Sam Smith, 2006 - Liberals might attract a lot more voters if they would stop dissin' them so much. It used to be that the left had a relatively few bad guys, such as Wall Street bankers and corporate executives, but now not only have these become major Democratic Party campaign contributors, liberal targets have exploded to include a large percentage of the voting pool. Once you eliminate all those who smoke, are too heavy, live in the suburbs, believe in Jesus, belong to the Green Party, own a gun, or lack etiquette when discussing ethnicity, you don't have that much to work with.
In many cases, it's a matter of attitude more than policy. After all, if you go up to someone and say, "You're a big, fat pig" or "You live in a sprawling, polluting neighborhood" and then propose to reform them, the reaction is going to tend to be negative even if your ideas make sense. If, on the other hand, you talk about the need for healthier food and more exercise, people don't take it so personally. It is worth remembering, for example, that John F. Kennedy got a huge fitness craze going without calling anyone obese. Similarly, without characterizing another person's neighborhood, you can suggest ecologically sound improvements in urban design - such as accessory apartments, shopping within walking distance, and filling in the empty space around malls and along suburban strips. People support things that help them. Thus, if instead of moralizing over sprawl, one points out the energy costs savings in row housing, one is likely to find a more friendly audience.
For a group that professes so much interest in diversity and tolerance, liberals are often surprising parochial and impatient with cultural variety. Thus they have played right into the conservative gambit of reducing politics to personal values rather than being about the public good. The way out of this trap is to rephrase policies so they become non-judgmental of the voters being sought. And, most of all, to find policies that help most people live better. It's how we got a weekend, a 40-hour-week, social security and a minimum wage. And it is still good politics.
2 comments:
Politics is a process and an art.
The reason I'm into politics is an intense desire for positive social change and justice.
I often fall into the error of posting for emotional gratification rather than rational thought.
I try not to do this as it is counterproductive to my original goal.
We have to work at reaching good people where they are and listen better to what they say.
The left has a lot of people who preach from an unearned position of assumed moral superiority and assuned higher intelligence.
This attitude is not only unproductive but most of the time simply not true.
The left is mostly petit bourgeoise in origin and does not like to work with people they are uncomfortable with.
Our only advantage against a powerful foe rich in resources is our numbers.
Those numbers are meaniless unless we work together in unity to confront the basic issue of income inequality and the uses our country's resources are being used to benfit only a few who really control our country through it's economy.
It's how we got a weekend, a 40-hour-week, social security and a minimum wage.
No, Sam, it's not. Those were RADICAL ideas promoted by RADICALS. Liberals dragged their feet until the handwriting was not merely on the wall, but carved into it a foot deep. Then they claimed that the ideas had been theirs all along (cf FDR with Huey's ideas for the WPA (that's how all those roads, hospitals, & bridges got built in Louisiana) and social security).
Phil Ochs had the liberals' number.
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