Today, Kos has an excellent point about Bush:
Man, it’s bad enough that Bush won the election. But it makes me angrier that he won the election when people don’t even like the guy. Not even two months after the election, Bush is poised to be the most unpopular president at his inaugaration… I could deal with losing to a popular incumbent. But it’s tough to deal with the most unpopular incumbent to win reelection.
Kos then offers a battle plan:
The Democrats need to offer an alternative agenda over the next four years. It won’t be enacted, so they can shoot for the moon. The hell with good policy, make proposals that sound great. The GOP used flag burning and gay marriage to rally their side. We can find equivalents. Don’t worry about them becoming law, because they won’t. Worry about branding the party and placing every bit of bad news (and there will be plenty) squarely at the feet of the party that controls all levers of government.
We need to make the GOP radioactive. Their incompetence is providing the ammunition. It is our job to wield it. Remember, they control everything. We don’t need to be bipartisan. We don’t need to work with them for them to pass their agenda. So we offer up clear alternatives to everything they propose. We have to be aggressive.
The Mad Biologist: I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is that the Democratic ‘leadership’ doesn’t listen to the loyal core (I’ve made this point so many times, I’m not going to link–just scroll down). Just today, The Prospect had an excellent proposal for a television commercial about Social Security. Will the Democrats run it? Of course not. Before we get to issues of ideological coherency, we are faced with a much more basic problem: our politicians suck at politics. No doubt, they’re excellent at cold-calling strangers and asking them for money, but they lack any ability (and will) to cut through the media and connect with people.
What’s frustrating is that there are so many good ideas percolating up from the base, but I know they won’t be adopted. I have no idea what it will take for the Democratic leadership to pay attention to the loyal base (I was going to make a car bomb joke, but given today’s horrendous news from Iraq, I’ll refrain). The only strategy that I can see that might work is to come up with a list of five to ten items, and force Democratic candidates to endorse them, otherwise they get no support–we could even go nuclear and endorse the Republican opponent to make our point.
The Republicans are just better at politics right now, which is really frustrating given that we clobber them on most issues.
