Dispatches from Jay Gilchrist of the Greater Blackstone Valley Democrats
Since I have the time and since people tell me I’m the scribe of the group, I hope to put some information together and pass it on between meetings for all of you to consider over time. At a meeting of the Metrowest Alliance where John Walsh was presenting the results of the coordinated campaign of 2010, Kate Donaghue stood up to speak. After listening to a pot-pourri of comments that to me were not focusing much on paths going forward, rather, were going on about the problems of the past, her brief comment reduced everything to the outline we need to use going forward.
Information
Communication
Education
That is, I think, what we have to gather, tell each other, then educate voters till they believe it. As Kate Mastrioanni says, we have to concentrate the message.
So here’s some timely information. Since no one as any spare time, I’ve tried to lean it down from the original sources. You can ask me for the long version or why I think I’ve gathered facts.
First, full disclosure; I’m a progressive leaning centrist. I get a bit uncomfortable with far left and right leaning Democrat’s opinions, but I certainly want to hear what they say. I have no problem as long as they subscribe to the idea that there is still a big difference between the parties. Still, I can understand why our leaders have to play nice with corporate America sometimes (we will need big money until we get campaign finance reform). I have my fingers crossed that we’ll stop short of completely selling out.
Now, here’s some neat stuff from the Jan/Feb ’10 issue of The American Prospect. Mark Schmitt thinks we are in the age of post literalism. Democrats have a chronic recurring case of policy literalism. It’s the belief that policy should have a rational direct relationship to politics. Since even educated, newspaper reading adults have only the vaguest awareness of policy changes. It’s pretty severe education problem. Before the midterms, 52% of Bloomberg responders thought taxes had gone up under Obama when they went down $240 Billion. Pew research found, two weeks after the midterms only 46 % of those surveyed knew Republicans took over the House. We have an education problem here.
More: Read the whole constitution – Regardless of your views on our justice system’s imprisoning millions of petty criminals, who knew that the reality of fairly equal distributed forces of law enforcement is unbalanced in high crime areas. Victims in high crime areas are not seeing the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. As a result, neighborhoods teetering on the edge of stability go down the tubes. Changing this should be a progressive demand (Mark Kleiman).
For a Republican, how do you gel shrinking government with the need for more police and judges when state’s need more enforcement in these neighborhoods but have been tapped out for years. In other words, reduce my taxes, I don’t see any problem – oh my god I just got stabbed. So much to fix – finance, health care, trade imbalance
Next: The issue has four pages summarizing where we stand in Washington. It’s called the Progressive Agenda Score Card. It’s a real shorthand education. Even more briefly, 14 goals are described. Main ones: progress so far, spin noted, real story noted, what’s possible and summary. There are 3 non starters, Free Choice, Closing Guantanamo, Boosting the Economy. Looks like we’re stuck with low taxes for billionaires, but get a little boost for the economy.
Next memo will be on some key challenges and what is remotely possible for us in the BV to do about it.
My Opinion. What do you think?
