Bluebelle

NOOOOO!!! SOMEONE STOP HIM!!!

Just as Obama starts to gain some ground, Dems are going to shoot themselves in the foot (as always, it seems).

Why don't Dems get it? Terry McAuliffe is BAD LUCK. He's a penny on the ground tails-up. He's an umbrella that accidentally discharged indoors. He's a broken mirror. Hiring him is like stepping on a crack no matter where you put your feet -- it's just not going to work out well for you, no matter what.

GET HIM AWAY FROM THIS CAMPAIGN.

(If I hear that Bob Shrum has anything to do with the Obama campaign, I will officially begin preparing for the apocalypse.)

Flippity floppity fleeeee . . . .

(DISCLAIMER: I didn't write it, and I don't know who the original author is, but this thing needs to go viral.)

Think about it . . . then pass it along.

If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates, you're a "token hire." If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates, you're a "game changer."

Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America.
White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

If you grow up in Hawaii, you're "exotic."
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."

If you name your kid Barack, you're "unpatriotic."
Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual, you're "reckless."
A Republican who doesn't fully vet their VP pick is a "maverick."

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.

If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you've got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people, you are an "arrogant celebrity".
If you are a popular Republican female candidate, you are "energizing the base".

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions, you are "presumptuous".
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a "shoot-from-the-hip maverick".

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree, you are "an elitist, out of touch" with the real America.
If you are a legacy graduate of Annapolis (dad and granddad were admirals) with multiple disciplinary infractions, you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an "empty suit".

If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an "experienced executive".

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist".
If you believe in creationism and don't believe global warming is man-made, you are "strongly principled".

If you cheated on your physically disabled wife with an heiress 18 years your junior, then left your wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman for 16 years, with whom you are raising two beautiful daughters, you're "risky".

If you're a black, pregnant single mother of four who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent who is endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you're a white, married mother of four who waits 22 hours with a high-risk pregnancy, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you "First dog."
If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."

If you kill an endangered species, you're an excellent hunter.
If you have an abortion, you're not a Christian, you're a murderer. (Forget about it if the pregnancy resulted from rape.)

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

And finally:

Quiz question for the RNC, specifically those on the Religious Right.

Who is one of the most revered and famous community organizers in history?

........................... JESUS CHRIST

Hey Democrats -- can we talk? (No really, sit down and shut up for a minute)

PULL YOURSELVES TOGETHER!

Seriously, stop all the self-defeating bellyachin' about our chances in November. We have 57 days left to make this happen. 57 DAYS. There is no time to waste.

We thought the 2004 election was dire (and it was), but it is nothing compared to this one. We need to elect Obama and Biden, PERIOD.

Can we do it? YES WE CAN, but we can't sit back and be complacent. We need to act NOW.

Here's the reality:

Our candidate is black. (Surprise!) Actually, he's bi-racial, which is even less desirable in some people's racists' opinions. This works against us (duh). There is a revoltingly ugly faction of our population that will not vote for a non-white candidate, no matter what.

In an election season where the stakes have never been higher (at least not in modern history), there has been an astonishingly high number of "undecided" voters. What no one wants to acknowledge is that a portion of those "undecideds" has been looking for an excuse -- any excuse -- to not vote for Obama because he's black. Period. All of those lame excuses we've heard -- "He's so exotic" or "I don't know, his middle name is Hussein" or "I heard he's Muslim" -- they all translate to: "I'm a xenophobic racist bigot".

Get real. They would never have voted for Obama anyway. Their lame excuses reveal morally repugnant prejudices, but we've gotta move on. There are plenty of people out there who can still be won over, and we have to focus on them.

The latest polls that are coming out in McCain's favor are partly due to a post-convention bump, and partly due to some racist "undecideds" moving over to McCain. Keep in mind that Sarah Palin wasn't picked to pick up disgruntled Hillary supporters as the McCain campaign claims -- no, she was selected to energize The Base: the lukewarm conservative evangelical Republicans who have only been half-heartedly supporting McCain until now.

Polls are showing that Palin is not attracting independents and moderates. She isn't winning over a substantial amount of voters to the McCain ticket. That was never the campaign's intention. She exists to solidify and rally the True Believers. This is the McCain campaign's desperate attempt to win the election -- follow the Rovian strategy of electrifying the religious fundamentalists, just like Bush did in 2000 and 2004.

Chances are good that it won't work this time. Registered Democrats now outnumber registered Republicans nationwide, and the independent voters who will decide this election likely will not flock to such an obviously conservative (read: conservative evangelical) ticket.

However, we can't take any chances.

Here's what YOU need to do:

1. Volunteer.

I don't care how you do it, but DO IT. Get out there. DO SOMETHING. The Obama campaign has about a bajillion different ways you can do something to win this election. Go to their website, sign up for a profile, and get immediately connected with the campaign office network in your area. Once you are logged in, you can access canvassing lists in your immediate neighborhood (door-to-door), and you can also get phone banking lists for voters in your area.

Neighborhood canvassing and phone banking are the two biggest difference-makers in campaigns. I recently read that for every 25 voters contacted by phone, 1 vote is gained, and 5 more are motivated to actually show up at the polls come Election Day. The gains are even higher for canvassing.

Why is this? Simple -- you establish a personal connection with a voter.

I know it's a foreign concept to many reading this blog (it's certainly something I can't comprehend), but there are WAAAAAY too many voters who aren't paying attention to this election. They don't seek out information on their own. If they happen to catch something on the news every now and then, that's all well and good (assuming it's not FOX), but they don't take initiative to learn about the issues.

So where do these so-called "low information voters" get their information? WORD OF MOUTH. That's where YOU come in.

2. Make your voice heard.

I know it sounds trite, but write letters. Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper, write letters to news magazines, write letters to your local news stations, write letters (OK, emails) to political websites. Write emails to cable news shows that read viewer comments on the air. Call radio shows, call TV shows, call whomever will listen. Post comments on blogs, even -- just do something. Speak up!

3. Donate.

Give till it hurts. Put your money where your mouth is. I don't care which cliche motivates you more -- just suck it up and donate something.

Even $5 makes a difference. Don't you have $5 that you can contribute to saving our democracy? Isn't this campaign worth giving up a latte or a lunch at McDonalds? Can you give more? How about $10? Or $20? Whatever it is that you can give, do it -- and do it again and again until Election Day. The campaign needs your donations to fund TV ads in swing states (like my dear home state of Ohio), to pay for the travel expenses incurred while campaigning, to pay for the campaign materials used in lit drops, etc. Unlike the McCain-Palin campaign, the Obama-Biden campaign does NOT accept money from PACs or lobbyists -- instead, it relies heavily on small contributions from LOTS of people. If you can afford it, don't let them down.

(It's almost 1am and I've got to get some sleep . . . I will write more tomorrow about this. TO BE CONTINUED . . . .)

Listen up -- George Lakoff speaks!

Progressives, liberals, Democrats -- lend me your (virtual) ear! If we wanna win this election, we gotta learn how to TALK about it!

From political linguist George Lakoff: Palin Appeals to Voter Emotions -- Dems Beware

An excerpt:

The Democratic responses [to Palin] so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind. [. . . .]

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. [. . . .]

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

Note: I love love love George Lakoff's ideas about political language and linguistics. His book "Don't Think of an Elephant" remains one of my favorites four years after I first read it. I'm currently reading his latest book, "The Political Mind". When I'm finished, I'll definitely write about it here.

So what if I'm a linguistics geek -- I don't care. Lakoff's ideas have the potential to shift the public perception of political parties. (Did you like that 'p' alliteration?) Democrats should take this guy's advice -- language is powerful, especially when its meaning is subconscious.