I like those, even though aside from the New Orleans idea, they're all susceptible to the "no positive vision" charge.
One thing the Democrats could do is talk more about how we have to be planning right now to take care of returning vets. This gives them an opportunity to bash Bush, who's cut vet benefits, and seem compassionate and foresightful.
You know, taking care of veterans is good policy and we should actually do it, but I don't know if making a fuss about it is a winner for Democrats. To anyone who's leaning Democratic, it's so blindly obvious that of course that's the sort of thing we want to do (Uh, help injured, needy people? Who got hurt working for us? Duh.) that it's not an interesting selling point.
And I think Republicans have the soldier-lovin' imagery tied up enough that anyone who isn't emotionally leaning Democratic already would look at an emphasis on taking care of veterans, and see John Kerry shooting at geese - it'll look phony.
It can't do any harm, but I don't think it does us much good.
I think Republicans have the soldier-lovin' imagery tied up enough
I don't know if this is true anymore, and they've done so much to undermine that image lately that I think the Democrats could really gain here. Dunno.
I don't think it's broad enough. This Republican party is an unbelievable, generational failure, and we ought to be saying that. There is nothing they can do right, and large parts of their party (admittedly, old line, Establishment Republicans) hint at it. We ought to continually say that America is a great country, but it faces many challenges, and cannot stay a great country with incompetent and corrupt governors like those that lead the Republican Party. We ought to be making common cause with disaffected Republicans, even when it won't pick up meaningful votes (as in the Northeast), because it will, over time, become the defining description of Republicans (as "leftist tax-and-spend hippie" is for Democrats), and it will end up drying up their funding and institutional support.
The next few years should be about winning in the next few years; it should be about making the Republican Party so unpalettable that it is in minority status for a generation.
There is nothing they can do right
This is kind of a good slogan, actually. I mean, I suppose "nothing" slightly overstates it---but maybe, "nothing useful" would cover it.
I suppose "nothing" slightly overstates it
You are totally banninated from trying to come up with slogans.
You're so right. I'm the unsloganator.
Maybe they could try fillibustering in order to shut down the federal government until the budget is balanced.
So what's the slogan: Vote for us, not the nitwit powermongering thieves?
Seriously? All these ideas have problems, inasmuch as they're ideas. I think it's only a non-rational appeal that's going to do work.
Vote for us, because while we concede that the Republicans have made some valid points and basically mean well, they are disastrously incompetent and sometimes even a little corrupt -- so vote for us instead.
Or, in the words of the alien posing as Bob Dole in the classic Simpson's Halloween episode: "The politics of failure have failed. It is time to make them succeed again."
The slogan (or ad) should be: "Corrupt or Incompetent? Who cares? Vote the bums out." You could practically make a game of it, putting up pictures of Iraq, Katrina, the various grafters, the pork-kings, etc., and having voters try to decide if they are corrupt or incompetent. I honestly don't feel sure in most cases, though I lean towards incompetent.
10: But they're not just ideas! Two of them incorporate symbolic props, and another an empty yet self-sacrificing gesture!
I think slol is saying we need to get Vin Diesel to run.
Okay, they're symbolic gestures that are too clearly the product of thoughtful minds. I was thinking more along the lines of Pappy O'Daniel adopting the Soggy Bottom Boys.
"Corrupt or Incompetent? Who cares? Vote the bums out."
I love this. When focused on Bush "I'm not saying he's stupid, and I'm not saying he's a liar. But it's gotta be one or the other."
I think slol is saying we need to get Vin Diesel to run
Actually, that's not far off what I was thinking. I was thinking, we just seriously need some Q ratings.
A lot of people are saying not to make it about Bush, since he's not running again, but making the 2006 election a referendum on Bush makes perfect sense -- not only based on the satisfaction of kicking the fucker while he's down, but because it could actually work. No longer do you have the "lovable oaf" effect to make it backfire -- people don't like him personally anymore, either.
"Hey, look at their guy! They may be running away from him now, but they picked him! Do you want to let them pick the next leader? I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling that lucky."
No, we run against Bush, the rotting albatross carcass around the neck of the Republican party.
I like the game idea.
No, make it immediate. If the Republicans retain control, Bush is still calling the shots. (Whether or not that would factually be the case is irrelevant.) Say for each Republican, "This guy lets Bush lead him around by the nose -- he voted with Bush 99% of the time. We can't let Bush set the agenda anymore. It's time for a change."
The only Bob Casey ad I've seen has said that, #21. It was like
"Rick Santorum is a douchebag because
A) Rick Santorum voted himself a pay raise 4 times
B) Rick Santorum voted against a minimum wage increase 17 times
C) Rick Santorum voted with Bush 98% of the time (big picture of Bush looking angry and pathetic)".
Meanwhile the Santorum ads are either
"Hi, I'm Rick Santorum. My parents were immigrants, and my grandparents were immigrants. I love immigrants, so you can trust me when I say the immigrants we have nowadays are awful. Vote for me and I will stop immigration."
or
"Bobby Casey has been spying on Rick Santorum's house. Bobby Casey is afraid to let you know what he's up to. Why is Bobby Casey so creepy? Call Bobby Casey and ask him why he's a scumbag."
If the Democrats can't win against a guy with a shit-based residue named after him, they can't win.
Hammer on "Where's Osama"
This works really well, right up until the day when they capture/kill Osama.
Oh, make it "Five years and you haven't been able to find Osama"? That'll stay true.
Hammer on "Where's Osama"
I don't see any posts about that here.
Tim and others, have you seen item 1 here?
Always happy to oblige! I have serious trouble really believing what's happening.
Matt, you seem to genuinely believe that people of Pakistani ancestry are real Americans. If 20% of the country agrees with you, I would utterly shocked.
I've got to stop reading all of these things; it's driving me nuts.
Iraq really needs to be at the center here. Bin Laden hasn't been captured because the administration didn't care that much about capturing him--they used the momentum to get into Iraq. Their budget is a failure primarily because of Iraq. Healthcare gets little attention because Iraq fills the headlines. New Orleans wasn't rebuilt because the administration did not care to rebuild it. The money is sunk in Iraq.
Iraq kicks everything else off the front page. When something else looks bad for the administration, they shout Global War On Terror!
There is no war on terror, there is only the war to create terror. This is the defining issue. If you believe in the boogey man, the boogey man becomes a more pressing issue to you than healthcare. The solution is to stop believing in the boogey man.
The number one issue right now is the boogey man. That's how far we've come. What democrats need to do is convince people to get out from under the bed.
And then have sex on the bed with, like, whoever you want.
I would certainly hope that it were more than 20%. That whole "welcome to America, Macaca" business played badly on Redstate.
That whole "welcome to America, Macaca" business played badly on Redstate
Yeah, and that's really nice; overt racism has been almost wholly repudiated. But when this thing happens to two Pakistani-looking people, I don't think the rest of America thinks "they can't do that to us!"
33, 34: The Redstate folks seem to mostly believe their own bullshit about Republican moral purity. It's generally aggravating but occasionally kind of cute, as when they get whacked upside the head by the reality of what they're supporting.
That whole "welcome to America, Macaca" business played badly on Redstate.
Bet Allen wins. Bet every Red State reader in VA votes for him. Being against RACISM! feels good; being against racism is antithetical to some of the underlying motivaters in the Southern Republican party.
I'm pretty sure the tax cuts have something to do with the deficit. Not that it matters -- from what I understand, the Chinese and Japanese are pretty much stuck propping up the US$ by rolling over our bonds, because if we went down, they'd be totally fucked. (They have such a corner on US$ that they can't sell them in substantial quantities without undercutting their value.)
So don't tell anyone -- no swing voters are reading this, right? -- but the US basically has infinite money. Our leaders are some clever motherfuckers.
My parents, Reagan Democrats if there's a category for Canadian-American Mormon conservative Bay Area households, kicked at Maher Ahar. To them he was a Canadian. They knew about this case before I did, and they were royally pissed off. (Mind you, they both voted Libertarian in '04 rather than voting for Kerry.)
I'm not happy about the resurgence of "of course we should racially profile" talk bubbling up, but I really do hope that the rights of citizenship mean something for more than 20% of Americans.
But when someone says "But their relative was arrested for terrorism!" will the percentage stay above 20%?
What was it, 38% of Americans who thought it would be a good idea if we made Muslims register with the government? I bet the majority of that 38% were conservatives, voted for Bush, and point to Dem efforts at gun registration as proof that Dems don't respect the Constitution. I don't think it's 20%, but I wouldn't be willing to bet that it was the majority, either.
I think the reaction to this will be much different than the "Macaca" nonsense--people will just say "well, if they don't have anything to hide, why are they refusing to answer the nice FBI man's questions?"
44% favored restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslims. And that was two years ago.
Favoring restrictions of rights based on religion alone sounds a hell of a lot like "you're not a real American" to me.
The fact that the NYT article had to emphasize that one of them was born in the US just shows that people feel dubious about the Americanness and/or loyalty of Pakistani-Americans and the like.
The right of citizenship means jack to Americans, at least when the citizenship belongs to first-generation immigrants. Look at all the bullshit about "anchor babies" and popular indifference (oxymoron alert) to what happens to American-born kids whose undocumented parents get shipped back home.
I believe fully that our immigration system is fucked up, and that sending off non-citizen family-members is fucked up, but once you have your US passport, you're a fucking citizen, and I don't fucking care where you're from, you're us. Jesus Christ, am I the only republican conservative left around in this country?
45: A whole lot of white Americans still tend to have a hard time with values of "us" that include non-white Americans.
Automatic citizenship for everyone born in the national territory is actually pretty unique. As far as I know, most European countries don't do it. This might be one of those issues -- like the ideal of secular government -- where the Founders were and are way out front of most Americans.
So let the fucking racists propose a Constitutional Amendment. We'll see how far that gets. Oh, and my father, one of my sisters, and my boyfriend fall into the category of "American citizens not born in the US." Citizenship is citizenship. If the rights it was supposed to entail can be easily bypassed for off-white "citizens," well then the status doesn't mean shit, except "keep your head down." And that sound a lot more like "subject," to me.
I'm sounding angry, aren't I?
This is where we come to cry out all our angries.
Can I therefore bitch about the realtor who locked me out of my house today and the city which towed my car b/c they're doing some kind of work on the street next to mine and wanted us to move our cars too and I forgot?
Oh Noes!
Getting one's car towed is on my top five list of shitty things to happen to people that aren't health, death, or breakup-related.
Yeah. I mean, it's just a hassle, it'll be fine, but it pisses me off anyway. Plus I'm not sure how I'm gonna afford to get it out of hock (and there's always the "how to get to the impound lot" issue, too).
I once stole my own car out of a tow yard. It felt pretty good.
God, that sucks. This whole summer I was terrified that my car was going to get towed because I parked in a place with some weird rule I didn't realize. It could easily have happened, too; I once had it parked at a park (unlimited free parking!) and came by to move it just as a cop was putting up temporary No Parking signs effective the next day. If I'd waited until then they'd have towed it.
B, have I mentioned the Randian acquaintance of mine who spent three days digging a random hole in a street solely to prove (to himself, apparently) that his local government was fucked up enough to let it happen?
Maybe that's what's going on around the way. Check their permits before you pay your fines!
Maybe if a few of us went over to your blog and dropped the price of a nice thick primer on feminism in your tip jar....
57: Heh. PK was all, "it's been stolen, call the police!" and I'm all, "no, it's the fucking city."
I'd better be right. :P
where the Founders were and are way out front of most Americans.
They weren't: birthright citizenship is in the 14th amendment, and not upheld by the Supreme Court until Wong Kim Ark in 1896. (Trivia: Harlan, who dissented in Plessy, also dissented in Wong Kim Ark.)
A 1790 law limited naturalization to "free white persons." The Dred Scott opinions are full of discussions of whether or not Scott was a citizen and whether or not being a citizen of one state establishes citizenship in all states. The provision was repealed in 1952; before then there were some court cases where one of the questions was: are the Japanese white? (There may have been court cases about the whiteness of the Chinese, too.) The status of residents of the Philippines wasn't clear for a while after 1898.
Native Americans weren't citizens until the 1920s, and I think, depending on tribal status, some also have a special status with respect to the federal government (I think this comes up in questions of jurisdiction).
I don't know if there's any point to this comment except that citizenship history is a mess.
I thought it was an excellent comment.
On topic, I really like item #3 a lot, but I like Garrison Keillor's idea even better.
I think b and leblanc should duke it out over Keillor. I say this not having read what Keillor's idea is and not intending to.
Native Americans weren't citizens until the 1920s, and I think, depending on tribal status, some also have a special status with respect to the federal government (I think this comes up in questions of jurisdiction).
Federally recognized tribes are sovereign; their powers and rights are based on treaties with the US government (for those that have such treaties). This means, among other things, that they are generally not bound by state law, only federal. Gambling is the major area where this plays out, but there are others.