Twenty Years on DU [View all]

[bottomofthehill]

Actually, even more than that but I had to leave for a brief time and then came back.

Why am I here. I am to the right of many on this board but to the left of many people nationally. I am a Democrat in the vein of Tip ONeill, Claude Pepper, John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Riley, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and many others. I am a big tent guy, but as a northeast urban Democrat sometimes distrusted here. I am Irish, German, Catholic, male, and a proud member of the Democratic Party.

I worked on Ted Kennedy’s primary in 1980, and in some way on every Presidential contest since. I have knocked on doors, phone banked, wrote post cards, wrote checks, planned candidate events & bus trips, driven surrogates, donated money, donated time, donated pizza, worn through shoe leather, I believe.

But I am a believer in reality. The is a lot of stupid, useless wasted effort on things that are either not real or don’t have a current chance to come to fruition. I am an incrementalist believing that if we don’t have any power we can not make small change that leads to greater change.

If I was the king of the world, would things be different, hell yes, alas, I am not.

We need to target a small list of doable things to make people’s lives better and then push the republicans to get them done. We need to pick big issues that will make real change ( Citizens United, I am talking you. Corporations are not people and people, Elon and others, I am taking to you). There is a simple campaign theme here, THIS IS NOT THE BEST GOVERNMENT MONEY COULD BUY, it’s the best government for those who bought it though. Tax breaks for the donors, check, tariff breaks for the donors, check, access to the donors, check.

Many here will not like this but we have to crawl before we walk, and walk before we run. I am not saying we abandon those we have brought out of the shadows over the years, but we have to rebuild the brand and the trust that we had post watergate.
In my opinion we do that by working the issues that have the broadest appeal to the most people that are attack by this administration. Public Education, Healthcare, Social Security, Background Checks for gun ownership. There are a lot of places where the majority of the public agree with us and that is where we need to lean in.

If you have read this far, thank you, in 20 years I have posted just under 10,000 times. I have read so much from so many of you. I have learned, my opinions have changed at times, others, I have thought this place was full of crazy people. Some of you have helped me through difficult times in my life, others by sharing have helped me keep from making mistakes and creating further difficulties in my life.

I am here because all in, DU helps me to be a better, more understanding person and I appreciate almost all of you ( there are 6 on my ignore list that can still fuck off as far as I am concerned) but 6 in the universe of DU, all things considered, you continue to amaze me and make me a better person.