Enemy Combatant
Thursday, June 09, 2005
How We Win In 2006
1. Talk about our exit strategy. Democrats need to have one, and it can be comfortably vague with a few preconditions for each phase, but we need to emphasize one message: We. Need. To. Get. Out. If we insist upon talking about it, the GOoPers will be forced to talk about it, and we win.
2. Talk about the GOP draft. Well, they may not have one yet, but they will if they win again in 2006. Talk about the end of legal abortion, more wars, less money, fewer jobs -- you know, the GOP Plan for 2006.
3. Go to every war-dead funeral in your district/State. If you're a Congressional candidate (incumbent or not), you start going to every soldier funeral in your district (getting the family's permission ahead of time, of course). If you're a Senatorial candidate (incumbent or not), start going to every funeral you can manage (which means, if you're in California or Texas, maybe a representative few. If you're from New Hamster, you better get your butt to every one.)
Don't crow to the press about it; keep it under your hat, in fact. Let them encounter you already doing it. Local media will cover these funerals, especially if politicians start to show up; the national media have proven themselves the kept mistresses of BushCo, so fuck 'em.
Oh, and nobody says anything to the press about it while at the funeral, except the same two words: "Constitutent service."
4. Talk about how we fix Social Security. It's simple, really: Raise the $90,000 FICA tax cap. A graduated FICA tax on income would solve the problem, easy peasey. The way to explain it, is to pull out some calendars and graphs and show that the top CEOs in the country, each year, pay off their entire year's FICA taxes by January 2nd or 3rd. Oh, and you don't call it, "raising the cap." You call it, "closing the tax shelter."
5. Move the discussion light years ahead: Discuss whether we should impeach Bush only for WMD lies, or broaden the Articles to include other atrocities (torture, utter incompetence on 9-11, etc.). First of all, a few Republicans will simply sputter, turn red, appear to choke, and have a coronary. (Let's hope the Dickster is among them.) Second, they'll realize they've got to rebut the claims, at which point they'll find, with alarm, that they're discussing the minutiae of impeachment while running to get back into office.
6. Adopt the GOP 11th Commandment. I cannot emphasize this enough . . . Biden? Leiberman? Obama? Pelosi? When you hear something Howard supposedly said, even if your jaw is all warmed up, and even if you think you disagree with it -- take a deep breath, count to ten, then --
Slam the piehole shut! Zip it! STFU!
Aim your fire outside the tent! That's where the enemy is.
