Ask yourself what do all these things have in common... Trade policies that ship millions of jobs overseas for multinational corporations who work with governments like China that have essentially created an economic system that is best described as modern day slavery. A fucked up tax system that has billionaires, the 400 richest people in America paying a smaller percent in federal taxes than millions of middle class Americans Deregulation across several sectors that allowed Wall Street to defraud millions in the middle class out of their money, blow up our economy, and on top of all of that allowed them to get rich doing it. Deregulation that recently created the largest environmental disaster in our countries history in the gulf. A lack of regulation that has allowed private for profit health insurance companies to murder thousands and bankrupt millions of Americans by rescinding their care when they needed it the most. And all of the above forming an equality crisis which allowed The Walton family (The owners of Walmart), a single family to gobble up more wealth than the bottom 40% of the United States population combined. The overwhelming majority of economic growth to go exclusively to the rich. And long list of facts on the collapse of the middle class are Here What do all these things have in common? A. They are the strongest campaign issues we have that all tie together and form a powerful narrative that’s in the mind of most progressive activists that the Republican Party is not merely another political party, but a corporate tool that's policies have systematically stolen the wealth of the middle class in our country and have radically restructured our economy from one that use to grow every Americans wages to one where the wages of the richest rocket, while everyone else’s actually fell and continue to fall. Yes, there is class warfare being waged in this country and it has been being waged against the majority of Americans by corporations, the wealthy and their Republican puppet voters for the last several decades. B. They largely have been sitting on the shelf, gathering dust. This tragic, powerful, populist narrative that should right now which should be kicking the utter living shit out of the Republican Party is being unused. Oh sure, this election year you will see Democrats in October say, Republicans are Crazy tea baggers who want to privatize Social Security and Medicare
Give more tax cuts to the rich
etc But that misses most of our most powerful points which are not about what they will do, but about what they already have done. To quote Robert Riech
The Democrats are reactive at best – notwithstanding the worst string of corporate outrages since the robber barons rampaged in the late nineteenth century. Consider what the public has witnessed over the last year -- the greed and wild recklessness of BP, Goldman-Sachs, Big Pharma, health insurers, and large profitable businesses that continue to lay off millions. Where are the political thought strategists that connect these dots and illuminate these stories and thereby shape a Democratic agenda for the future? Nowhere. As I said, we aren't doing nearly enough what we have, given all that’s happened and what’s even sadder is that the Republicans are arguably doing more than us with far less. I've seen it said in several articles this summer, this is a more or less a blame election (and I agree) and while conventional political wisdom suggests that should be bad for us, but given the fact that this narrative has been occurring for decades and delivered it's most devastating wake up blow to the middle class in the 2008 crisis I think conventional wisdom can be turned on it's head here. We like to think that people in the middle class that vote Republicans don't get it and people who only occasionally or never vote don't understand the stakes. And that’s true, but why? In a recent Gallup poll 71% of Americans said they thought the middle class was getting screwed. Now imagine if you asked the average voter why they are getting screwed
and then ask yourself that question. You'd probably get a lot of ummms and "the bankers control everything!" from some lifelong Republican tool who voted for the people who championed completely deregulating them and wants to gut the crappy financial reform bill we just passed. Whereas your response would probably revolve around a combination of the top list. Right now our narrative (which will hence for refer to as the details of reality) is confined to the blogosphere, documentaries and books. So how do you change that? How can a net roots movement spread the "details of reality" through the minds of Americans? That’s what I asked myself when I started thinking about this problem. We obviously can't depend on our political leaders most of whom are a bunch of pussies, scared to death of the thought of using populism. Our supporters however, the unions, the people who mostly fund our party actually believe we should fight for a middle class! (The audacity!) But how? ----------------------
Before I get to that I want to say, let’s not beat around the bush here, Novembers probably going to be ugly for us short of a game changer and the DNC right now sure as hell doesn’t have that. Attacking the Tea Party surely should be part of the strategy, but our main strategy really? Look at the shear amount of damage the Republican Party has done to our country in the last few decades that reached its boiling point in 2008 and our strategy mainly revolves around what the Teapublican party might do?! Their philosophy has been destroying this countries middle class for decades, that’s the lead what they did, not what they will do. What they will do is important as well, but it's a side piece compared to the wave of destruction they've already sent through our country.
-------------------- Back to the how... An ad campaign that pushes the details of reality. Ads like this one I made on deregulation. ^^ Video that was here at the top ^^ Or this one I wrote on our collapsing wages.
(Each number (C1, C2, etc) represents a different person in the ad)
In the ad their are young adults standing in front of a white background, (I'm sure you've seen an ad or two that does this) C1-I'm studying to be a pilot
C2-A biologist
C3-A illustrator
C1-To be in the middle class
C3-but my pay
C2-will never be as much as the previous generation
C1-in my field
C2-because over the last thirty years C1-The Republican Party deregulated
C2-Wall Street
C3-the oil industry
C1-Removed trade barriers with china
C2-rewrote the tax code
C3-redesigned our whole economy C1-And as a result the middle class makes much less than they did thirty years ago after inflation
C2-While the salaries of the top one percent have rocketed (show graph)
C3-Republican trickle down economics
C1-the rich won and everyone else lost --------------- Since I got this idea a several weeks ago I have wrote several of ads like the one above, ads I believe form a narrative that will have an impact on the elections. Be it a legislative fight or an election, every single time the Democratic Party fairs poorly with the electorate we all say the exact same dam thing "The Democrats didn't fight hard enough!" And while that’s true, I think you would all agree with me that it would be nice if for the first time in our lives, for the first time since FDR rallied progressive populism we would be able to wake up on November 3rd be it a good or bad night and say that we fought as hard as humanly possible. Whatever you think of this idea you don't need me to tell you the current Democratic establishment strategy won't allow you to say that (because lets be blunt here their plan is as usual weak shit), while I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that my strategy won't. But I'm just another person, you average poor guy, I don’t possess the resources or connections to pull this off alone, hence this post. What I do have though is an idea that I think could significantly brighten our odds for 2010 and possibly be a game changer not just for this election, but all the ones to follow. So if you see something here, if you believe I am onto something as I do and you know someone at the DNC, the Huffington Post, or know anyone anywhere who would like to see this tried and has the resources to do this. Link them to this now. The elections are growing near, but Octobers all that matters and strategies can be implemented fast, in the blink of an eye the GOP made the Ground Zero Mosque a campaign issue, and we can do the same with the details of reality In a matter of weeks we can create a barrage of ads that attack using our issues and if our populist fear pussy leaders won't get on board from the start, even they will start mimicking our messaging once they see it's working. And when they predictably say we are waging class warfare it won't matter (As it's incredibly easy to counter with....) Class Warfare Republican Clip - The democrats are waging class (class!) warfare!
C1- Really.. because when I think about class war
C2- I think about
C3- Republican Wall Street Deregulation that allowed predatory loans to destroy millions of families
C1- Republican Tax rates that had millions in the middle class paying more taxes than billionaires
C2- Republican trade policies that’s shipped millions of jobs to china
C3- and gave the corporations a tax cut to do it!
C1- Resulting in a collapse in middle class wages while the riches rocket through the roof.
(Graph here)
C3- There is class warfare in America
C2- and it has been waged against the middle class by Republicans for the last thirty years
C3- The Republican party of no middle class
C1- No future for you |
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