The Open Matt Project

what the hell is going on with people lately. I know the election was an absolute bummer, but to that end, why take it out on your friends and acquaintances? If you put something of a hot button out there, be prepared for the ensuing debate.

You're being awfully sensitive. I think a little disbelief is not surprising, with a campaign that brought out such extreme passion, and especially since the post you linked was a list of accusations that are highly applicable to Bush's campaign.

But I see the point in the article, and it is valid. I think the Democrats tried a little too hard to emulate the methods the often more successful Republican party, and both parties ended up ignoring the... I guess they're moderates, who were ready to change sides after Bush's disastrous first term. Fighting fire with fire was definitely a compromise of values. Maybe it shouldn't have been made. I worry that the Democrats, if they were to follow that advice, would be setting themselves up to get completely trounced. Maybe I'm underestimating the American people.

First of all - some of you need to get your own blog. This comment system is woefully inadequate to cover the length and depth of your ideas (literally).

Second, I don't need defending and frankly I've spent more time and energy in this arena than you, TK, by many orders of magnitude; you're hardly in a position to patronize me. I don't require agreement from my friends, but I do require respect.

Third, my goal in these two recent posts was to reach out to the people who lost the election and try to express some of what can be done to win more support (read: votes) next time. I understand the bitterness and anger - it sucks to lose - but the idea is to learn from ones mistakes so as to not repeat them, not to cling to self-righteousness and tunnel-vision. I expect more from my liberal friends than emulation of Bush.

If someone like me actually asks to be brought over to your side and gets the scalding I see here, what chance have you for winning over the three and an half -million- people who preferred Bush over Kerry?

In short, when someone offers a hand in friendship, I would advise you not to spit on it.

It's good to hear her perspective, but it shocks me that she buys Bush's lines before Kerry's. Especially the part about how doing something about terror should mean military action against an uninvolved country, not just criminal proceedings. It's like burning down the church because a member of an affiliated church killed someone. At least we're burning something! Mob action on a global level.
It also stuns me that someone could feel her intelligence insulted by the Dems more than by Bush. She is right that there is venom on the left, but a lot of that venom is because people like me feel like Bush insults intelligence everytime he opens his mouth.
The left is wrong to demonize and alienate people that disagree with them, but when you witness the total rape of things like the environment, Bill of Rights, women's rights, and labor law that have occurred in the past four years, all to benefit a small group of people, it makes you very angry. Hundreds of years of work (and in the case of the environment, millenia of work) destroyed in such a short time. So much squandered for so few.
I think one of the keys to this woman's misunderstanding of the left is that the problems with the rich folks that Kerry only began to address are not problems with the entrepreneurs who go from making 30K to making 100 or 200K - it's the entrenched money that has wealth beyond these people's wildest reckonings, due to their family and connections. Very few lefties want to stop upward mobility - they want to shake some of the rot from the top of the tree. The cons have been methodically polarizing wealth into the hands of the few, and selling the slim chance for others to join their ranks with slick PR and hollow promises. It is a shame that this was not communicated in a way that didn't seem to threaten the efforts of people working to make their lives better, but any suggestion of a more equal distribution of wealth has been villified as "communism" for so long that these ideas can't even be discussed without people thinking you love Stalin.
As for working with the international community, the US will have to come around to the fact that we are one humanity on one world sooner or later. Those that don't understand the links between terrorism and foreign policy will remain confused and afraid. Terrorism results from injustice and poverty, not from hatred of freedom. I don't condone terrorism by anyone, but to stop it you have to understand why it starts, something that many americans cloistered in their safe worlds of TV and shopping malls will not understand. So few see that even your poorest americans are rich by global standards, and the way to help these folks is not to drop bombs on them and export their resources so that you can afford more shit that you really don't need.
In the end I think it comes down to predispositions. The bulk of politicians insult intelligence, period. They play image games, period. If you are sensitized to those games from the right, you turn venomous to the right, and vice versa. Which is why election reform and viable third parties are so essential if this experiment called democracy isn't to end in our lifetime.
End rant.

Klaatu, in a word, yes. I guess that's how Matt felt and feels. In his defense, his political consciousness (or at least voting consciousness) is rather new).

Chalk one more to American Exceptionalism.

So after Bush's attacks on the constitution and civil liberties, an unprecedented preemptive war based on false intelligence, and after he completely ignored his pledges to rule as a moderate, after he ran his campaign obviously appealing to religious bigots, and after the dirty tricks some Republicans pulled in swing states (most of said tricks aimed at the poor and brown), it was the bad attitude of some of the Democrats, and Kerry's occasional, largely exaggerated, vagueness on policy that turned off centrist potential Democrats?

I feel like I've entered a no-spin zone.

I think my point is more that this chick and myself wanted to vote for Kerry, and were pushed away as "the enemy". In the next four years, will my vote be courted or distained? That's what I want to know.

I, however, did read the whole thing. I can't help but feel that she was speaking for a lot of the disenfranchised democrat's such as myself. I do agree with much that she says, but I still don't see that as reason enough for a vote for Bush. I am not someone who thought the notion of "anyone but bush" as a logical or even rational mantra made much sense, even so I could never put my faith in a man like bush. As the left would say, "not my president". Never was, never will be.

Not surprisingly, you clearly didn't read the link.

You are worse then the Democrats making excuses on why Kerry lost. Mr. "BUSH" holmes talking about how wheee, Bush won "because of so and so"

You are playing the same game man. I am stupid with politics and even *I* can see that.