Friday, November 05, 2004

Issues that Win, Issues that Lost

This pretty much sums it up.
Look kids - it's over. The New Deal is done. People don't want it anymore. They don't want it because they're ignorant (ignorant, as in, they don't realize what it does, and what the world was/will be like without), but they still don't want it. We need to realize this - the people that we purport to be fighting for with our (i.e., progressive with regard to economic justice) agenda DON'T WANT OUR HELP. They don't want health care, or well-paying union jobs, or environmental protection. In essence - a lot of people are pretty OK with being poor, ignorant and miserable, or at least vote that way.
It's sad, but it is. We obviously can't take the privatization of Social Security lying down, but it's my hunch that the GOP will be able to pummel the media into believing that it's a good idea to return to an American where old people die poor and alone.
Look - we lost. We lost on guns, and, smartly, Dems have stopped talking about them.
And now, pretty much, we've lost the New Deal. It took us 70 years, nearly, but it's done. We can still fight for economic justice, expanding health care and the like, but need to find ways to make it matter to people today, and stop trying to appeal to their dead great-granparents.

1 comment:

aaron said...

I think we have to find a way to talk about greatest generation vis a vis social security....new deal stuff.

Not as the centerpiece, but just because it's a powerful image--and goes to the idea of responsibility, veterans. Plus old people are clustered everywhere...but largely in Florida, and Arizona. And I wouldn't mind making John Kyl's life harder for this next Senate election.