RBInMaine
RBInMaine's JournalIt can not just be rallies and marches. A REAL movement means SUSTAINED political action!
The problem with the left is that it is disconnected and disorganized. The right is much more organized around their thinking, their purposes, their media, their think tanks, and their political action.
A REAL movement is like the Women's Suffrage Movement or the Civil Right Movement of the 1950's and 60's. They were organized and SUSTAINED with committed people who worked on these for YEARS, even decades. And it involved tremendous POLITICAL ACTION to get the laws changed.
So we shall see. Will these marches become a REAL movement or just one feel-good day? The main thing is to organize POLITICALLY and VOTE OUT THE REPUBLICANS IN 2018!! THAT must the NUMBER ONE GOAL, PERIOD!
These marches are great, but where the hell were they three months ago??!!!!
The election of Trump = APATHY and COMPLACENCY in MANY, MANY cases. I give HUGE credit to those who did vote, who did volunteer, and who donated. But if more people had gotten active, had donated, had VOTED then this SHIT STORM would never have happened in the first fucking place!!!!
We could have won with just a few more people, relatively, in the Philadelphia area, Detroit, and the Milwaukee area. How many of the marchers, in whatever march over the last few days, did not volunteer, did not donate, and did not even vote or went and voted for FUCKING Jonnson or FUCKING Stein therefore HELPING TRUMP??
With Trump on the fucking ballot there should have been million-person marches during the CAMPAIGN!!!! But no, people sat on their asses and ignored the clear and present danger. And look what the FUCK happened!!!
So GREAT that these marches and mobilizations are happening. But we MUST understand the colossal FUCKUP that way too many people made in this election by not staging this movement during the CAMPAIGN with Trump threatening to win the American presidency. Now, on one level, it is TOO FUCKING LATE!! The damage is DONE!!
But on another level, it's not in vain and not too late. In 2018 ORGANIZE, CAMPAIGN, and get off the couch and FUCKING VOTE!!!!!!! Elections have consequences, and this is the ULTIMATE one!! WE MUST LEARN THE LESSON ONCE AND FOR ALL!! GO AND FUCKING VOTE!!!! AND VOTE THE RIGHT FUCKING WAY!!!
What is necessary right now is a progressive populist version of the Tea Party!!
It should be an effort that does these key things:
1) Get all progressive groups from the Dem Party at all levels to Unions to Planned Parenthood to MoveOn.Org to the Sierra Club to Common Cause and all others to UNITE for a change all under one banner. Progressive groups are scattered. They need to UNITE.
2) Have a PERMANENT and YEAR-ROUND effort including rallies with thousands of people and many other activities.
3) Focus mainly and relentlessly on populist economics but also civil rights and saving the planet.
4) Tell the rich corporate donors to instead invest in setting up enough progressive alternative media to truly rival right wing talk radio and tv. THIS IS SORELY NEEDED. If the rich want to help us, DO THAT. (Campaign financing needs to comes from MILLIONS of SMALL DONORS.)
5) Set up MANY more progressive think tanks. (The rich ones can help with that too if they like. But we don't want their money for campaigns.)
6) Do candidate and activist training.
7) Do grassroots recruitment of and fundraising for progressive populist candidates at ALL levels of government.
What could it be called? (I am not talking about a third political party but rather an ONGOING and EFFECTIVE and UNITING political movement. Maybe it could come under the flag of Sanders' Our Revolution movement, which could be expanded.)
Boycotting LL Bean is a huge MISFIRE! It is a GREAT company!!
LL Bean takes great care of its workers, makes some of its products domestically, gives millions of dollars to great causes including environmental conservation organizations and efforts, and has good products with AWESOME customer service that is unparalleled.
Yes, Linda Bean, company founder LL Bean's granddaughter, is a right wing nut who gave way too much money to a pro-Trump super pac. But she is just one of ten members of the board of directors, and LL Bean had and has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with the nutty things Linda Bean does. LL Bean is entirely NON-POLITICAL!! Also she has other businesses, so if GrabYourWallet.com wants to boycott something then boycott THOSE. But they are listing LL Bean just because it is a nationally recognized company.
Know all the facts here folks and tell those behind this call for this extremely misguided nonsense to STOP IT NOW!!
It is backfiring is a very, very big way! And rightly so! Even the PROGRESSIVE commentators in Maine are writing about how STUPID this is!!
When you stay home or vote third party, THIS is what happens. Make a different choice next time.
We've got a mega narcissist ultra unqualified psycho weirdo freak coming into the White House, and he and the mega corrupt Republicans in Congress are burning the country and all we believe in to the ground. And they are about to the load the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts with right wingers. They are also going to give us the most corrupt and unqualified swamp monster cabinet ever.
So, to all those who voted for Dems and Clinton, thanks. Your consciences are clear. To those who didn't, this is what you get when you stay home because you "don't like the candidate" or "aren't excited" enough to bother to vote, or you vote third party because your candidate didn't get nominated or decide crazily that there is some kind of equivalency between the Dem and the RePuke. Simple as that. Enough of all the emails from Dems and Dem organizations or Progressive organizations talking about "fighting back" and all the rest. Try this instead: GET THE HELL OFF YOUR ASS AND GO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE! Elections have consequences. Not happy about what is happening when you were TOLD a thousand times that this is what was going to happen? Then make a different choice next time. I don't want to hear a single syllable of complaining. GO VOTE NEXT TIME AND/OR VOTE THE RIGHT WAY!
Until then, it's BURN BABY BURN! Right to the fucking ground! Hope you're enjoying it.
Remember Donnie, PISS poor planning prevents proper performance!
Good advice for old Donnie Shower.
Trump is truly a FREAK, and as far as I am concerned NOT a legitimate president.
Donnie Golden Shower is NOT the president and is truly a freak. He LOST by almost 3 million votes, has NO mandate, has poll numbers in the toilet, got in through all kinds of unsavory shit from voter suppression to illegal hacking, but most of all is a completely unqualified, psychologically unfit, and morally bankrupt piece of SHIT.
He is a FREAK. He is a mega-narcissistic spoiled rich boy FREAK. He is emotionally immature to the point of being a 70 year old child.
So Trump can shove his wall up his ass and go play with his Twitter account. In the meantime, we need to UNITE, get on ONE message that tears the shit out of Donnie Golden Shower, and rips the RePUKEliCONS to shreads. And that message is that we fight for the working people of America while they are a bunch of corrupt SCUM bought and paid for by their corporate masters with a leader who is simply a FREAK!
Simple as that.
C'mon Trumpster, Make Macy's Great Again! Make Sears Great Again! Make a deal! Make a deal! ?????
How come old Trumpster isn't at Sears making deals? How come he isn't at Macy's making deals and sitting down with them and helping them re-do their business plans and making THEM great again???????? They are both shutting down tons of stores and thousands of people are losing their jobs. C'mon Mr. Great Business guy. Make them great again!!!
The great lesson of the last 8 years: Don't go to sleep at the wheel!
After the great Obama victory of 2008 the Democratic Party went to sleep, and it KILLED US!!!!!
Make no mistake that I give great credit to Obama for many things, and he is a great guy who will be fondly remembered. But to understand what went wrong we also have to fairly critique him along with everything else so we can understand what went wrong so that we can fix things going forward. He did some very good things, but he campaigned as a soaring transformational guy but all too often led as a chess-playing TRANSACTIONAL guy who tried to make deals with the R's who never wanted or had any intention of making deals. He should have taken his popularity and mandate straight to the American people and HAMMERED the GOP in a much bigger and louder way and done more of the great things he campaigned on. He and Dems all over did little to combat the Tea Party movement. And he put in Tim Kaine and then Wasserman-Schultz at the DNC who were not full time DNC chairs and did not do a good job. The DNC turned into a corporate-lite establishment fundraiser instead of a strong grassroots organization out there organizing BIGTIME in every single county in the nation. The DNC just plain STUNK! We therefore got GUTTED at the state level all over the country and had SHITTY elections in 2010, 2014, and 2016.
In addition, the party FAILED BIGTIME to put together ONE overarching compelling message for candidates to run on which should have been a MASSIVE POPULIST message saying: GOOD JOBS FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE and JUSTICE FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE!! Simple as that. A strong, compelling message with a relentless focus on the ECONOMY EVERYWHERE. Instead, Democrats/Progressives fumbled and bumbled around in the weeds squirreling around with this issue and that issue with no overarching message and FOCUS. And our turnout in non-presidential cycles has STUNK! So we all have to take some of the responsibility here.
Folks, we must be honest and understand WHAT WENT WRONG so we can now get a new a much better DNC chair in place, re-organize the party at the grassroots everywhere, and get ONE clear, compelling, STRONG overarching message into operation so we can straighten this party the hell out and WIN again. We actually are the largest party and we win on the issues. But we have FAILED to COMMUNICATE and ORGANIZE correctly, so we have LOST. A good, honest, hard look in the mirror is always what is needed. We can't keep going to sleep at the wheel!! We need to WAKE UP and SHOW UP!
The party motto going forward is SO simple:
"JOBS AND JUSTICE FOR EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE!" Period.
We have ALWAYS been about working and middle class job creation and social and economic justice for everyone. It is not an either/or situation. It is BOTH and SIMPLE.
We fight for Men, Women, White, Black, Hispanic, Native, Asian, etc., Gay, and Straight. We fight for city folks AND country folks. We fight for working and middle class job creation in cities AND in small towns and out in the country. We respect ALL cultures, including urban cultures AND rural cultures. We fight for people struggling with urban blight AND the rural small-town blight of closed mills and boarded up Main Streets. We respect EVERYONE, fight for EVERYONE, and are relentlessly FOCUSED on JOB CREATION for EVERYONE so EVERYONE can have a shot at the American dream. Period!
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Member since: Mon Aug 1, 2005, 07:24 PMNumber of posts: 13,570
