A letter to liberals
the opposition
Dear liberal,
It's time you put your ass where your mouth and money is. Stop the whining. You want to preserve abortion rights, defend them. Don't whine about Bush and his future judges.
You like your values, well you better defend them, and I mean for real, every day, in your lives. The free ride is over. I'm tired of the bitching and moaning. Time to do. It is simply time to do.
All you stolen election people: please, please shut the fuck up and listen.
Sending bloggers hate mail because we're not plugging the modern day conspiracy, makes you an asshole.
Let me explain how I feel about this: I don't trust or like how Diebold was implimented. I don't like the lack of paper trails. I strongly dislike Diebold's lack of accountability. But to make your case, you need hard proof. Indictable proof. If you accuse the GOP of stealing the election, you have to have more than suspicion. Just because Bev Harris says it happened doesn't mean it did. It would really help if she was a computer scientist or statistician. And if we're all waiting before making serious charges it's not because we sold out. It's because we're not idiots. It's one thing to be wrong about a Kerry landslide. Tucker Carlson and I can have a laugh over that one day. But to steal an election like this is basically treason. And you need a really sturdy standard of proof before you scream traitor.
If there is proof, you need to get to a prosecutor. Not just because you think something happened. You have to prove it. No one is hiding it, no one is covering up on the blogs. We would just like some hard proof before we say something.
Personally, I'm tired of handing our opposition tools to beat us over the head with. Being wrong about this is one.
Like the people who think Kerry was gutless in conceding. Come on, the man did nothing but run for president for two years and believed until the early morning that he won. He would have rather given up a kidney first than concede. Unless you've been in that losing room, you have no idea how painful it is and how much fun the winning room is. No one wants to be in the losing room. No one. Give the man some credit.
But here's the deal: we are on the cusp of something really good. Really positive. Losing sucks, but in defeat the seeds of victory are planted. We have the ability to organize and raise money and communicate. And we aren't just talking to ourselves. We're not the old left or the new left. We're different and we've learned. We know where we have to go and what we have to do. No more cliques.
To the people who didn't think Kerry wasn't exciting enough: grow the fuck up. If you can't get him elected, how do you think Dean will be president? It's not about your personal litmus test for liberalism. The days of interest politics as fashion are over. We need results. You cannot build the America you want by whining. Only by working, and working hard. It's hard work people.
When I hear people talk about boycotting red states, I'm saddened because I don't want to cede that ground to them. I want to fight them everywhere. I want them to have to defend every race, in every district. I don't want them to think there is anywhere safe. We also have to stop supporting Republican moderates. We need to run against them and run hard. We need to make them fear for their jobs. There is nothing a Republican moderate can do that a Dem can't do better.
I wouldn't worry too much about the people who bought Bush's lies. The ones who want to will come around. Someone posted a story about a 20-something Bush voter who was glad her husband was too old to be drafted. When asked, she said he was 25. When told she was wrong, she turned white as a ghost and stammered...."I thought they only drafted up to 23". Well, missy, no. They can draft up to 36, but they usually stop at 26. The skills draft could go up to 34.
Or when the college Republican goes down to the local Walgreens and asks for her birth control pills only to be told that the pharmacist refuses to fill the prescription because she's opposed to birth control.
The question you need to ask is this: what do we offer them when they wake up? What do we tell them? Who do we offer for them to vote for. We need to pick the fights closest to home and be credible. We should go after the liberterians and fiscal conservatives and tell them the GOP is leaving them. The Vets, who are being betrayed by them. We need to welcome these people and explain what the GOP is really turning into.
We need to oppose them, not just in Washington, but at City Hall and the school board. We end the free ride we gave them. We oppose them at every turn.
It's like Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. said on Utah Beach "well, we might as start the war from right here, the supplies will have to catch up to us no matter where we are."
We need to start the fight close to home. In our lives and in our local politics. We can't just focus on federal offices. State and local matter more, right now. Every race we win, the more we learn, the better we get. And we need to start now. Today. Who is that school board candidate who needs your help. Where is that councilman who has progressive ideas? We need to start from where ever we are and work from there. Idealism is our enemy, reality and practicality are our friends. No race is too small to learn from, no office too unimportant to win. We need to use what we learned this year and take it home, then take those lessons and use them in 2006.
This will be neither easy nor quick. It will take work and effort and some disappointment. But every time we act, we learn and we help make the America we want. And that is the goal we're striving for. Not just winning one election for one man.
posted by Steve @ 12:00:00 AM
