accomplishments of activist movements? (women's suffrage, emancipation, civil rights, voting rights, ending the viet nam war, equal rights, etc.)

rather than berate scoail activism, we should encourage a new activist fervor in the US to inspire people to care about the important issues of our times. indeed, almost every democratic triumph for ordinary citizens was helped along by social activist movements. benny, the sort of skepticism you expressed towards activism in your original post is what is really shooting ourselves in the foot.

in the words of rabbi michael lerner:

"...herein lies what may be the ultimate self-defeating psychology of the Left: its inability to imagine that if we fought for our most visionary politics that we could eventually win the American majority to our side."

Adrienne, you've crafted a powerful message:

Everything we do as progressives is to preserve the American Dream. God endowed us with opportunity to work hard and be happy, and no one should be allowed to deny these God-given opportunity.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

Our path to victory, and our national salvation, is to consistently define ourselves as the preservers of opportunity, as guardians of the American Dream. Everything we do must be framed in those terms.

How about you and Kos form your own freaking party and leave the Democrat Party alone...and you can take all the Dems that shit on women by calling them single issue voters with you?

I think we can also include Martin Luther King's dream of his four little children being judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character in that vision. Also Bobby Kennedy's favorite George Bernard Shaw quote, "There are those that look at the way things are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"

that will definitely help us win.

My favorite part about that attitiude is how successful its been over the past 8 years.

Adrienne has articulated what I was feeling when I read your original post, Benny G. I think that we do need a big tent, but we need to have some definition. I feel that it is ok to have disagreements over what are the best ways to affect change. But ultimately the important thing is that we share the same values - the same vision of what America should be.

What concerns me about your original proposal is that it sounds to me like another "move to the center so that we don't alienate so many people" idea like we hear so often. If we need to reexamine our stance on a subject like school vouchers, then so be it. But we should do it only if/because our current stance is no longer the most effective way to get to the end that we envision.

I also realize that part of what you are talking about here is what you said in your response to a comment below - that you are worried that we simply aren't getting anywhere. This is definitely a problem, I agree. However it seems to me like our problem is not that no one agrees with our core values. Sure, some people don't agree with our core values. But lots of other people haven't voted for us recently because the Republicans' case has been more convincing than ours... They have successfully cast themselves as the party of security (9-11 changed everything!), the party of "moral values" (playing on peoples' fears) and the party of the American Dream (you too can be rich). But we know that we have moral values and we too believe in the American Dream, and we have a better vision where more people can reach that dream. So I think that we need to try communicating this message in different, better ways and we need to not play into the Republicans' hands. We need to try having a more united stance on issues and refraining from sniping at each other on the Sunday talk shows, before we try giving up on some of our values.

Oh, and I think if folks on Daily Kos want to discuss how women are portrayed in the media, I think they should. It's a forum for exactly that, discussion, and it doesn't stop anyone else from talking about other issues and it doesn't stop Kos from continuing to post on the issues he cares about. (I just think it is a little ridiculous, how much angst there was in that conversation on both sides.) Anyway, if we are a big tent then we need to have room for some of those discussions. I think it's possible to do that AND to stop taking shots at each other on TV.

I never made a secret of the fact that I didn't want to see Dean be DNC chair, but he is in that position and he was rightfully elected there. If one more Democrat comes out and says "Howard Dean doesn't speak for me" I'll scream. If he doesn't speak for you, who the hell does? Part of our problem lies in not having a messenger. We are so busy watching Mark Warner and Joe Biden and John Edwards and Bill Richardson angle for the '08 nomination that we can't get any kind of coherent message out or any kind of coherent defense against the GOP. I think people need to stop running for President for the next 18 months and start solidifying a message our Congressional reps and Senate candidates can stand behind for the midterms.

upchuck: "forgive me for the last one, i just thought i was following the norm for communication on this blogsite: youthful angst expressed with crass language and sexual innuendo"

my ears are burning!