It's time

[dampscribbler]

It's time to abolish voter registration by party.

It's time for a viable alternative to the electoral college.

It's time for "Liberal" to stop being a bad word.

It's time that candidates of any party stopped being ashamed of their intelligence, their education, their experience.

It's time Democratic candidates stood up for something besides "I'm not that guy."

It's time for real campaign reform.

It's time for liberals to get as active as conservatives. In schools, churches, communities, and, yeah, even workplaces.

It's time to put an end to divisive media. (As Jon Stewart told Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire" last month -- "You're hurting America. Stop hurting America. You're part of their strategy -- your partisan attacks.")

Calling yesterday a failure of the democratic process is the easy way out. NOTHING is going to be easy in the coming years. Buck up.

Yeah, you can have today to mourn and whine and complain. But tomorrow, dammit, we all have to roll out of bed and cobble together the pieces of our dashed hopes and forge something new. Because 40 million other Americans are feeling just as crappy as you are right now. And if all of us give up, then everybody loses.

We've got work to do.

Comments

"It's time to abolish voter registration by party" -- why?

[qnetter]

I'm inclined to believe exactly the opposite: it's time to pull back from the nonsense of open primaries, time to require party declaration. Only by building platforms and running as unified parties will real choice be brought back to the two-party (now one-mob) system.

Re: "It's time to abolish voter registration by party" -- why?

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

I've never voted in an open primary, so I guess I feel like they deserve more of a chance.

That statement, though, was inspired by several things I've read in the past few weeks about voters of one particular party seeming to experience discrimination, possibly based on their party affiliation. One particular incident locally involved a man who was paid by the Republican party "to register Republicans." He threw away the registration forms of anyone who checked the Democrat (or Independent) box "because I don't get paid for those."

I'm pretty sick of the party system, myself, and would like to see candidates run on their own platforms for a while, rather than party platforms. The fact that in 2000 we had to choose between Bush and Gore (candidates backed by their parties even during the primaries) rather than McCain and Bradley still rankles with me. But maybe my answer isn't the best...I'm willing to consider other possibilties, as long as they offer a shot at better choices next time around.

Re: "It's time to abolish voter registration by party" -- why?

[qnetter]

As for the registration issue -- the process, not the check-box itself -- paid registration troops that are not oath-bound government employees should be forbidden, just as paid signature-collectors for initiative petitions should be forbidden.

If you want to change how a party behaves, you have to become active in them. Make them take a stand. Otherwise, the likely-voter myth takes over, and the drive to center-right accelerates.

I am a registered and active Democrat; that earns me the right to participate in the process of determining whose name appears on a ballot with a "(D)" next to it. It should not be possible for some unaffiliated or Republican walk-up to participate in that process.

Re: "It's time to abolish voter registration by party" -- why?

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

paid registration troops that are not oath-bound government employees should be forbidden, just as paid signature-collectors for initiative petitions should be forbidden.
Amen!

Re: becoming active in the party -- I'm just not so sure. It seems like many of the most active Democrats I know are left-of-center, yet they seem to be having little influence on the party at the national level. I'm disenchanted with parties altogether.

[chgriffen.livejournal.com]

For one, we need to stop letting Bush get away with denials and lies.

And then we need to split the West and Northeast off the mainland and form a new country.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

What do you suppose is allowing Bush to get away with his shenanigans? Unwavering support of his party? Yes. A population who prefers their heads in the sand? Maybe. What else? What and who do we need to address in order to wake people up?

[chgriffen.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew.

People see the world through what I call an explanatory framework. You could call it a paradigm, if you expand Thomas Kuhn's definition from science to all human knowledge (see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Whatever information comes to people is raw and cannot be understood unless it ties into their framework. That is why most things are interpreted differently by different people. Is keeping on fighting a sign of resolve or thickheadedness? Is barring gay people from marrying a strengthening or a violation of morality?

It's hard to get through an established framework. You really have to break it down completely and force them to rebuild it. And I don't think that's possible with most of those right wingers. They like their framework - it's simple, righteous, and rubber stamped by their churches.