{"id":594,"date":"2004-11-04T05:53:06","date_gmt":"2004-11-04T05:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:52","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:52","slug":"a_democratic_reformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=594","title":{"rendered":"A Democratic Reformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working on a piece about “The Future of the Democratic Party,” and I realize that it’s going to have a lot of competition in the next few months.<\/p>\n

That’s OK. It’s good, actually. As I read the emails from my friends, and the blogs and news sites, I see a lot of questions and some ideas.<\/p>\n

Someone on one of my email lists put this up:<\/p>\n

My co-worker reminded me today that advertisers have a better pulse on America than most Democrats…they know and accept that decisions are made from the gut — emotional level — not the brain.<\/p>\n

Time to employ a bit of marketing strategy…<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So to her, the problem is that the Democrats don’t know how to sell.”Screw Them” Kos has a simple answer:<\/p>\n

So how did Bush even get this far? By demonising an entire group of people — gays and lesbians. By cynical appeals to religion. By slandering a true war hero. And, most importantly, by scaring people. You see, terrorists would detonate a nuclear bomb in a major city if Kerry were elected. Only Bush can protect us. And those efforts, as I have written before, were all aided and abetted by a well-oiled message machine the likes of which the American left is still unable to match.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the problem is that the opposition is evil, and unprincipled. <\/p>\n

I’ve got a different one.<\/p>\n

Go look at the electoral map<\/a>. Go read my piece on country music and values<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the problem. Amy Sullivan says, over at Political Animal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think Democrats need to say out loud now what many have been whispering (or blogging) for a while. I adore my former boss Tom Daschle and–objectivity be damned–am heartbroken today about his loss. But it is clear that Senate Democrats simply cannot afford to have a leader who hails from a hardcore red state. It puts both the leader and the party in an untenable position.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I think Amy is absolutely right in the things she’s written about the need for the progressive movement to reconnect to issues of faith and religion – and she’s one of the pioneers that have talked about that – she’s absolutely wrong here, and has it completely backwards.<\/p>\n

The Democrats won’t be a dominant party until they can align their message with the American people well enough that their leadership is safe running in Red states.<\/b><\/p>\n

Does this mean that they repudiate core Democratic values? <\/p>\n

I don’t think so. <\/p>\n

I believe in the liberal values of tolerance, equality, and government on the side of the little guy. I believe in clean air and water I can drink. I think that most Americans do as well, and that while there are healthy debates to have about how to get there – or closer to there – I simply believe in the product that liberals and Democrats should be able to sell. I don’t think most Americans are too stupid to buy it.<\/p>\n

I do think, that like the automakers in the 1970’s and the dot-com kids in the 1990’s, the apparatus of the Democratic Party has forgotten that it has customers and that the needs of those customers take precedence over the wants of the management and employees.<\/p>\n

It’s got to be the Democratic Party for the whole country, not just suburban Washington D.C., Manhattan, Brentwood, and Mill Valley.<\/p>\n

So here’s a thesis:<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party is the Democratic Party for the whole country, not just for New York, Massachusetts, and California.<\/i><\/p>\n

In fact, rather than designing what the party should look like<\/b>, let’s step back and talk about what the party is for<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Let’s come up with a set of design principles – a set of theses<\/b> for the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

I think we ought to be able to express what we want in less than a hundred of them. I bet we can do it in ninety-five of them.<\/p>\n

Then I’ll nail the fucking things to the door of party headquarters, and we’ll start a real Reformation.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and add your own in the comments. I’ll build a list here as we go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working on a piece about “The Future of the Democratic Party,” and I realize that it’s going to have a lot of competition in the next few months. That’s OK. It’s good, actually. As I read the emails from my friends, and the blogs and news sites, I see a lot of questions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}