{"id":4968,"date":"2005-08-14T09:12:19","date_gmt":"2005-08-14T13:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/63.247.129.141\/~sebenen1\/?p=4968"},"modified":"2005-08-14T09:12:19","modified_gmt":"2005-08-14T13:12:19","slug":"sunday-discussion-group-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sunday-discussion-group-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Discussion Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sure hope he doesn’t mind, but Kevin Drum posed<\/a> a terrific discussion-group topic this week, so I’ve decided to steal<\/strike> appropriate it for our Sunday gathering.<\/p>\n

The topic is nice and simple: why aren’t Dems winning more elections? What, exactly, is going wrong?<\/p>\n

Kevin narrowed it down to the 10 leading possibilities.<\/p>\n

1. Too socially liberal. Need to move to the center.
\n2. Too wishy washy. Need to be loud and proud liberals.
\n3. Too tin-eared. We’re terrific on the issues, but we need to frame them properly.
\n4. Too wimpy. Need to convince Americans we can kick Osama’s butt.
\n5. Too wonkish. People don’t want laundry lists, they want character.
\n6. Too gutless. Need to get down in the gutter with Karl Rove and rip his lungs out.
\n7. Too shortsighted. Need to create liberal versions of the Heritage Foundation to help us build long-term vision.
\n8. Too tired. Need to break loose from the past and offer fresh, original ideas.
\n9. Too splintered. Need to quit pandering to the interest groups that actually vote for us.
\n10. None of the above. It’s the media’s fault.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I were to add a #11, it’d be that we’re just not very good at the whole “campaigning” thing. We nominate people who would make excellent public officials, instead of those who make excellent candidates, and always seem to be a step behind when Republicans go on the attack. When it’s the election season, we’re playing softball, they’re playing hardball.<\/p>\n

So, what’s the deal? Why aren’t more people voting for us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sure hope he doesn’t mind, but Kevin Drum posed a terrific discussion-group topic this week, so I’ve decided to steal appropriate it for our Sunday gathering. The topic is nice and simple: why aren’t Dems winning more elections? What, exactly, is going wrong? Kevin narrowed it down to the 10 leading possibilities. 1. Too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}