I found it very useful. Thanks for the knowledge. I am personally trying to follow the advice & try to be independent.

far too many smart passionate and civil diarists have been banned by the most infantile minds on the net.if you think markos is going to pull in democrats as he insults women, progressives, and dead contractors all with the most smug self-satisfied grin while condemning the greens for taking repub funds as armando shills for wal-mart, well, you’re wrong. check out markos glib reply to jules siegel. like a gnat hitting a brick DK is driving people away except for the converted. and their 20 votes don’t mean jack.

In my belief system, [which you are free to disagree with] your Dad being at death’s door and passing over is, yes, a grievous matter, but it also means that his inner consciousness is expanding in a way that showers the world he’s leaving with the love and truth he’s held in his heart.

My saying is, “Death breaks our hearts open”.

God Bless you, your Mom and your Dad and the rest of your family.

I will concede a personal element in my thinking right now. My father’s about to die from brain cancer – yesterday he lost the ability to swallow, and since he and Mom are both strongly opposed to heroic life support measures in terminal cases, and hav etheir living wills and powers of attorney in order, it’s just a matter of time now. Hours? Days? As long as his body’s reserves and his heart hold out, I guess.

Anyway, Dad flew a P-38 in World War II, and I’ve been going through his photos and memorabilia, scanning interesting items to put online. Looking at the official training material and reflecting on our conversations over the years about what his wartime experience meant to him, how he sees patriotism, and so on keeps making my personal grief and my despair and rage at current politics mingle together. I so much wish that he were leaving this world at a time when his beloved country (and mine; I haven’t given up my form of patriotism) were less of a waking nightmare.

This certainly is an emotional in additional to an analytical response. I appreciate the demands of strategy. It’s just that in addition to all the stuff I’ve written before, I wish that Dad and the others of his generation could see hope rather than trategy as they leave us. I would like their last experience of America to have been a better one.

And with that, I’m written out. Off to do what I can to support Mom.

You’re still thinking short term. You’ve got to think past the next election. Our IMMEDIATE CRISIS is the Bush administration, and we must take power away from them [big red flashing letters]NOW NOW NOW[/big red flashing letters] any way we can, with whatever tools we have, however flawed they are.

Although we’re making an exception, an example, if you will, of Joe Lieberman. And if we succeed in dumping him, then we’ll look at the rest of the Senate, and say, “next?”

As we netroots activists get stronger and more experienced at working together, we’ll be in a better position to challenge and pick off those Dems that really piss us off. Diane Feinstein and Joe Biden are on a lot of hit lists right now, for example.

I just came back from a progressive gathering in New York City, and we spent more time talking about what’s wrong with Democrats than about George W. Bush, believe it or not. I’m really not naive or stupid. I see the problems you do, and possible some more.

But it’s beyond shortsighted to whine about how we have to let Bush steamroll over the nation because the Dems aren’t as good as we wish they were.

BTW, Kevin Wohlmut is banned from commenting on this blog further.

I wrote earlier (comment 26), and I will try not to repeat what I said other than to provide continuity.

This is the shortest article I have managed to date on my idea to for a Constitutional Amendment to reform funding elections:

http://nextamericanrevolution.org/2006/06/18/bringing-democracy-to-north-america-2.aspx

The idea of election reform as extreme as I advocate will draw fire from Big Business, The Republican Party, The Democratic Party, the NRA, Greeenpeace, Trial Lawyers, etc, etc, Maybe the Girl Scouts won’t be pissed off.

For continuity, I favor a Constitutional Amendment (CA) which would make individual Americans (and PACS supported solely by individual Americans) the only source of campaign funds. The CA would require supporting legislation with penalties for infractions.

You mentioned in your reply that you like the idea of publicly funded elections. It’s an idea with considerable merit. It’s also as exciting as a kiss from your aunt.Significant reform will require a grassroots movement capable of tipping elections; it has to energize voters in both parties. If the support for the idea is there I would include it as a legal 3rd source of funding in the CA.

First, I will argue the case for a CA because it’s obvious to me: No ‘real’ legislation advocating campaign contribution limits will endure without a CA protecting that legislation. After an Amendment is passed, any new legislation which modifies what’s allowed is DOA if it’s in violation of the Constitution. It’s worthless to back Congress into a corner and pass public funding for elections if after that, year by year, little by little, they allow special interests back in the game. And Congress would.

A Constitutional Amendment could be forced by a bipartisan coalition of voters. Hopefully no one will be shocked, but I have Republicans in my family; and some of my best friends are Republicans. They are not all evil people and levity aside, many are as just as frustrated as most Democrats. It’s sinking in that the failures of a Republican government to address their needs isn’t the Democrats fault. It’s sinking in that the 2-party system has been used to divide and conquer, with big business paying off whoever is in power & cashing in. It’s sinking if for Democrats that a lot of their folks are not behaving as they should and if you just look to see who has dropped 100K in the re-election piggy bank you see why.

A bipartisan MINORTITY of voters could turn the whole thing around; we just have to agree to quit being played as suckers fighting each other over hot-button issues like flag-burning and abortion, and gun control and school prayer and gay marriage. I feel strongly about all those issues, but arguments on these topics are like debating the color scheme of the smokestacks of the Titanic – after she struck the berg.

Meanwhile we are getting screwed by low wages, high gas prices, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance, special tax exemptions for the rich, no health care for the poor, global warming protected by government, social security going broke, education going to the dogs. These are driving a stake thru the heart of this country.

My opinion: if we fail to address these issues soon, we will cease to exist as a nation – in my lifetime. We will not address these issues as long as special interests control government.

It’s not a Democratic Issue or a Republican Issue; it’s an American Issue; the existence of our country is at stake.

Now if things change between now and elections, I’ll gladly, gratefully acknowledge it. But for the moment I’m stuck: the Democratic Party has opportunities it’s not taking, and I don’t see that giving them any more support will motivate them to change.

As for thinking too small…it’s possible I am. The truth is that my best rational apppraisal is that it’s too late to resort civil government through civil means in the US. I don’t believe that the Bush/Cheney administration will allow a meaningful challenge to its power to emerge. I think it quite possible that a crisis will be exploited or manufactured to justify suspending elections, and that if elections do happen, they’ll be stolen from here to hell and gone. I don’t think the Democrats have any chance at all of shifting things within the system, because the system is in the hands of people prepared to do what it takes to keep themselves and their allies in power. We haven’t had a valid election on the national level since 2000 and we won’t be getting one now, or in 2006.

Now, I could be wrong. I’d like to be, frankly. I’m involved in political outreach and campaigning in the hopes that I am, so that if there’s room for real democracy left in the US, its opportunity won’t be wasted because I failed to do my part. But I feel like Orwell in his assessment of the prospects for liberal order in the face of totalitarianism – this is about remaining true to my sense of what civil human beings ought to do rather than hoping for it to mean anything.

It is, in any event, in this context that I approach the Democratic Party. When I say “collaborate” in referring to Democratic leadership and most of the elected rank and file, I mean it with the full weight that I’d use in speaking of collaborators with the Nazis or Communists. I put the Bush/Cheney administration on that moral level. I don’t see how someone looking at their record can do otherwise – the differences between America now and the depths of the Great Leap Forward or dekulakization are differences only of length of time in power.

And given that, being only a little toadying just isn’t good enough. Being willing to say “this is simply wrong, and we’re not going along with it, and even though we’re in the minority, we will never help it get worse and will speak the truth about everything they lie about”, that would be good enough.

Third parties will never be viable in America until we institute instand runoff elections and do away with the electoral college. 180 years of history have proved this.

RE: the complaint that Dems are not sufficiently speaking out as a minority party….and the statement that 42% of Dems voted for the war [I assume the commenter is referring to the 2002 vote about Iraq] need to be seen within a time-frame context [which is, thank God, beginning to change]: we really did go through a sort of national hysteria over 9/11/01 AND the Rove-driven media machine did play politics with that national shock and made sure to quickly and ruthlessly attack anyone not in lockstep with Bush’s ‘leadership’ decisions. Hey, that particular time frame of Dems not speaking out and/or voting with Bush should not be held over all Dems heads today. Some problems cure themselves.

The points made about 1] the need to change the funding of elections and 2]reform of the media are right on. Both are so critical to the long range goal of re-instituting real democracy. By now, these two problems are systematically entrenched in our collective reality, and much else that we lament flows from these two.
I suggest we grass-rooters pick one of the two and put all our efforts into it, for however many years it might take. I’d start with election funding. When so much has gone awry, we must make a singular resolve to change the system at one critical point. We could ask that candidates pledge themselves on our one issue……then we could follow through and hold them to their pledges.

I often think in analogies. The analogy I am thinking of here is the one about parents failing to discipline their kids until the kids no longer even listen. The very best cure for that problem is for the parents to take only one issue and lay down the law, so to speak, and never fail to follow through on that one issue. The kids will fight that one rule like crazy, because they’re so used to getting away with things. The one change [at a time] saves the parents from going crazy, because the parents really need to discipline themselves in order to begin to change ‘who’s boss’ in the household.
Aren’t we citizens supposed to be the ultimate authority in a democracy?

No, no, no. Neither one. I’m saying that the problems with both parties are merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. The bigger problems is systemic and cultural and has been growing for some time. That problem is that the political culture of the United States is so sick and poisoned that we can no longer have public discussions of issues or even get straight information out of news media. And the voting public has been so focus-grouped and market-niched, and has been so saturated with false memes and mythos, that voters are either tuning out of politics or getting sucked into the sick political culture and can’t see what’s going on..

What most effectively motivates people to change when they’ve been (from your point of view) foolish and/or wicked? And what leverage do you have when they’re between you and people who are even worse?

You’re still thinking too small, as if all I’m proposing is reforming the Democrats. But that’s just a band-aid.

We have a tool now that we’ve never had before, and that’s the web, and we are finding new ways to organize and apply pressure and smack heads in Washington. We’re still figuring out how to do this, but it shows great promise. I think in the next few years we might see the eclipse of mass media election campaigns, and the possibilities that will open up are wondrous and mind-boggling and revoutionary. But we need to lay a groundwork now for what can happen in the future.

In the short term, it’s absolutely insane to NOT want to take any power we can from Republicans any way we can, and the only tool at our disposal is the Dems. It is beyond belief that otherwise intelligent people can’t see how critical it is that we accomplish this in November, and all the whining that the Dems are bad, too, wah, wah, wah, just makes me want to puke. I’m sorry, but grow up. People are flawed. Politicians are stupid and corrupt. Deal with it.

But as I said, this is just a band aid. It’s not the cure. It will help make the cure possible, however,

Political history does not provide many examples of wimps and followers become wise and brave when they come out on top.

You are still thinking short-term. Too small, too limited. You aren’t seeing the big picture. In as much as the crew we have now will mostly be the crew we have next year, no, there won’t be much of a change. Nobody expects there to be much of a change that quickly. That is not the point. This is just one little nudge of a hundred thousand other nudges that have to be nudged before the political culture is sufficiently changed so that we can elect people we have more confidence in. As long as the political culture remains poisoned, we just have to work with what we have.

But we have to work on both ends at the same time. Without working through the Dems, and through elections, we can’t get to a place where we can effect real change in the Dems and in elections. But once we can effect change in elections and the political culture, reforming the Dems will be much easier, because we’ll be retiring the old crew and getting a better crew.

So, the November elections are critical to any FUTURE success we might have, even though the November elections by themseves won’t do squat.

Can’t you see that? Am I crazy? I feel as if I’m just repeating the same things over and over again and nobody is getting it, because you’re thinking too small.