Okay, Dems, What Went Wrong? And How Can We Fix It?

your right JW Utah quit shooting them a few years ago but I'm sure you know that. Gary Gilmore was the last one shot that I remember. But hey hold on to your hat JW this might jostle your more current memory:
June 6, 2003 | Page 2

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UTAH PRISON officials have put out the call. Help wanted: Sharpshooters needed to execute two death row prisoners on back-to-back days in late June. Only those seeking the opportunity to kill with the full backing of the law need apply.

Utah is one of three states that allows for the death penalty to be carried out by a firing squad--and it's the only one to have carried this grisly form of execution since the reinstatement of capital punishment a quarter century ago. Troy Michael Kell's execution is scheduled for June 27, and Roberto Arguelles faces the same fate on June 28. Kell is expected to be granted a stay as he pursues a new round of appeals.

edited to add LOL

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I've actually purposely stayed out of abortion threads here on A2K, thats why I'm rather frowning at Fox's assertions about all she's seen me "saying as much" about. I can actually only remember the one post, which referred specifically to a friend's experience.

I've been staying out of them because I know that each and every abortion is the product of anguish, panic and desperation, and of struggling at length with an inhuman dilemma. It's a very personal thing, that I don't want to be posturing about.

But, if you insist on the programme: yes, I believe in the right to abortion, and no, I dont believe that right extends to the day before birth (unless it would be a choice between the life of the mother and the life of the child, in which case I think doctors by default choose for the life of the mother).

Where in between the line exactly is or should be, I don't exactly know, to be honest.

But what I'm still highly disgruntled about re: this discussion, is the wild, rhetorical - and most frustratingly, plain irrational jump into accusative assumption of Tico's. Yes, I consider "a baby" to mean a live, born baby. You know, like in Webster ("an extremely young child"). But how that would somehow automatically mean that I must thus be perfectly fine with killing everything thats not actually yet a live, born baby, I dunno. I just fail to see the equation there, at all.

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JustWonders wrote:

Tico always gives a straight answer, IMO. But, then, I think Foxy always gives a straight answer, too.

Straight answers Tico does give, when he doesnt skip straight into rhetorical overdrive, yes, absolutely. Foxfyre is always extremely polite, but in my experience a lot harder to always get straight answers from. (There, now that you want all my honest answers ..)

JustWonders wrote:

By the way - we don't shoot them, nimh. I'm sure you know that

The point about that line of mine, in case you missed it, was that it was an unreasonable one - an example of something I personally wouldn't deign with a response (though I sure seem to have been cajoled into one after all now).

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Since there are published studies on the psychological effects of multiple abortions and the women who have them, and since I've heard with my own ears a woman saying abortion is her preferred method of birth control, I don't think anyone can categorically claim that each and every abortion is the product of anguish, panic and desperation. I do think the majority of them are, but can't agree with you that all are.

Like you, though, I don't wish to become embroiled in a discussion about abortion.

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nimh wrote:

....Where in between the line exactly is or should be, I don't exactly know, to be honest.

I appreciate your honest answer, and won't ask the followup question I'm sure you could see coming.

nimh wrote:

But what I'm still highly disgruntled about re: this discussion, is the wild, rhetorical - and most frustratingly, plain irrational jump into accusative assumption of Tico's. Yes, I consider "a baby" to mean a live, born baby. You know, like in Webster ("an extremely young child"). But how that would somehow automatically mean that I must thus be perfectly fine with killing everything thats not actually yet a live, born baby, I dunno. I just fail to see the equation there, at all.

Please bear in mind that I was not accusing you of anything ... but was merely wanting your response to the assumption I was making based on your responses. My assumption was not "wild," "rhetorical," nor "irrational." You could have answered me a couple of posts ago if you had chosen to.

Sorry to cause you to be disgruntled. Please think happy thoughts now.

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Nor was I accusing Nimh of anything. The question was for clarification. You see one of my three pregnancies also ended in miscarriage at about 9 weeks. I definitely felt with all my heart that it was a baby who died. So perhaps some compassion the other way is also in order for those of us who don't think of our baby as an embryo or fetus.

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nimh wrote:

Lola, I gotta admit that

Lola wrote:
It's not Bush that's doing anything. And there's very little that is honest or sincere about him. The extremists in your party are driving us crazy because of the utter audacity with which they have dismembered our representative government

strikes me as just rhetorics as well, and I'm on your side... It's "true" to you, parts of it may even be true to me, but without any argument it is just rhetorics - unsubstantiated, flourishful assertions.

Also, I'm sure you'll recognize, when you come back, that the kind of reasoning that goes, "saying this kind of thing is only irresponsible if it's not true, but since what I said is true, it's not" would, indeed, like Thomas said, fit perfectly in your thread ... hey, with that line anyone can fend off arguments: "it's just true, so there!" :wink:

It doesn't have to be true. All it has to be is repeated to fit into the New Right's bag of tricks. Yes I'm practicing conservative argument techniques. (I've taken my crusade on the road. Thus, here I am.) Some are more effective than others. Telling the truth is limited in it's functional value and therefore not found in their techniques memo. Anything can be sold with good marketing, including a completely ridiculous idea like the sincerity and good intentions of a figure head president.

nimh wrote:

Quote:

I'm sure you'll recognize

Your use of the future tense here is unnecessary. Of course I recognize it. I was just about to puke, so I said what I thought. Unfortunate choice on my part.

Sorry.........I was just so disgusted. A condition that is growing chronic lately.

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Lola wrote:

Anything can be sold with good marketing,

For more on this contention, you may want to Google "Ford Edsel".

Lola wrote:

Sorry.........I was just so disgusted. A condition that is growing chronic lately.

Nice Anne Coulter twist there Lola! I see you're getting the hang of it.

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Dionne's piece, thank you Nimh, for posting it. (If anyone hasn't read it go back and find it.)Here tis.
It covers some things I've been thinking about lately. I think I started a few days ago when I re-saw Woodstock the movie and spent a few hours with some Irish revelers. My thoughts have been about when we liberals missed the turn in the road and stopped seeking justice for masses of people and somehow let the church people go.

There we were at Woodstock, the beautiful people seeking, the Woodstock Nation beginning to blossom. Outside, in the real nation, liberals were a part of a real movement, the push for civil rights, the right of all workers to unionize and negotiate for fair wages and benefits, the fight against the Viet Nam War. You know who was with us? Hell, do you know who was leading us? Churchs.

I was in a group called A.C.T.I.O.N. . You ready? Approaching Christ Together In Others Needs. It was a group of Protestant and Catholic clergy leading college students and young radicals like myself through the process of making change. We launched community kitchens and lobbied for change in the Federal Food Stamp Program, we registered people to vote, we held rallies to discuss the war not just declaim it, we helped organize workers at jeans factories.... we looked out at America and said "So far, so good, let's get better."

Hey, it was a movement and there we were, church folks and non-church folks, a scattering of socialists, a bunch of hippies, a couple of yippies and two cowboys (one of which is in Iraq right now, but I digress). We all saw that there was still a vast gap between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, working persons and administrators (See? I no longer say slaves and bosses. I'm getting soft. Very Happy

)

Anyway, I've got to go eat breakfast, but the thought keeps coming back to me that it seems right around 1972 that the churchs vanished from the liberal bands (I don't think we banished them, I think they had to go their own way on Roe V. Wade. I think they screwed up on how they pursued their campaign, but that's for another day.)

We should have never let them go, that's all I'm saying. We should have found a way to make them stay with us. Even today, in the discussion about gay rights, you've got moderate Protestant clergy looking for ways to bring about justice and what are they getting from us on the left? Wary glances instead of handshakes and high fives.

There is no greater government protection for the family than Social Security, yet we are not getting the support of churchs against this new effort to dismantle it. (Hey, even the President says his private/personal accounts plan doesn't address the real problem, so why do it?) That's our fault. I think either we missed the turn on the road or we let them miss it.
Either way, they are way over there and they are not waving hello.

Joe(Looking out for the workingman, now that the Irish are gone.)Nation

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Thomas wrote:

Lola wrote:
Anything can be sold with good marketing,

For more on this contention, you may want to Google "Ford Edsel".

Lola wrote:
Sorry.........I was just so disgusted. A condition that is growing chronic lately.

Nice Anne Coulter twist there Lola! I see you're getting the hang of it.

I AM, aren't I? Laughing

When you need to change the subject, or when you're called on your own dirty tricks, all you need do is comment on the process and ignore the content. Or speak about how the argument of the other effects you physically. Be hysterical. The American public loves it. They eat up the soap opera, Oprah, Judge Judy and Fox News. Excellent tricks. And if you add in a few words with negative connotation you're all set. The negative connotation words are put to best use if they are used as adjectives.

And the Edsel is a perfect example of marketing failure. Observe if you will, that my emphasis was on good marketing, not just any old marketing. It wasn't the product (the Edsel) that caused the marketing to fail, but the marketing itself that was obviously not carried out by our guy Rove. If only all marketers had Rove's capabilities.

You should read up on all the direct mail tricks, Thomas. They work but only if they are applied with talent. Raising money and sales requires more than skill. One must have a feel for it. A talented man at the top of a sales campaign, especially one who understands the psychology of man, can change the world. The show is on now. Tune in.

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Lola, your'e wrong babe about the Edsel. It was heavily advertised using the best of the advertising techniques you claim are so infallable. The public just didn't like the dopey design. It became a joke, a parody of the whole technique.

The rhetorical and communications excesses you are touting are not at all new to the 'liberal' domains of our political establishment, and you know better than to make such a claim. FDR ran on a neutrality platform in 1940, even as he conspired with Churchil to get us into the war with Germany. He claimed to hate war and that even his dog Fallah hated war - while planning for war. Surely you don't claim that the theatrics we see by the quartet of Democrat loonies in the Senate - Kennedy, Byrd, Boxer, and Reid - are serious political discorse. It is theater and it is practiced by all politicians. Historically in this country it has been the Democrats who did it most and best. Their skills have taken a downturn in recent years, and they have increasingly turned to some seriously flawed candidates (Dukakis, Kerry, Dean, etc). However, for some of us that is good news.

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The Woodstock of today can be found in the new evangelical mega churches. The conservative reaction to Roe was to organize. They've been at it for all these years.

Liberal churches is not where the action is because all the candy is over at the mega church.

I think it's a fine plan to organize the liberal Christians. As far as I know, many liberal Christians are with us now. But the evangelicals took over feeding the poor long ago. Direct mail shops targeted relief missions in the 70s and 80s. There was big profit in it. And when the mailing list analysis began (which lists give the most money......it's called targeted mailing) the evangelicals were the best donors. So the lists grew in this direction. And with it, the hiring of evangelicals to write the stories. Evangelicals recognized the potential money making aspect (they're big on money, they want a lot of it) and entrepeuners of the evangelical bent went into the direct mail fund raising business and build large direct mail businesses and mailing houses.

If they weren't already evangelical, they were motivated to join the church. I know of many direct mail businesses at the time that required their leadership staff to attend church and regularly held fundy religious retreats and bible studies. Those who couldn't stomach it eventually left. I did.

The direct mail shops morphed into advertising agencies. etc. This is an example of the profit motive running the show. So political and evangelical zeal is not the only factor in the New Right's strength. But you can see how together, they enhance each other.

Liberal churches just kept doing the thing they had always done. But big profit was to be made in direct mail. So the liberal churches have lost market share and the evangelical mega churches are booming.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Lola, your'e wrong babe about the Edsel. It was heavily advertised using the best of the advertising techniques you claim are so infallable. The public just didn't like the dopey design. It became a joke, a parody of the whole technique.

The rhetorical and communications excesses you are touting are not at all new to the 'liberal' domains of our political establishment, and you know better than to make such a claim. FDR ran on a neutrality platform in 1940, even as he conspired with Churchil to get us into the war with Germany. He claimed to hate war and that even his dog Fallah hated war - while planning for war. Surely you don't claim that the theatrics we see by the quartet of Democrat loonies in the Senate - Kennedy, Byrd, Boxer, and Reid - are serious political discorse. It is theater and it is practiced by all politicians. Historically in this country it has been the Democrats who did it most and best. Their skills have taken a downturn in recent years, and they have increasingly turned to some seriously flawed candidates (Dukakis, Kerry, Dean, etc). However, for some of us that is good news.

They tried with the best technology they had in their day. But advertising has lots of new technologies and techniques. I remember the Edsel jokes. I was there at the time.

Quote:

Their skills have taken a downturn in recent years

This, of course is exactly my point, george. Thanks for the help.

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Glad to help Lola. However I see no indication whatever that the loose collection of single issue zealots who are the core of the Democrat party have learned anything. Clearly Senator Reid and Rep. Pelosi haven't shown any indication that they have learned from Daschle's fate. Perhaps your instructions will give them wisdom.

However I do believe the Democrat's problem goes far deeper than just thechnique or dealing with the evangelical boogey men you so fear. Their problem is that on many issues they are still in the grip of the ideas and agendas of groups which are increasingly mistrusted by a majority of the American electorate and which have proven themselves to be flawed when they were applied. New leadership, new ideas, and a new constituency are all needed to reverse the continuing decline of the Democrats (or liberals, or progressives or whatever you call them.): new communications techniques alone won't do the job.

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But george, as confident as you appear on the subject of why the Republican party is now in ascendance, you continue to evidence almost no understanding at all of how that has arisen. You are frightfully uneducated on the personalities involved and you've not bothered to research the movements and details. That holds true for each of you here on the right, though foxfyre has some intimate grasp through personal experience with the rise of the religious right.

How many of you know who Paul Weyrich is? Or of the historical relationships between Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed? Of the establishment and funding for Townhall? What can any of you tell me about the Olin foundation? Or of Lewis Powell's 1971 confidential memoradum titled "Confidential Memoradum: Attack on the American Free Enterprise System" and its consequences? What do you have to hand on Richard Mellon Scaife? About the founding of Accuracy in Media? Or regarding the principals and events which led to the evisceration of the Fairness Doctrine? Of Karl Rove's past campaign maneuvers and tricks? Etcetera. A very long list.

Not a single one of you demonstrates much at all in the way of real intellectual curiosity about your own party and, indeed, your own country. You do, on the other hand, demonstrate an intellectual subservience to party and an inability to pull yourselves up out of the comforting mythologies of your specific breed of nationalism and exceptionalism. With some small variation, talking with any one of you becomes utterly predictable on almost any political topic.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Glad to help Lola. However I see no indication whatever that the loose collection of single issue zealots who are the core of the Democrat party have learned anything. Clearly Senator Reid and Rep. Pelosi haven't shown any indication that they have learned from Daschle's fate. Perhaps your instructions will give them wisdom.

However I do believe the Democrat's problem goes far deeper than just thechnique or dealing with the evangelical boogey men you so fear. Their problem is that on many issues they are still in the grip of the ideas and agendas of groups which are increasingly mistrusted by a majority of the American electorate and which have proven themselves to be flawed when they were applied. New leadership, new ideas, and a new constituency are all needed to reverse the continuing decline of the Democrats (or liberals, or progressives or whatever you call them.): new communications techniques alone won't do the job.

Here's an excellent opportunity to observe up close the conservative technique. Notice how george so expertly uses words, hardly noticeable in a sentence (unless one is looking for it) that frame me in a negative and ineffective light. The most obvious is his reference to me as a person who is terribly afraid of boogy men. In this he's saying I'm paranoid. He gives me no credit for what I know about the direct mail, fundraising industry over the last 30 years. It's an excellent example of how we leave ourselves exposed if we attempt a legitimate debate. My really hysterical posts, which could be viewed as a test of my theory, he ignores and uses my attempt to reason as his point of attack. Very well done, george. Others in your camp did not do as well.

But there is more here to be learned. It would be a mistake to focus only on that line. The entire post suggests that the Democratic Party is mean, malicious, and stupid all at the same time. We're out dated and our values are not only worthless, they are extreme. George thinks the Democrats should adopt more of the conservative's values. We should become more like a good fanatical Christian conservative. Heck, why don't be just give in and become Republicans?

The reason the Republicans are experiencing such resistance to their techniques is that their "family values" rah rah is actually just a facade. The current conservatives, those that are in charge, in the Republican party, have one value......and that value is self interest. Never mind that the sentence preceding this one is an exaggeration and stated in absolute terms. This is good advertising technique and is effective, as we've seen demonstrated by the Republicans. It brings results and that's what we need to do. (And it's not such an exaggeration anyway.) I know there are many citizens who have been sold by these techniques. And it is to these individuals we should be directing our advertising efforts.

In this respect I agree wholeheartedly with nimh. But nimh's recommendation that we reframe our values so that we appeal to the average, good hearted American is not enough. I've been joking around with my conservative tactics comments. But I'm not joking about the point I'm trying to make. We have to get advertising smart or we'll fail, as we have been.

John Kerry was the wrong candidate because he did not understand this fact. He tried to reason with the people. And good rational thought alone will not hold up against today's basic marketing techniques. We have been living in the past. And the marketing world has zoomed ahead. We better catch up if we plan ever to win again.

And it's not only that we don't use these techniques. What's worse is we're being sold ourselves. And we're being sold by the kind of technique used by george above. Listen to him. What we have to do, according to george, is become not ourselves to become something we are not. And he says it with such genuine calm concern in his voice. Who wouldn't want to believe him?

I don't suggest that george is on a mission from the Republicans...... although I don't rule out the possibility. George is fine tuned and he could very likely have picked up the technique as one picks up the latest fashion styles by looking at pictures in magazines and on TV. A good mimic can do this and not even realize what they are doing. Heck, I've picked it up just observing Foxfire, george, JW et al. And Fox "News" sets a fine, easily mimicked example.

You know, george. I don't argue with you about economics because I don't know enough about it. I've been in the fundamentalist evangelical direct marketing/advertising business for thirty years. My knowledge about the industry is not paranoia. It's expertise.

Now let's observe george's technique in response to this post. We have much to learn.

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blatham wrote:

You are frightfully uneducated on the personalities involved and you've not bothered to research the movements and details.

It's funny, because I did do at least some of the homework you assigned to me. And just a few days ago, I thought I had the same insight about yourself. It came when I was debating evolution with a creationist, and he stubbornly refused to even consider any information about evolutionary biology that hadn't been written by a fellow creationist. At one point, a thought crossed my head: "He is just like Blatham", I thought, "every time he makes a statement about what neoconservatives are like, he backs it up with some Salon story, or a position page from People for the American Way, or some similarly liberal source. Like this creationist accepts information on Darwinian evolution only when it comes from creationists, blatham never backs up his opinions about neoconservatives with something he read in sources like The Neocon Reader. For all I know from the sources he quotes, he never read anything about neoconservatism that was actually written by a neoconservative".

The reason I am sharing these musings of mine isn't to sling mud at you, blatham, but to make two points. First, the attribution of ignorance and ideological cockiness to ones opponents involves a serious "My shît don't stink" fallacy. You say:"With some small variation, talking with any one of you becomes utterly predictable on almost any political topic." But by this standard, I am a Repbulican too -- and so are you. It's nice rhetoric, but it's a meaningless standard to apply.

The second, and more important, point is that by constraining yourself to liberal sources in learning about conservatism, you miss a lot of stuff. And some of this stuff would useful to you for figuring what went wrong for the Democrats, and how you can fix it. For example, Mickelthwait and Wooldridge tell you everything about Grove, Olin, Rove, and the conservative marketing machine. But unlike the sources you prefer, they also inform you about the Democratic projects that failed in terms of their stated goals, and how these failures prepared the ground for the rise of the republicans. Roosevelt's farm program. The "Negro removal projects" if the 40s, 50s and 60s (as James Baldwin called them), also known as, "urban improvement projects" (as the mayors involved called them). The top marginal tax rate of 90% America had under Carter. And many more.

Exposing dishonest marketing by your opponents is the easy part of political discourse. But to get the Democratic party on its feet again, you guys also need to do some premise-checking on your own. Making a mistake and not admitting it is only hurting yourself twice.

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I read the Luntz memo. That can hardly be classified as Democratic propaganda. If you haven't already done so, you can read the memo here:

http://www.luntzspeak.com/memo.html

Just click on the lilttle picture of the memo and there it will be for you to read. It's very informative.

Otherwise, do you have some homework for us Thomas? I'll be glad to read it. Bring us up to date, if you will.

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thomas

Happy to address this matter with you, honestly, given that you confess to your own failings before I begin.

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blatham wrote:

Not a single one of you demonstrates much at all in the way of real intellectual curiosity about your own party and, indeed, your own country. You do, on the other hand, demonstrate an intellectual subservience to party and an inability to pull yourselves up out of the comforting mythologies of your specific breed of nationalism and exceptionalism. With some small variation, talking with any one of you becomes utterly predictable on almost any political topic.

I concede it, "intelligence" will always be with you, liberals. Laughing

I think the same applies to many brainless Democrats who try to defend Ward Churchill or blame Bush administration for everything that doesn't work properly in this country. I wonder what the liberal solutions are for such complex issues as SS reform ... well, if Kerry was in office, I'm sure you will simply deny there is a SS problem. And you place all responsibility for deficit in the hands of our administration, which is a clearly false statement.

Quote:

With some small variation, talking with any one of you becomes utterly predictable on almost any political topic.[/[/quote]

Just allow the government to take all the money it wants.. it's the people who must be guided and ruled and told what to do with their money. Corporations are evil , the "people" are good... I am also fed up of hearing this daily...

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Okay, Dems, What Went Wrong? And How Can We Fix It?

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