Bill Bradley's editorial in the NYTimes

[Mass]

A wind of sanity. I wished more people were like that in the party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30bradley.html?

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Party Inverted
By BILL BRADLEY

FIVE months after the presidential election Democrats are still pointing fingers at one another and trying to figure out why Republicans won. Was the problem the party's position on social issues or taxes or defense or what? Were there tactical errors made in the conduct of the campaign? Were the right advisers heard? Was the candidate flawed?

Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media.

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.

You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

[FormerDittoHead]

1. I agree with this...

our goals should not be short-term. We shouldn't be thinking about selling out to the interests of large corporations and selling out core issues for the sake of raising enough money and getting just enough votes for the next election.

I'd rather let another cycle pass than just end up doing the same thing the Republicans are doing...

[Ninga]

2. Outstanding perspective by Bradley.

I had the honor of being a Bradley delegate in 2000.

I have always respected his depth and ability to see well beyond and into the future regarding the economy and the necessity of preparing our workforce for the next buggy whip era.

[harrison]

3. Interesting article. The thing is what ideas have the Repugs

come up with? Their purpose, it seems to me, is to simply represent the wealthy and figure out a way to get the masses to vote against their own economic self interest. That is what conservatism has become, or maybe it is always has been. I see no great conservative ideas. I see talking heads who are paid a lot of mine to "divide and conquer" the masses: to split white against black, and the religious against the non religious, and women against men and on and on it goes.

[sendero]

6. They have come up with plenty..

.... they have honed their rhetoric that goes something like this "rich people are the source of all jobs and all wealth creation and we mustn't tax them too much or anything like that. if you let us support the rich you might be rich too someday".

Beleive me, the message has been very effective, although it is 100% pure bullshit lots of dumbass Americans believe it.

[TomClash]

8. So maybe our purpose should be to represent masses

and get them to vote in favor of their self-interest?

[dmkinsey]

17. I'd say that is our purpose

and the whole problem is that the corporate media keep telling the masses that they should vote against their best interests.

[Poppyseedman]

12. What the conservatives have is a vision.

People understand a vision, not necessarily ideas. Ideas can get bogged down in details. Details confuse people.

That GOP vision is pushed and promulgated by well organized conservatives foundations.

What is the Democratic party vision? Ask ten people you get ten different answers depending on their hot buttons.

Ask a conservative what the GOP vision is: Tax cuts, Stop evil, Reform SS, etc.

[JerseygirlCT]

4. Bill Bradley has been my hero for so many years

I think he's incredibly smart. And right on the money with this one.

I hope people listen to him!

[rodeodance]

5. they know their role (the ann coulters of the world). How true

The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying.

[displacedtexan]

7. The only thing missing...

... is the money at the local level to fully fund repukes for school boards, city & county commissions, district attorney-ships, judgeships etc.

Local Dem orgs close up shop between elections and mostly bicker among themselves when their candidates aren't targeted by the state Dem party org.

[TomClash]

13. The Conservative movement under Reagan

was built with small donations.

One thing he forgot was that these conservatives are like Maoists - they have built "a permanent revolution" that attacks everything like a bacterial infection. Do we really have to be like that?

If we build a more ideological party - that has to happen for people to commit to it - does that exacerbate the left-right divide? And would increasing that chasm lead to civil war?

[unblock]

9. please note du's copyright rules

mass,

please be aware that du copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

thank you.

[Mass]

11. Sorry,

I did not know for the 4 paragraphs (corrected).

However, the link was at the beginning of the story.

[unblock]

15. thanks for editing it down. i did see the link.

i mentioned the rule on links for everyone's benefit, even though it did not apply in this case.

[AlinPA]

10. This is it. What a great way to describe the problem (pyramid turned

on its point vs the structure of the r's). DNC state party organizations please read!

[Stevepol]

14. He's right as far as it goes, but on the whole it just obscures

the real problem WHICH IS THE VOTING MACHINES. Fix the voting machines and everything looks different. Kerry won the election; the campaign was a great campaign; the Dems made great strides in doing precisely what Bradley says needs to be done. WE WON THE ELECTION.

[Poppyseedman]

18. You said the dems have made great strides

in doing what Bradley said to do.

I find no actual evidence to back that claim up.

Bradley is doing us a great service by pointing us in the right direction. The Democratic party was disorganized, undisciplined, not unified under a core message and vision. hopefully Dean can help.

It's doing a disservice to still see people laboring under the delusion that Kerry lost because of GOP voting machine fraud.

There has not been one solid compelling piece of evidence to back that claim up. Lots of innuendos, local statistical anomalies, but no statewide or national conspiracy to be exposed. If there was, Kerry/Edwards would have put it forth. The GOP would be dead for 20 years if they did.

So either it's not there or Kerry/Edwards are sell outs. I believe the former.

[trudyco]

23. There has been no decent investigation to figure this out...

Certainly there was means, motive, opportunity for this to happen. There was the lack of a check and balance (accurate exit poll). There were a LOT of anamolies. The Republicans have been very persistant in not having proper checks and balances like voter verified paper ballots to happen. Thats why I advocate for election reform legislation AND for the Dems to sponsor an independent international team to do an extensive exit poll in future elections.

There is enough circumstantial evidence to be very worried about election fraud. But I don't see this as being mutually exclusive with having a better message.

Either way, it would benefit the Dems to have a vision. To have a core set of values that can be reiterated over and over so people get the idea. However, it will be very tough with the Neocons owning the media. Every good idea and wonderful speech can be twisted and hidden when the media allows things like the "swift boat veterans" to put out blatant lies.

[kliljedahl]

16. Need to read the one by Danforth on the same page

It's a pretty reasonable examination of where the Repugs are going wrong. Of course, we already knew that anyway, but something unusual from their side of the chasm.



http://www.kliljedahl.net

[Mass]

19. Link here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x116319

[kliljedahl]

22. Thanks for the link

http://www.kliljedahl.net

[Larkspur]

20. Bill Bradley is agreeing with Howard Dean

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

This is why Dean changed his mind and decided to become DNC Chair. He plans on helping from inside the Party hierarchy the Dem Party grow from the grassroots up.

[Mass]

21. This is why I supported Dean as party chair.

I hope this will work, though, because the forces against it happening are strong.