Well, Gentle Reader, yesterday sucked. We cried on and off. We listened to Mr. Kerry's gracious concession speech. We hated feeling like we'd been beaten. We went down to town hall and volunteered to work on boards that needed help. We didn't even specify a preference. We assume we'll get assigned to the one that manages complaints about the town dump, because that's the kind of day yesterday was. But we liked not feeling defeated. We liked feeling that our response to defeat was to get more involved in our community. Light a candle rather than rage.
Then we went out for Thai food with a bunch of friends - the brigade of the red eyed. Being a middle child, Pudentilla found herself instinctively trying to cheer her friends up. In doing so, she observed the following.
Mr. Bush's majority consists of 1%. We can persuade this tiny fraction of the population that his margin represents that racism, sexism and homophobia are not religious values and that God doesn't like it when you tell lies in order to start a war. Mr. Bush will not be able to blame Bill Clinton or John Kerry (although we see Fox is already lighting the Hillary torch) when many more soldiers dies in Iraq and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are killed in his war of choice. Mr. Bush will have to pay for the consequences of his economic policies .We're lucky to live in New England. In two years, lefties, Dem party people and progressives built an extraordinarily effective political machine in which ordinary people took a large measure of control over their political lives. True it wasn't effective enough. But also true that it took the Republicans a generation to do what the Dems did in two years. This is not a trivial accomplishment. Steve Gilliard is far more eloquent than Pudentilla on the topic.
These observations cheered Pudentilla up and she started making her list of things she would like to see happen in the next two and four years.
We would like the Dems to make Condi's and Wolfowitz's life a living hell of factual inquiry at the hearings if the rumors that Bush is going to name them to State and NSC are true. We would like the Dems to announce that they will ask every federal court nominee whether or not they believe that a woman has a constitutional right to choose abortion and that they will filibuster nominees who refuse to answer or answer no. We would like the Dems to resist the "mandate" meme that the SCLM is pushing. Mr. Bush got 51% of the vote (before the absentee votes are counted as Digby wisely notes. It is the job of every Democrat, elected and otherwise, to require Mr. Bush to earn any improvement in that margin, and if he fails to do so, to work strenuously to reduce that number. Mr. Bush has a narrow lead, a slim margin, a bare majority, but he does not have a mandate. The burden is on him to build the bridges and if he fails, he should be blamed for the political upheaval his failure will create. We would like the Dems to be less mealy mouthed in attacking the "moral values" meme. One interesting tactic they might adopt is giving a "moral values" report card to all the legislation Mr. Bush proposes and using that report card language on the Sunday talk shows. "Well Tim, Mr. Bush's Social Security proposal really fails the moral values test that we Democrats like to use when considering public policy. While Mr. Bush will enrich Wall Street with his proposal, he won't increase the security of the elderly's income or secure the safe retirement of the young. We think that those who want to be honest and fair, and do the right thing should...." And they should be tough about it. Sure as shooting, Tim will ask, "Are you saying the President's proposal is immoral?" Democrats always fold at this point. Instead of shilly shallying around they should claim it. "Well, yes Tim, I am. This is an immoral proposal that breaks the compact of trust between generations that has allowed our elders to live dignified lives for almost a century now. For the life of me, I can't figure out why a man who claims to be a Christian wouldn't want to obey the biblical injunction to honor our fathers and mothers. But the proposal he has made is immoral. No doubt about it." We should make the church folk own their hatred. Oliver Willis had a fascinating picture on his blog yesterday. 
Now a Republican Christian might be able to persuade Pudentilla that the man in this picture isn't a Christian or a Republican or that he doesn't represent the Christian Republican right. But for now, when she thinks "Republican," this is the guy she thinks of. When she thinks "Christian," this is the guy she thinks of. If quiet Christian Republicans and quiet MBAs who like tax cuts in the red states are hurt to believe that Pudentilla would think they all are the hateful bigoted man in this picture, they should do something about the man and leave Pudentilla alone until successful. You have the majority, he is your problem. MoveOn should do an entire "moral values" advertising campaign on the theme of hate as a religious value in Pudentilla's estimation.
Pudentilla hopes that the blogosphere's super-stars identify a limited number of 2006 races to target and organize the blogosphere's interest around. We think the re-election campaign of Rick Santorum is an excellent place to begin. We like the idea of concentrating on ousting thugs like Santorum from the blue states, of picking off border states and of developing slates of Latino/a candidates in the going-blue mountain west. If somebody famous starts a pac, Pudentilla officially promises $50.
On a related note, Pudentilla believes that one of the reasons the Christian right has been able to take control of the Republican party is that they drove moderate Democrats out of the red states. The Christian right made it impossible for red state Republicans to split their tickets when the Dems offered a moderate or even conservative candidate (look at the southern senate race results on Tuesday). They didn't consolidate power by driving out their own moderates, they drove out the Democratic moderates, and the notion of what moderate was in the Republican party lurched quite far to the right. We believe Democrats should think about this with respect to the few remaining Republican moderates in the blue states. Drive them out. Make them pick sides. Pudentilla's own senators in Maine are notorious Republican moderates. In the by gone days of American political discourse they had a place. Now they are taking places that should be held by Democrats who will be far more effective than they at restraining the hateful impulses of the Christian right who have taken over the Republican party. If they don't want to jump ship, they should be retired.
We think the Dems in the House and Senate should not play nice. We like the idea of long moral values speeches against things like raising the deficit and then voting present on the debt ceiling bill, for example. We hope the Dems on Capitol Hill show a little discipline. We'll never be as good at the foot soldier thing as the Republicans, but we are so close, it is worthy trying.
We think that the Dems should start think about the label conservative and making it as hot a word as liberal. We're thinking ads with, for example, the woman from Ohio whose vote was challenged because she didn't pick up the registered mail they sent her. We think a tag line, like "those conservative Republicans, they told white people they were protecting the vote, but what they did was tell lies to try and keep black people from voting. I guess conservatives think bigotry is an American value." Then an ad from any one in Ohio who's lost a job - those Republicans don't think work is an American value." Then one on the deficit. Those conservatives are running up a bill my kids will have to pay. " We think the conservative Republicans have created a range of associations that most Americans won't like. We think the Dems should tie those associations firmly to the word conservative.
We think Democrats in Congress should offer a fair and steady critique of the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Mr. Bush is screwing it up so badly that it will be easy to be fair and still be critical. We must never let Americans forget that this is Mr. Bush's war.
