Dear Democratic Party:
Hi. I am a voter. Remember me? I'm not so sure you do. You haven't been answering my calls. Or any of my friends' calls either. In fact, to be honest, I sense a real breakdown in communication between you and us voters. It's almost as if there are two Democratic Parties: one for voters and one for office-holders.
It's a sad state of affairs, I know, especially when you consider there are so many more Democratic voters than there are Democrats in office. But it's what I wanted to write to you about today. I still think we can fix this.
You've been real quiet lately. Quiet in that sad sort of a way that lets me know you're thinking about something, but you don't want to say what it is. Maybe it has something to do with the other guys in your office. You know, the ones who say that if you stand up for something, it means you're an extremist and that you hate America. Maybe you've started to believe it. I hope not.
I really hope that, even though they barely outnumber you in that building, you haven't forgotten the millions of people who think they're wrong. Because, there's more of us than there were before. In fact, we outnumber them now.
Which brings me to what happened in Connecticut last week. Yeah, about that...some of you guys seem kind of upset. I'm sorry about that. Not sorry about Lieberman losing, we did that on purpose. I'm sorry it upset you. That was the opposite of what we wanted to do. We wanted to get you guys motivated. Because we are motivated, and, well, you're not.
For the Democrats (by that I mean both you, the ones in office, and us, the voters), this should be our year. The voters are ready for some serious change in this country, but you're still acting like it's December of 2004. You're still licking your wounds, scratching your heads, and staring at the ass that got handed to you with a look of stunned confusion.
It's not a good sign of the state of affairs when a majority of us voters would rather choose the unknown than the status quo. It's even worse when the powers that be can't see the writing on the wall and decide to stick with status quo; a lack of definition, a dejected acceptance of irrelevance compared to the other guy.
"Democrats: We're Not Republicans" failed as a party slogan in 2004. It isn't going to work this year either (in part because the new Republican slogan is "I'm Not One of Those Republicans").
So about this Lamont thing. It wasn't a triumph of the blogging community. It wasn't a slap in the face to Lieberman and only Lieberman. It was us voters standing up, going to the windows, sticking our heads out and yelling, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!"
But more than that, it was us trying to communicate with you. We expected to see you run to your windows and yell it back at us. However, it's been almost a full week now. We're one week closer to November and we haven't heard you say so much as "wait, you're mad?"
We've been waiting since before the summer's state conventions for you guys to prove that you have a message, to show some national party unity and prove you're not just the other guys on the ticket. The mood is downright sour in this country. We want something to rally behind.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Bob
Dear boxclocke. Your rant warms my heart. As long as "children" such as yourself have this sense of power, the Democrat party will soon be irrelevant. I'm sorry to tell you that your life experience so far has not taught you anything. Maybe one day when you actually need to earn a living, you'll wake up to reality. In would appear that you need to spend more time in reality, then trying to make it up. Lamont is a loser, and the democrats that voted for him have been given a small sense of hope. But in November, Lieberman will win, an maybe finally the grownups in the Democratic party will take back the party from the moonbats and whiners.
2 - Rick in Tex
Lieberman supports the war because he's seen the intelligence and understands the threat we face. Any argument that this threat doesn't exist or is our own fault should be reserved for Berkley not Washington. I'm usually a strong supporter of the Republicans, but even I'm a not happy with the current folks. However, what do the Democrats propose we do other wise. So many Dems bash Bush left and right, personal attacks do not endear me to your cause. If u want to persuade me to jump ship (and it's possible) get some real plans. Tell me first what your idea is, then tell me why it's better.
We can't just up and leave Iraq, any rational person will tell you this could damage the area beyond repair for years. Of course the Left likes to forget about the "R" factor. REALITY! There must be a plan. Setting dates is not a plan. Crying about this administrations' mistakes does not get me to vote for you.
Maybe the Dems do have an idea, I just haven't heard a unified voice state it. Demo leaders are weak and speak only after the latest poll numbers are out. No conviction. Don't get me started on that Dean guy. What were the Dems thinking? My 4 year old shows more maturity and tact.
I don't have the hate that most on the left and right carry towards each other. As a matter of fact I think these debates are exactly what the old guys from 1776 wanted. It's just that the democratic rhetoric is tiring. All hate no substance.
The left may enjoy this little victory in Conn., but in the long run it will only further expand the Red dominance, and even I do not want to see this. Checks and Balances, not hate and unrealistic demands.
So Dems, or should I say the LEFT, stop the immature bashing and give me an idea of how your going to make things better.
Are things really THAT bad? I think not.
Democrats need real leaders, too bad they sent one of their best packing. Atleast until Nov.
3 - John Guilfoil
Good stuff. The Democrats have an identity and a pride problem. Meanwhile, Republicans stick to their guns (literally) and guns (primary issues) and rally THEIR faithful to THEIR causes.
Meanwhile the Democrats rally their faithless AGAINST their enemoes instead of FOR their issues. People were starting to forget what Democrats' primary issues were. Then Lamont came along and said, "hey, Anti-war, remember?"
4 - JustOneMan
"In Connecticut, voters proved once and for all that this country doesn't just want change; they demand it."
No it doesent...Early polls already show that Joe will beat "lefty louie" Lamont....
What this election has proven is that the Dumbocrat party is fractured and a group of lefy wing insurgents...with no plan for national security, job creation, education or international relations is beginning to take over the skeleton of a once strong an viable party...This is proof the the Dems party stands for nothing and has no plans to do anything except shout "Biush Lied"...you cannot win general elections with that...remember Al EGore and John "Reporting to take a duty" Kerry....
How quickly the left forgets that you need sunstance to win elections!
5 - Larry
Remember those famous words..I AM A UNITER..NOT A DIVIDER. THE UNITED STATES IS MORE DIVIDED NOW THAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR..THANKS TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. WE ARE MORE DIVIDED NOW THAN EVER BEFORE WITH THE WORLD COMMUNITY.
6 - Gman
All the commentary over Lamon over Lieberman is mostly just TALKING heads. Fact is that Joe is not notable for anything over three senate terms. The Iraq war support is one small issue that contributed to his primary defeat. Connecticut wants representatives that will champion real causes on some-what of a regular basis (i.e. global warming, lost of middle class society, hunger, genocide, drugs, healthcare, etc.)
7 - Jennifer in Virginia
The democratic party does need to develop a platform that dispels the GOP's labeling as the party soft on security. A first step in that direction is to repudiate the label the GOP has assigned to the party as anti-war. I keep hearing that, and it projects the wrong image. The Democratic Party mantra is ANTI-IRAQ war, pro-war on terrorism. We need to trumpet the platform that security begins at home - we need stronger, more effective and thorough homeland defense to stop the terrorists from attacking us through our ports and borders. That's just a start, I could go on and on.
8 - JustOneMan
Larry..thank-you- you prove my point - Bash Bush with no substance of plan to do anything different...
And Gman---you are quoting from the Howard Dean playbook on how to spin election as hope for the Dems this election cycle...Name one piece of Dumbocrat legislation that addresses any of the following
global warming, lost of middle class society, hunger, genocide, drugs, healthcare,
NONE...all the dems are doing is saying NO NO NO! Without presenting alternatives and options
9 - Liberal
"Lieberman supports the war because he's seen the intelligence and understands the threat we face."
Do you mean the intelligence that claimed that Iraq bought uranium from Niger and was loaded with WMDs ready to be launched at the US?
10 - Mad
DAM ALL the political do nothing Asses ,we the voters sent to Washington.
YES we the voters are MAD, and and they will see some changes on the first Tuesdat in Noember.
A message to Joe Liberman, If we wanted a Republican in your office,we would have voted for him instead of you.
11 - Michael J. West
THE UNITED STATES IS MORE DIVIDED NOW THAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR.
Are you kidding me with this?
12 - Liberal
"A message to Joe Liberman, If we wanted a Republican in your office,we would have voted for him instead of you."
Let's see. The last time around, the Republicans ran a child molester against Joe. This time its a "card counter."
You have to wonder why the Republicans keep reaching this far down into the barrel.
13 - Crusty
I'm excited to see the juxtaposition of dems poo-pooing Ned Lamont w/ their same treatment of Ralph Nader a few years ago - do we all still remember Howard Dean begging Nader on national television not to run for president - Terry McAulife?
I seem to remember dems dressing up as supreme court justices at a well-attended Nader rally to drive home the importance of a democrat picking nominees -and how Ralph Nader was spoiling the election for dems
-how did "our guy Joe" do on that supreme court business?
14 - Rick in Tex
Saddam Hussein was a threat and had to be dealt with. His relationship to terrorists goes back to him harboring Carlos the Jackel years ago. His money supported extremist and now we fight the extremist in their own backyard, NOT OURS! I do think Rumsfeld botched the whole operation from the beginning by not using enough troops.
However, the Bush administration is not credited enough with taking the war off of our soil and using our best trained to fight them. War sucks, as a veteran of war I can attest to this. But we do not live in a Utopia.
I was looking for some substance from the left, but as you can see from their posts, emotions rule, not reality.
I think History will be kinder to Bush, and will prove, as most who see the intelligence know, that Saddam had the WMD's moved to Iran or Syria.
Please understand I am not a Bush lover, just someone looking for an alternative which the Dems seem unable to provide.
I hear Hillary is next on the Left's crosshairs.
(laughs outloud).
BTW history also repeats itself endlessly, pacifists cried during WWI, WWII, Korea, and rightly over Vietnam. Too bad the left can't get over that war.
OK Lefty's- begin the attacks, do what you do best.
15 - Georgio
NONE...all the dems are doing is saying NO NO NO! Without presenting alternatives and options
How is this for alternatives
GET THE HELL OUT OF IRAQ...FIGHT TERRORISTS...and don't give me that George Bush bullshit "we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"..As The 9/11 commissioners stated "that as long as we are spending all our money on Iraq we don't have the money to spend it on homeland security"..
Iraq is a failed war..ask yourself ..Has it gotten any better in four years HELL NO..We have wasted lives and money over there when it should have been spent on this country..WE are not ever going to make that country a democracy because ISLAM does not like the modern world and wants to live in the past ..Their BIBLE is their GOD..
Fight the war in Afghanistan and get the hell out of Iraq before we lose that one two which we are about to..
Get rid of Chernoff ..he is another failure of the Bush team as well as Rumsfield..
Reverse the tax cuts to the rich and start talking to the leaders of our enemies face to face ..I could go on and on and I wish VIRGINA would too she makes sense..
16 - Liberal
Rick,
You want substance?
"Saddam Hussein was a threat and had to be dealt with."
If you believe that, you also have to believe that the US military did not decimate Iraqi forces in the first war and that ten years of reconnaissance and no-fly zones failed to contain that undecimated military.
"His relationship to terrorists goes back to him harboring Carlos the Jackel years ago."
True, but the 9-11 highjackers were almost all Saudis trained in Wahabi schools in Saudi Arabia and funded by Saudis. There is no logic to attacking Iraq in response to an attack from Saudis.
"His money supported extremist and now we fight the extremist in their own backyard, NOT OURS!"
Iraq was, to be sure, a brutal dictatorship, but it was a secular Muslim country. As such, Iraq was as much, if not more of an enemy to the fundamentalist extremists than the West.
"I do think Rumsfeld botched the whole operation from the beginning by not using enough troops."
Military operations were concluded in days. The Iraq mess was not a military failure. The instability we now see is the result of a conceptual failure on the part of the administration. As we saw in the political success of Hamas and Hizbollah, if you bring democracy to an Arab country, the populace will vote in significant numbers for extremism and for an undemocratic (religious) government.
"the Bush administration is not credited enough with taking the war off of our soil..."
The two fundamentalist Muslim attacks on US soil occurred eight years apart. That is apparently how long it takes them to plan and execute such an operation.
In my opinion, the war in Afghanistan is a part of the war on terrorism. The linkage between the former government and terrorist groups is undeniable. The war in Iraq is something else.
The greatest threat we now face is the development of nuclear weapons by Iran. The US lond claimed that its nuclear arsenal existed as a deterent to the huge military force of a sworn enemy (the USSR). For Iran, the huge military force of its sworn enemy sits on two of its borders. Using the same deterent argument, it is logical for Iran to have stepped up its nuclear program.
That will be the legacy of the Bush administration.
17 - Nancy
The mood of the voters is against incumbents (in general) because the voters sense, correctly, that once in office, politicians of both stripes settle into a comfortable lifestyle of hogging it at the public trough, probably for the rest of their lives given how hard it has become (mainly through the manipulations & rigging of these same persons) to unseat an incumbent. In short, once elected, incumbents forget what Real Life is like for those who have to scrabble for a living, and settle down to a long, long - possibly permanent - stretch of luxury, entitlement, and privilege enjoyed by few others in the world, punctuated by public posturing about fake and fallacious issues for the benefit of the mindless MSM, carefully avoiding any actions or work of substance, like protecting the public from oil companies' price gouging, or jobs heading overseas, etc. Why should they, after all? THEIR lives & comfort are assured. So they thought.
The Lieberman defeat is a good thing. Hopefully it signals that the time remaining in office for such do-nothing professional troughsuckers is in danger, if not already over except for the ballot counting. We the people can't afford & shouldn't tolerate keeping on our public payrolls individuals who are not only afraid, but refuse to do the work they're overpaid for. We the people can't afford & shouldn't tolerate keeping on our public payrolls individuals whose idea of 'work' is to aggrandize & enrich themselves at public expense, while conniving with the megacorporations to cheat the public by looking the other way while the public is raped by these same CEOs. We the people can't afford & shouldn't tolerate keeping on our public payrolls individuals whose main method of winning re-election is to spout division & hatred, stirring up the unthinking idiot masses by trotting out stupid, shallow "issues" they claim falsely to endanger the country - issues that have no value except as divisory tactics. These individuals are poison - weasels - and need to be given the boot asap if not sooner. Unfortunately, most of the occupants of the Capitol are of this class, and I don't refer just to the GOP side.
The optimum solution would be to enact term limits: no more than 2 terms per incumbent, just like with the presidency. This would prevent such disasters as lifetime despoilers of the public trough, a la Byrd of W. Va., or Thurmond of S.C. NO ONE should be entitled or allowed to hold office to the point of reaching senility therein, or of occupying the position to the point of permanency.
The problem here, of course, is that (I believe, I'm sure the better informed will correct me if I'm wrong) the occupants of congress have written it into law such that they can't be subjected to term limits, nor can they be forced from office for any reason due to senility or extreme age.
Hell's bells, even getting them out when they're caught red-handed in the cookie jar is damn near impossible, witness the astounding claim by members of congress that the FBI had no business raiding the offices of William Jefferson, that as a member of congress, he is "immune" from search and seizure like the rest of us.
Immune? From the law?
THIS is the mentality that led to Lieberman getting the axe by the voters of Connecticut: the attitude that the incumbents of congress are above the law, excused from having to toe the same lines as the rest of us mere mortals who don't hold office. Lieberman just happened to be the first on his block to come up for re-election is all. It could have been any of them; in fact, it WAS several of them, some deserved (like the obnoxious Ms. McKinney) and some not so deserved.
Lieberman himself is not the issue, he's a symbol of the larger issue that IS the issue: voters furious at arrogant, do-nothing, career deadwood in congress in league with an arrogant, oafish, incompetent president and arrogant, rapacious megacorporations (specifically Big Oil, altho I've heard Big Pharmaceuticals cussed out recently, too).
The incumbents scramble like the rats they are to save themselves from the wrath of an angry public.
Hopefully, for most of them, it's already far too late.
18 - Anna Creech
Well said! I'm tired of having to support a party that seems to have forgotten what it stands for. C'mon, people! If you say you're a Democrat, then start acting like one!
Don't get discouraged by some of the commenters here (I stopped reading after four or five). I'm an adult American working in the real world, and your open letter speaks for me, too. Age and experience has nothing to do with the truths you write.
19 - DJRadiohead
I generally stay away from the politics section on the site for obvious reasons.
While I disagree with much in the post, I do think it was written very well.
I'll leave now, so everyone can get back to the spittle fest and flame war.
20 - Dave Nalle
Well said! I'm tired of having to support a party that seems to have forgotten what it stands for. C'mon, people! If you say you're a Democrat, then start acting like one!
Republicans are just as dissatisfied with their party. It's also failed in numerous ways which are even less forgiveable because it does control the congress and the white house.
I don't see how much of the blame for actual republican failures can attach to Bush, since he's tried to do what his constituents wanted, but the spinelessness of congress and the cupidity of its members is a problem which voters of both parties need to face up to.
Dave
21 - Liberal
For those of you not in Connecticut:
One of Lamont's tv ads showed Joe morphing into Bush with audio of Joe's pro-Bush statements. Joe responded with a "look, I'm not a Republican, I'm a good democrat" campaign.
Since the primary, Republicans (including the VP and Pres. Press Secretary) have been falling all over themselves to help Joe get re-elected.
The Republicans, who ran a child molester against Joe last time around, have reached only slightly higher in the barrel for this years unelectable opponent.
What does that tell you?
For those of you who appreciate irony or conspiracy theories and followed the primary closely:
Schlesinger's (the Republican) website is down.
22 - Nancy
Thank you, Dave; I should learn to be so succinct.
23 - Dave Nalle
This will be another seat (re. #21) like Tom Delay's which the GOP loses out of pure stupidity.
As for the quality of the nominatees running against Lieberman, the GOP has excellent potential candidates, but they almost always get squeezed out by the most hypocritical party-liners and yes men they can find.
The problem in the GOP is the body of reactionary gray hairs who still dominate the nominating process in state conventions and largely determine who gets the money in the primaries. They tend to go for the wrong kind of candidates and it's hard for someone with principles and real values to get through that process.
Dave
24 - Nancy
I think most voters, like me, would support ANY party which cleans up its act - meaning kick out the grifters and graft artists, clean up & put some muscle in the ethics & anti-lobbying rules, and stop fucking around with idiotic, non-sequitur issues like gay marriage or flag burning & get to work on actual problems like price gouging by big industries, alternative fuels, illegals, health care, and other issues. Granted it's a long time ago, but at one point the GOP did have enough balls & guts to kick out the weasels - Nixon & his crew. They weren't afraid to sit in judgement, air their dirty laundry, and then scrub it out. Since then, they've degenerated into a party of scumbags, just as clueless & spineless in their way as the Dems.
25 - Bliffle
One can make the case that the Iraq invasion has worsened the US position strategically by taking the Sunni foot off the shiite neck, thus strengthening Iran. With Saddam in power that sunni power counterposed the shiite power of Iran which is bent on domination.