My first Post here:
I think you are absolutely on track.. I am a Goldwater Republican
looking for a party. My old party now has become the entity that Pres
Eisenhower warned about as he left office. The traditional Democratic
bases of union members and minorities have been effectively
marginalized. States like Texas have made unions almost illegal
particularly for teachers, a previous very strong Democratic voting
block. The aging baby-boomer population has become very conservative
as they have aged which has also effected fund raising. However this
administration may have finally proven too incompetent at managing
the government for these groups. The real question is can the
Democrats come up with an attractive candidate. I still do not see
one. But then again I do not see a good candidate on the Republican
side either.
Chris F.
On Jun 29, 2006, at 6:23 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
The skill sets needed to effectively win election and effectively
run the
government are not the same. There is no doubt that the Bush team's
political strategists were much more effective than the Democrats.
They are
good campaigners.
But, when it came to running the government, they proved to be
horrible
managers. For those who believed in the value of invading Iraq, and
who
honestly wanted success, Bush's actions have been extremely grating.
Throwing away a first rate State Department plan for rebuilding
Iraq for a
collection of wishes was a blunder. Eschewing people who know
about the ins
and outs of development, and having someone's whose experience with
economic
development was the managing of a day care was stupid. Keeping Zalmay
Khalilzad out of the loop on Iraq for ~2 years was extremely
stupid. By all
accounts, he has done amazing work trying to cobble together a
political
agreement since he became ambassador.
I think that a good Democratic tact on Iraq is not that we should
never
overthrow dictators. It is not that we always need permission from
the UN.
It is, that, if one decides to do this, one damn well better be
prepared.
IMHO, if Kerry were to focus on day care workers running Iraq,
maybe with a
commercials depicting someone working in a day care, praising their
work,
but asking "is this the right person to send to run Iraq?"
But, that's mostly hindsight. Looking forward, I see only one
Democrat on
the national scene who "gets it": Barack Obama. He had some
interesting
statements on the way Democrats deal with people of faith
yesterday. I can
provide links if people want.
One question to be asked is why middle and lower income whites have
as much
trouble identifying with the Democratic party as they do. To me,
knowing a
number of them, the answer seems pretty obvious: they see the
national party
as having less in common with them than the Republicans. I think
Obama has
presented one of the reasons why. I think there are others, and
that an
understanding of these is a prerequisite for any real resurgence of
the
Democrats.
Dan M.
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