Once in a Blue State

Yesterday, I had the great honor and pleasure of getting to sit in on the Texas Democratic Party's luncheon, featuring special guest speaker Mary Beth Cahill. Before her speech, I pulled her to the side, and asked her some questions about Democrats in '08. Being a staunch liberal (forever and always), I was naturally curious to see what kind of tricks my party has rolled up their sleeves for '08. Suprisingly, my questions were not met with enthusaism.

According to Cahill, Democrats won't have to do much to keep up with the Republicans. Speaking on the record, she said that the biggest strength of Democrats today is that they are not Republicans. Now, normally I would agree with this statement, as I buy into the belief that the conservative "movement" has not made much of a move since before I was born. However, this year I will be more cautious come November 2008. After their massive defeat in 2006, the Republicans changed their tune entirely, taking a relatively radical stance on issues like Iraq and Universal Healthcare. Rather than seek out support from Bush, they have attempted to distance themselves as much as possible from our Lame Duck In Chief. And this has created a problem for Team Blue. With people calling Mike Huckabee "The nicest candidate around", and with candidates like Libertarian Ron Paul and D.A. Branch becoming candidates that America's rebellious (and previously Democrat) youth can support, the Democrats seem to be reactive far too passively.

In the novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe illustrates an African society so set in it's old ways, that it completely misses the grass-roots takeover by the white crusaders that happens seemingly overnight. Without someone pointing out the fact that the Republicans generally seem to win a lot, it seems that the Democrats are forgetting their own track record. We may have won the battle for 2006, but in a 51-49 margin. This is not what I would call a "win".

My opinions of the Democratic Presidential candidates aside (that would make for a sperate blog), come 2008, we had better be prepared for the Battle of the Nice.

Becuase come 2008, whoever is elected will change the course of history. And not in a "remember how accident-prone President Ford Was?" kind of way...in a "Remember when we used to be able to have abortions?" kind of way.

And that is my rant for Spetember 25.