Saturday, May 07, 2005

 

A Battle We Really Did Win

We just won a big battle, people. Microsoft just reversed itself again, and resumed its backing of Washington state's gay-rights anti-discrimination bill. A reminder: This bill comes up before the Washington State Legislature every year. And has been killed every year. But this year, it came within a vote of passing -- the best the bill has ever done. And that was without Gates backing it. Next year, with Gates backing it again, it WILL pass. And you know why? Because John Aravosis, instead of just sitting around and getting drunk and moaning theatrically about how we are all DOOOOOOMED, actually put his histrionics to good use. Because of John Aravosis, a bill that was a perennial loser is now assured of passage next year. Perhaps this is because Aravosis, as a former Republican, doesn't seem to have the innate distrust of the democratic process that lots of lefties have. The far right sees elections as tools to be manipulated; the far left sees democracy and capitalism as corrupt things that will and should wither away, clearing the way for Communism, if you refuse to participate in them. (Why else do you think that slogans like "Don't vote, it only encourages them" have been popular among college-campus lefties for decades? This sort of attitude brings smiles to the faces of Republicans, who adore anything that depresses voter turnout among lefties.) When things don't break a Republican's way, does he/she sit around whining about it? No. He/she tries to do something about it. Look at 1964. The Republicans and Goldwater went down in flames in an asskicking exceeded only by that administered by FDR and the Democrats in the 1936 elections. Did they sit around and piss and moan? Did a third of them say "to hell with this, I'm forming a third party"? Did a third of them decide to quit activism altogether and just moan from the sidelines? No. Instead, they committed themselves to stay together and work to change the situation, knowing that it was going to take a long time. By their own diseased lights, they were given a boon in the form of LBJ's pushing for both civil rights and the Vietnam War. But they still had to work to take over the media; that was accomplished in the late 1970s. With the media in hand, things went more smoothly for them. Now, we can reverse this, but only if we commit ourselves to our good goals the same way that they did to their evil ones. DFA and the Meetups are a good start. So are getting AirAmerica and Democracy Radio off the ground, which are grabbing a segment of the radio audience that Pacifica can't reach. We haven't been fighting back effectively for very long, and we're already doing better than I thought we would.


Comments:
All right, I figured out your a Democrat. I'll give your party a little advise. Take it and you'll win the next election in a landslide. Ignore it and you'll lose another close one.

1) Make controlling immigration your #1 issue. Everything else is secondary,
2) Have a plan to fix the economy,
3) For once and for all, drop guns as an issue. Gore got trounced by guns and so did Kerry. Even Clinton himself three times told Kerry to shut up about guns. The Democratic party needs to figure out that your anti-gun stance is suicidal. We don't need more gun laws, we need less.
4) Have a real plan to save social security.

That's it. You follow my advise, you will win. If your candidate mentions guns once, he's lost. Oh, by the way, you made a terrible mistake picking Kerry over Dean. I'm seeing someone in your party has finally figured that out.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

More blogs about politics.
Technorati Blog Finder