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Wednesday, November 03, 2004"WWADRD?[Boing Boing]Dear Friends:
If the shoe was on the other foot, What Would a Dumbass Republican Do?
Get depressed?
Get down?
Feel defeated?
Go away?
Refrain from being an obnoxious pain in the ass, 24/7?
Temper his sense of righteous entitlement?
Mute his howls of indignation?
Question his convictions?
Hell, no!
Here's what a Dumbass Republican would do:
Act like a winner in a world full of deluded losers.
Refuse to let the "facts on the ground" deter his belief in what he's got coming.
Drown out polite civil discourse by braying his unshaken beliefs like a stuck pig.
Refuse to shut the fuck up.
Refuse to go away.
Wrap himself in the flag and impugn the patriotism of any who would question his moral superiority.
Wear a big shit-eating grin that gives the other side just a moment of pause as they lay their heads on their pillows at night.
Have a glint in his eye that says, "I may have a shit-eating grin on my face, but I'm just waiting for an opportunity to slip this knife in."
See this not as a defeat, but as an inconvenient mistake.
Friends, join me.
Do not accept.
Do not waver.
Do not shut up.
Do not give comfort with your distress.
Be an unrelenting irritant.
Be a dumbass.
Right now, attitude is everything.
Together, we can help each other bear the present while shortening the time - and it will come - when we prevail."
2:54:18 PM
Values. It wasn't the war or the economy that killed us. It was the notion of "values". Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, yet Kerry was bad because he had "Massachusetts values" or other such nonesense. We need to retake the language. We need to reframe the notion of "value". That's why Obama's speech below is so brilliant. He speaks of God in a way that not just fails to offend this atheist, but inspires me. It's faith used for the purpose of living a good life, rather than faith wielded as a weapon against a whole class of people. The wedges: gays, abortion, and guns. Democrats have abandoned guns as an issue, and over the next three or four cycles it will prove an increasingly ineffective wedge. The NRA won. Good for them. That leaves the two "faith based" wedges -- gays and abortion. And with great skill, the Republicans have equated those two issues with the word "value". That's going to have to change. [Daily Kos]
2:52:44 PM
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2:27:49 PM
:: title :: ----- Original Message ----- From: John Kerry To: ccline@msn.com Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:31 PM Subject: A sincere thank you
Dear Craig,
Earlier today I spoke to President Bush, and offered him and Laura our congratulations on their victory. We had a good conversation, and we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing.
In America, it is vital that every vote counts, and that every vote be counted. But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process. I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail. But it is now clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for our campaign to be able to win Ohio. And therefore, we cannot win this election.
It was a privilege and a gift to spend two years traveling this country, coming to know so many of you. I wish I could just wrap you in my arms and embrace each and every one of you individually all across this nation. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
To all of you, my volunteers and online supporters, all across this country who gave so much of themselves, thank you. Thanks to William Field, a six-year-old who collected $680, a quarter and a dollar at a time selling bracelets during the summer to help change America. Thanks to Michael Benson from Florida who I spied in a rope line holding a container of money. It turned out he raided his piggy bank and wanted to contribute. And thanks to Alana Wexler, who at 11 years old and started Kids for Kerry.
I thank all of you, who took time to travel, time off from work, and their own vacation time to work in states far and wide. You braved the hot days of summer and the cold days of the fall and the winter to knock on doors because you were determined to open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. You worked your hearts out, and I say, don't lose faith. What you did made a difference, and building on itself, we will go on to make a difference another day. I promise you, that time will come -- the election will come when your work and your ballots will change the world, and it's worth fighting for.
I'm proud of what we stood for in this campaign, and of what we accomplished. When we began, no one thought it was possible to even make this a close race, but we stood for real change, change that would make a real difference in the life of our nation, the lives of our families, and we defined that choice to America. I'll never forget the wonderful people who came to our rallies, who stood in our rope lines, who put their hopes in our hands, who invested in each and every one of us. I saw in them the truth that America is not only great, but it is good.
So here -- with a grateful heart, I leave this campaign with a prayer that has even greater meaning to me now that I've come to know our vast country so much better and that prayer is very simple: God bless America.
Thank you,
John Kerry
Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.
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2:13:47 PM
----- Original Message -----
From: velma.anne@absnetwork.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 11:09 AM
Subject: How did he manage to do that again???
Fucking Bush brainwashed the uneducated, lack-of-resources, religious fanaticism of middle america and the deep south. I'm sickened, angry, disheartened, and disappointed with Americans. They don't pay attention to anything, even when it's spelled out for them in black and white, over and over again!!! What the fuck? This country is lame. And now what? Osama is going to hit again, cos nothing is going to change in the Middle East; kids still won't have quality education cos money goes into testing and not resources; and then we still won't have enough cops and probation officers cos all the money we don't have was wasted on lack of strategy and budgeting for Iraq.
2:13:45 PM
Election Will Prompt Democratic Soul-SearchingSubject: Election Will Prompt Democratic Soul-Searching
By Alan Elsner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats are likely to enter a period of intense soul-searching and internal struggles after their 2004 election defeats, as they ask themselves how they regain the confidence of the American majority, political analysts said on Wednesday.
It will not be an easy task. Defeated in the presidential election, the party that dominated U.S. politics from the 1930s until the 1990s also lost ground in both chambers of Congress and the Republicans retained control of most of the state governorships.
"I think this is a realigning election. The Democrats are going to have to get used to permanent minority status for a generation or two," said Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
"The party doesn't know what it stands for any more. The Republicans have built majorities around their ideas, which can be boiled down to a few simple statements. The Democrats fish around for issues where they think there already are majorities," said Schaller, a Democrat.
If one topic dominated the post-election talk, it was strength of social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage as a force President Bush (news - web sites) successfully used to motivate and energize millions of voters.
"The Republicans have been successful in framing themselves as the defenders of American traditions -- of religious traditions, family traditions, and I think they have successfully painted the Democrats all too often as contrary to those values," said Barack Obama, newly elected senator from Illinois whose victory provided one of the few bright spots for Democrats on Tuesday.
Schaller said it was extraordinary that many voters in key states seemed more worried about same-sex marriage than the war in Iraq (news - web sites). At the same time, Republicans persuaded millions of people who lacked health insurance to vote against what they portrayed as a Democratic Party plot to put health care under the control of government bureaucrats.
In Georgia, a state where Democrats were highly competitive as recently as eight years ago, a referendum banning same-sex marriage passed with 76 percent of the vote and Bush won the presidential ballot by 18 percentage points.
GUNS, GOD, GAYS "The Democrats' positions on guns, God and gays has alienated millions of suburban and rural voters. The party needs to find a way to talk to them again if it is going to win national elections but it won't be easy," said University of Texas political scientist Bruce Buchanan.
Republican political consultant Bill Greener said people in the nation's "heartland," where Republicans racked up one victory over another, often saw urban Democrats on the East and West Coasts as smug and elitist.
"If you project a view that people who express strong religious faith are a threat, people who hold that faith are going to feel a sense of resentment," he said.
In many ways, the Democrats have become a coalition of minorities -- blacks, homosexuals, Jews, the unmarried and the unreligious. Bush's political strategist Karl Rove characterized the typical Democrat as "somebody with a doctorate ... people who imbibed the values of the sixties and seventies and stuck with them."
In the immediate term, the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is likely to be between those on the left led by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites), who will argue that the party needs to sharpen its differences with Republicans, and those who would like to see the party find a way to appeal again to middle class and rural voters who appear to have written the party off.
"We're sick and tired of losing," said Steve Achelpohl, head of the Nebraska Democratic Party. "There are a lot of angry candidates out here because our candidates were better qualified, and they didn't win."
2:13:44 PM
It's sad, but I think he nails it. We all wanted Kerry to win, but in our hearts we knew that what the Republicans were saying about him - being a french speaking, lattee drinking, volve driving Northeast liberal - was essentially true. In my heart I know Edwards would've been the better candidate - and will certainly be in four years time.
-------------------------------
Simple but Effective
Why you keep losing to this idiot.
By William Saletan
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at 12:05 AM PT
12:01 a.m. PT: Sigh. I really didn't want to have to write this.
George W. Bush is going to win re-election. Yeah, the lawyers will haggle about Ohio. But this time, Democrats don't have the popular vote on their side. Bush does.
If you're a Bush supporter, this is no surprise. You love him, so why shouldn't everybody else?
But if you're dissatisfied with Bush—or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory—you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off?
I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.
Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire—don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.
This is what so many people like about Bush's approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he "gets it." They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don't hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.
Now look at your candidate, John Kerry. What quality has he most lacked? Not courage—he proved that in Vietnam. Not will—he proved that in Iowa. Not brains—he proved that in the debates. What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. Now Bush has two big states that mean everything, and Kerry has a bunch of little ones that add up to nothing.
If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry. You already have legions of people with preparation, stature, expertise, and nuance ready to staff the executive branch of the federal government. You don't need one of them to be president. You just need somebody to win the White House and appoint them to his administration. And that will require all the simplicity, salesmanship, and easygoing humanity they don't have.
The good news is, that person is already available. His name is John Edwards. If you have any doubt about his electability, just read the exit polls from the 2004 Democratic primaries. If you don't think he's ready to be president—if you don't think he has the right credentials, the right gravitas, the right subtlety of thought—ask yourself whether these are the same things you find wanting in George W. Bush. Because evidently a majority of the voting population of the United States doesn't share your concern. They seem to be attracted to a candidate with a simple message, a clear focus, and a human touch. You might want to consider their views, since they're the ones who will decide whether you're sitting here again four years from now, wondering what went wrong.
In 1998 and 1999, Republicans cleared the field for George W. Bush. Members of Congress and other major officeholders threw their weight behind him to make sure he got the nomination. They united because their previous presidential nominee, a clumsy veteran senator, had gone down to defeat. They were facing eight years out of power, and they were hungry.
Do what they did. Give Edwards a job that will position him to run for president again in a couple of years. Clear the field of Hillary Clinton and any other well-meaning liberal who can't connect with people outside those islands of blue on your electoral map. Because you're going to get a simple president again next time, whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that president will be from your party or the other one.
9:00:26 AM
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