Some folks claim that all the Dems need is a Rove like creature...Yet, I don't know if we want a criminal like him running the main opposition party...I love how the Mainstream Media talks about "defeat"...They failed to do their homework and understand that we didn't really have a normal democratic election in November 2004...We actually had massive fraud, voter intimidation, brutal diversionary SmearVet tactics and a selection compliments of Diebold & Co. -- All roads lead back to Rove (Mr. Ends Always Justify The Means)...fyi...
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Philadelphia Inquirer
June 5, 2005, Sunday
SECTION: NATIONAL POLITICAL NEWS
HEADLINE: 1 party in search of a guru: Democrats seeking Rove-like strategist
BYLINE: By Dick Polman
WASHINGTON -- The clout-challenged Democrats yearn to close the guru gap.
The dominant Republicans already have a guru - Karl Rove, who has guided George W. Bush since his Texas days, and now charts the GOP's fortunes. So it's no wonder that the Democrats seek one of their own, a font of wisdom who can divine what is wrong and point the way forward.
It is an urgent desire, because the Democrats are facing more tough elections in 2006. They'd love to seize control of the Senate, but their hopes are bleak unless they win Senate races in at least six of the states that voted for Bush in 2004. And that won't happen unless they can somehow connect with voters who view Democrats as out of touch with traditional values.
The problem is, Democrats still aren't sure how to connect. As party pollster Stan Greenberg said here the other day, "They don't know their policy direction, they don't know their underlying values, they don't know who they fight for."
Which explains why many party activists are heavily into brainstorming and guru-hunting.
But new people and new ideas are in the pipeline. Right now, the nominees for Democratic guru include:
George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, and best-selling author of "Don't Think of an Elephant!", who says Democrats can outfight the GOP on "values" by "reframing" the debate with better language.
Thomas Frank, commentator and author of a hot book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", who says Democrats can trump Republicans on "values" by changing the subject and bashing the GOP's corporate pals.
Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian preacher and author of a hot book, "God's Politics," who says Democrats can beat the GOP on "values" by linking Democratic principles to Bible passages, and by moving the party rightward on abortion.
All three guys were feted like rock stars last week, at a confab sponsored by a prominent liberal group called Campaign for America's Future. And it's not just grass-roots activists who are juiced. Top Democratic politicians have been seeking their wisdom; party chairman Howard Dean, in recent public remarks, has been channeling Wallis and Lakoff. Dean even thinks that Lakoff "will be one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement when the history of this century is written."
Yet, within Democratic circles, Lakoff has many critics. So do the others. This is no surprise, because not even prospective gurus can easily unite a party with an identity crisis.
Defeat has taken its toll. Democrats hold only six of 28 Senate seats in the South, arguably the region where "values" matter most. John Kerry last year won only 40 percent of married parents nationwide; most tellingly, he beat Bush by only 1 percentage point among voters earning between $30,000 and $50,000 _ a blue-collar bracket that was once a Democratic bedrock. For many, "values" trumped material interests.
That's all grist for Lakoff, who, with his balding pate and kindly voice, comes off as a guru. He said Thursday that Democrats persist in believing they will win if voters are merely given the facts (about Bush, and the issues). That must stop, he said: "We who still believe in the rational tradition are screwing up. ... You have to frame things in a way that people will FEEL them. As conservatives have shown, if you repeat something often enough, it becomes part of your brain and you don't need facts."
He said Democrats need language that resonates with American tradition. Frame the Senate filibuster as an attempt to preserve "the two-party tradition." Frame Social Security as a testament to "fairness" and "the common good." Frame gay marriage as an exemplar of "human dignity." And frame abortion by dropping the word "abortion. He explained, "The word 'abortion' plays to the GOP's frame. "'Abort' implies 'things going terribly wrong,' and you don't want to be for something that's going terribly wrong. We should reparse the situation." He suggested "ending unwanted pregnancies."
Lakoff is basically urging Democrats to stay on the left and cede no ground. But some activists are wary. Victoria Ford, a Minnesotan, said, "What if we keep standing up for what we believe and most people still don't agree with us? What if we talk the way George says and that just keeps the conservatives energized against us?"
One temptation is to simply dump the values debate. That's what Thomas Frank suggests.
Frank credits Republicans with persuading several generations of blue-collar Americans to vote against their economic interests by aligning with the pro-corporate GOP, and buying the GOP line that the Democrats are amoral elitists. He said Thursday: "So, how do you counter that? On bad days, I don't think it can be beaten at all. ... Because it has become an indelible feature of the entertainment culture that we're in."
He thinks the only way to woo back the working class is to find a theme that will trump values. He thinks Democrats can do this by returning to their roots, by standing up for the little guy against powerful corporations that are driving down wages and shipping jobs overseas. Those firms, he said, are the real threats to family values; indeed, "economics can be the most meaningful subject of all; it touches everybody's lives."
The problem with Frank's idea, however, is that it clashes with the influential corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Frank knows this. He said the party's Washington establishment "is determined to never let old-school economic progressivism back in the door. Because it'll cost them some campaign contributions" from fat-cat donors.
Wallis, meanwhile, has plenty of advice. He wants Democrats to confront the GOP on moral values, by broadening the definition, and talking openly about the party's "spiritual foundations."
The preacher said in a Friday speech that "fighting poverty is a moral issue," because "I find 3,000 verses in the Bible about poor people." He said "protecting the environment, otherwise known as God's creation, is a moral issue." He said that "whether you tell the truth about going to war is a moral issue," because John 8:32 decrees that "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Rebuking the Democrats' secular image, he said that "the biggest mistake progressives have made over the past several decades is to cede the entire territory of moral values to the political right. ... I don't think Jesus' top two priorities were a capital-gains tax cut and the occupation of Iraq." Indeed, it's probably no accident that in recent weeks, Dean, Kerry and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida have all quoted the Bible.
But the problem _ beyond the fact that his critics see no point in vying with Republicans in what one activist calls "a cultural game of holier than thou" _ is that Wallis wants the party to move rightward on abortion. He thinks the party should dump "liberal political correctness" and the language of "choice." He thinks Democrats should promise to reduce the abortion rate. This stuff is all in his book _ and he mentioned none of it in his speech. There were many abortion-rights activists in the hall, and that is a very sensitive topic.
Auditioning gurus is easy; finding the right one is harder. For Democrats, who are disputatious by nature and ideologically diverse, there will be no straight path to the promised land.
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