buhdy says there is no key, but I might have picked it up on a side street! I’m not sure if it’ll fit in the lock, but it just might. So I would like your help and your feedback, if you can spare a few minutes to read this today.
Last night, in a fit of SheKos mania (wherein I examined all the diaries I had missed), I rejoined Dkos. It really sucks to have to un-GBCW. 🙂
But you guys have taught me a ton of shit in the sad little 5 days that I was away. The wool is no longer pulled over my eyes. And I have been hashing it out all morning on the GOS with Obama supporters who keep using extremist language and, in effect, putting words in my mouth.
And then it kind of hit me, like a ton of bricks: THEY TOTALLY NEED US! We don’t fucking need them. I mean, the country is in the shitter as it is – seriously, how much worse can it get? Not much. Come reelection time, some of us Dharma Bums will vote for President Obama again, some of us will stay home, and some of us will go indie/3rd party. And if they want the prez to get reelected, they’re going to need to learn how to kiss our collective ass.
WE’RE the ones in power. HA HA! SCORE!
I would rather get this knock-down, drag-out within the leftist blogosphere over with quickly, because the sooner we do this, the more time we’ll have for coalition building later. And we’re going to freaking need it. My gut feeling is that this is going to be much, much worse than Clinton vs. Obama. This goes much deeper than that did, and I know that most of us here feel it.
So they’re gonna have to figure out a way to talk to Obama’s critics without resorting to name-calling, threats, condescension, sarcasm, and fear. They’re going to have to appeal to us the way we NEED to be appealed to; Obama’s reelection campaign manager is going to pound that point home to his volunteers, over and over and over again. I used to be involved in HR. One of the first things my mentor told me is, “When someone comes into your office and they’re very upset, meet them at their level. They want to feel that they’re being heard because, if they don’t, nothing else you say is going to matter.”
Before I go off all willy-nilly again and post a diary that’s going to garner a lot of eyes and a lot of flaming rhetoric, what do you think would be the best way to break this news to ’em? Off-the-cuff, the way I usually do? In conjunction with other bloggers, as sort of a group-wide effort? Emotionally? Logically? Any and all help you can give me would be great.
Please leave suggestions/tips/ideas in the comments. Thanks!
140 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
Please don’t kill my hope.
you crazy drama queen you!!!!! lol
pssst, buhdy didnt say he lost the key. he said that there is no key.
ie the Facts, as you understand them to be.
let them stand as they may.
Use emotion, for effect,
to make your points stick.
To give them Bumper Sticker slogans
that remind them of whatever self-deception,
they may be hanging onto.
What are Progressive Values?
Speak at the level of the “average worker”,
the “concerned citizen”. The recovering GWOT refugee.
afterall we should all have that in common,
if we don’t, what’s the use?
there needs to be a “common language” of “common needs” —
we can get most of that from the “rhetoric” of the Obama Campaign, LOL!
you know, kind of re-ignite, the Dream.
you are right CitS — they need us.
However, do we need them?
Or simply a Better form of Representative Govt, and Fact-based Media,
that actually works for the People, For Real Change?
To Take Our Country Back. Movement Politics, Real Reform, More Progressives in Office.
my 2 cents. fwiw
I had an interesting conversation on dkos today with Faye Armitage. If you don’t know Faye, she’s one hell of a woman. She ran against John Mica in 2008 for the FL-07 house seat. She lost in a rough district.
Have a read about where she’s at right now. And this is one of our candidates.
your animus towards the place.
You told me once that you feel that many of the so called Obama-bots play their hands better.
I wonder what recommendations you could give, for me if not us to play our hands better and appeal to more people.
Because hell, I know I ain’t perfect and others aren’t either.
Although I think buhdy, MOT and others are pretty good at it.
Considering McCain got nearly half of the votes, there doesn’t appear to be a very big margin of error. In that respect, yes, they need us. But they want us to compromise our ideals. Tough duty for us grizzled antiwar, anti-establishment types. It is just not going to happen for a large segment of us. They can ignore or denigrate our idealistic ways all they want but it won’t change them. So yes, if they want to win again, which is their MAIN goal as pragmatic progressives, they had better find a way to put up with the fringe. They can’t have it both ways, telling us to toe the line so the democrats can retain control while telling us to leave because we’re ruining our chances.
And I can’t remember my other thot!
buhdy is sparinng with a Republican troll
because we are more likely to vote for Democrats than the Republicans are.
You’d think they’d have noticed that by now.
I found posting a GBCW very helpful for finding out what people thought of me. A few trolls came out of the woodwork, and a few people I didn’t realize even gave a damn were rather upset.
However, it’s considered bad form to do it over and over again. fwiw.
I just don’t think that’s so. They throw us under a bus, repeatedly, because they take us utterly for granted. To them, we’re like (if I can steal a line from June Jordan) the third beer. You can have it even though there’s no reason for it. And they have about that much enthusiasm for us as that. We’re not the ones they’re trying to influence. Never were, never will be. They want the independents, the undecideds, the center, the right of center. They know that they are as far left an option as we’re ever going to get. And they don’t give a hoot whether we vote or not for them.
Sorry to rain on your reconciliation with Naranja. I still think Naranja has jumped the shark, is utterly irrelevant, and that you’re running back there to watch it hit the next oncoming iceberg.
The so called Democrats today would have been totally unrecognizeable back then. The focus was always on the well being of the people at large, how to improve their lives, how to get things done. Compromise wasn’t part of the vocabulary. Sure, there were remnants of the old south, but they were being purged. Optimism was strong.
We had not really entered deeply into Vietnam yet.
The war broke the country apart, but our opposition bound us (any many newcomers) together even more.
If Obama and his supporters want to vanish into this air, ignore the needs of the people and continue the war.
And it probably will, sorry to say.
I don’t think too many of ’em are aware of it, though, and if they’re aware of it, they’re not dealing with it…yet, at any rate.
Here’s what one said to me yesterday:
To which I replied: