So numbers don’t convince you. Well, I would expect no less. Speaking as a Democrat, it is my sincere hope that the numbers on election day don’t convince you either. Now that Karl Rove has retired, Republicans seem to have lost their last electoral realist, so there is a good chance they may never figure out why this election turned out the way it did. That would suit our electoral realists just fine.
“Most Americans, I believe, love their country for what it is–not what it could become if suitably socialized, taxed, neutered, and otherwise recast. If McCain-Palin can effectively articulate that message, they will win.”
Right there is the major failing among you. You still do not understand that you are not “most Americans”. You are a plurality of somewhere between 40-45% of Americans [There go those pesky numbers again] and you have to sell your point of view to the rest. Moreover, it isn’t just your candidates who have to do it. It is you.
To sell a point of view, you have to step beyond the illusion that the soundness what you believe should be obvious to any sensible person, or to the majority of people. This is very hard, I know, and requires a little imagination about why another point of view than your own might seem equally reasonable. That’s what a good salesperson does.
Moreover, you need to wake up to the yawning gap between what your candidates have preached and what they practice. The one that you put in the White House in 2004 is just about to preside over the government’s de facto nationalization of the entire banking system. If that isn’t Suitably Socialist I don’t know what would be. Where on earth did that come from?
The one you are trying to elect has proposed buying up billions of dollars of individual home mortgages. And he says a few days later that he’s also going to balance the budget. Presumably he will be doing this while keeping our military well funded so we can be safe and strong, and he’ll also be cutting all our taxes in the bargain.
The difference between your point of view and mine is that I need no such watertight compartments in my mind between “loving America”, “limiting government”, “defending against terrorism”, “cutting taxes”,”deregulating oppressed markets”, “balancing the budget”, and “rescuing [pc for 'bailout'] the financial system”.
Since these notions are largely incompatible with one another, your point of view requires watertight separation, because it is inconsistent to a degree just short of psychosis.
This makes your point of view a very hard sell.
If you start from the premise that goverment must be proactive and sensible regulation is primary to the safety and well being of us all, you can actually put up a priority list that makes sense even if it doesn’t always overcome sales resistance.
But, under the circumstances, I don’t expect to encounter very much sales resistance.
