Dear Friends:
We’re supposed to be demoralized. Not going to vote. Not going to work for the Democrats’ agenda. It’s important that we be demoralized—for those who want to derail the slow, difficult progress we’re making toward a more equitable, inclusive, less predatory, society.
“The Democrats are”a discouraged and demoralizing bunch….what we’ve got right now, Sean, is shaping up as a real parallel to 1994 and what we call ‘ the elephant stamped.’” Bill Bennet to Sean Hannity on Fox News, March 1, 2010 (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587676,00.html) “The elephant stamped”: in other words, the Republicans crushed the opposition.
The Republicans are counting on Democratic demoralization to carry them back into power in November. That’s the same strategy Newt Gingrich used in 1994: make it impossible to govern and portray the Democrates as inept and ineffective. This is the strategy William Kristol advanced in his famous 1993 memo on how to defeat the Clinton’s health care plan and derail the Democrats (http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v2n1/kristol.html) That time it worked.
This time it doesn’t have to. Yes, the Republican propaganda machine (aka Fox News) spins out fear stories about Obama and the Democratic agenda that polarize our country. But we are making progress in many areas and there is much to fight for. The 2010 election has begun.
The key is to “take back the narrative”– to counter the lies and distortions being spun in order to cripple the possibility of reform. A very effective way to do it is at the local level, grass-roots level in our own communities. Here are two ways to go about it:
1. Write a letter to the Letters to the Editor section of your local paper. The Letters to the Editor page is the SECOND MOST WIDELY READ PAGE in the newspaper, according to political organizers. People want to know what’s going on among their neighbors and in the town they live in. What an effective way to get favorable perspectives on Democratic candidates out there! Many candidates will support your efforts to write letters. Here is one example, with some great tips about how to go about writing to your local newspaper: http://www.kusterforcongress.com/free_details.asp?id=16.
2. Go to or help organize a house party for a candidate and invite people you know.
This is a very effective way to humanize Democratic candidates and bring people together to hear them.
3. Adopt-a-candidate out of state. You may not have a local election, but you can find a candidate you support out of state and contribute to their campaign, either financially or by working for them long-distance. These days most Federal candidates have excellent websites with many opportunities to help long-distance.
The key is to get involved.
As conservative columnist Kathleen Parker said in a recent editorial on the need to speak out at the community level to discourage the violent extreme in our country: “When you choose to remain silent, consider yourself complicit in whatever transpires.” (Washington Post, 4/16/10)
Regardless of how you feel about specific aspects of the Democratic agenda, we hope you will agree that scaring voters and polarizing the country by demonizing people who disagree with you is harmful to our democratic process. A democracy, alas, is an easy thing to subvert: just act like only you and those you agree with know the truth and all the “others” are evil demons.
You don’t have to agree with all his policies to agree with what President Obama said just this weekend in his speech at the University of Michigan, ”What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad….When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.” He went on to caution, ”At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.” (New York Times, 5/1/10)
So, any of you who want to make your voice heard—in the 2010 local, Congressional and Senate elections: speak up, write to your local papers, support candidates!