Thursday, December 02, 2004
Grassroots Are the Key
If you, like I, have always resisted and will always resist getting a subscription to the Wall Street Journal just in order to read the occasionally non-aorta-bursting contribution to political discourse in its pages (wow, what an opening clause... kinda lost my own thread there) -- if that's the case for you, then you too may have missed the opportunity to read Joe Trippi's column in Monday's issue. It was widely quoted on progressive sites (who obviously had sprung for a WSJ subscription, bless their hearts), but excerpts aren't the same as the whole thing, are they? No, they aren't. Especially when the teaser paragraph or two is followed by something like, "You can read the whole thing if you have a subscription..."
Anyway, you can now read the whole thing without a subscription to the WSJ or anything else, on Trippi's own site. Herewith the obligatory quotations, focused on the reasons the Dems lost in November and what they need to do next:
Update: If you regularly read The Smirking Chimp, you didn't need a WSJ subscription, either -- and you could have read the whole thing yesterday instead of waiting for me to cite it today.
Anyway, you can now read the whole thing without a subscription to the WSJ or anything else, on Trippi's own site. Herewith the obligatory quotations, focused on the reasons the Dems lost in November and what they need to do next:
He concludes:
- Democrats can't keep ignoring their base. Running to the middle and then asking our base at the end of the campaign to make sure to vote is not a plan.
- Democrats must reconnect with the energy of our grass roots.
- The one thing we learned in the Dean campaign was that the 30 or so people in Burlington, Vt., were not as smart as the 650,000 Americans who were part of our campaign.
- A party that ignores the needs of state and local parties is doomed.
- In a world in which companies like Wal-Mart pay substandard wages with no real benefits, our party has got to find innovative ways to support organized labor's growth.
- The Democratic Party has to be the vehicle that empowers the American people to change our failed political system.
Finally, What is the purpose the Democratic Party strives for today? What are our goals for the nation? You couldn't tell from the 2004 election. The fact is, very few good ideas come from the middle. Ideas in the middle tend to be mediocre. Political consultants have become adept at keeping their candidates in that safe zone. But the time has come to develop bold ideas and to challenge people to sacrifice for the common good. Experts will tell you that you can't ask the American people to sacrifice individually for the common good. Those experts are wrong-it's just been so long since anyone has asked them.Put this together with Lucian Bohne's 10 principles (cited in my earlier entry), and damn -- we might just have a party again.
Update: If you regularly read The Smirking Chimp, you didn't need a WSJ subscription, either -- and you could have read the whole thing yesterday instead of waiting for me to cite it today.
