GOTV, Mr. Obama

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

There is a enormous and powerful difference between millions of people not voting for a particular party, and millions of people saying loud and clear to that party: “we guarantee we  will give you millions of votes, more than enough to tip the scale…… once you have done a or b or c or d or any combination of those things, and as soon as we see that you’ve done that you can relax in the confidence that you have won even before election day arrives, otherwise you’ve already lost and you might as well tell your corporate donors now that their money has been pissed away for absolutely nothing and that you were an utter and pathetic waste of their time, and quit campaigning”.

It takes planning, and it takes a determination to make decisions not out of fear but out of the power and leverage you know you have, but have only if you use it.

The best that can happen with this approach is beyond your wildest dreams, and the worst that can happen with this is that if nobody else does it while you do you won’t be defending yourself after the fact for having voted for people who could have done their jobs but wouldn’t.

Make it a credible threat. Not a bluff.

The democrats won the 2006 midterms effectively by running on an end the Iraq war platform. The first major thing they did afterwards was to betray the voters with the first emergency supplemental war funding bill passed by a democratic congress. The result was a folding of hands by the fake democratic antiwar movement who showed themselves to be really only interested in democratic wins, but not in progressive results.

The democrats have had years to “incrementalize” their way into producing good progressive results. They haven’t done so, and you now have an effectively republican congress and president.

That Democrats are politicians and being politician will do whatever it takes to win the votes they need means that the fear of republicans or the fear of losing ground is a phantom fear if enough people threaten the dems with extreme loss of votes unless and until they do something useful to win those votes back, which they will do because they are politicians and they need those votes to survive politically.

It’s an eyeball to eyeball poker game right down to election day, and it cannot be a bluff from the voters.

People have to be strong enough to say to the dems – “Look, if you’re going to ACT like republicans then we’re going to let republicans have your jobs your fools – now get busy and PRODUCE some useful progressive legislation or you’re history. Come back when you’ve produced, and I guarantee you my vote” – and mean it.

The dems will do it, and if on the off chance they’re too stupid to do it then they aren’t worth your vote anyway.

It’s called voting for results instead of promises.

Obama and the democrats might finally wake up and realize they need the independent and liberal votes they’ve thrown away since inauguration day last year, and that all the corporate donations in the world aren’t going to save them without those votes, and start producing some useful progressive legislation and pass it in time for the midterms.

They could have independents and liberals all across the country rewarding them for results instead of turning their backs on empty promises and the largest landslides in history this November with just a few simple moves.

Creating and passing an actual, real, universal single payer health care bill and rolling back the bailout of the insurance industry for example might do it all by itself, for example.

Although they could probably sew it right up it for themselves by also starting torture and war crimes trials for Bush and Cheney, while withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and breaking up the big Wall Street investment banks and doing Ken Lay numbers on Goldman Sachs‘s Lloyd Blankfein and Magnetar‘s Alec Litowitz, while firing Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Rahm Emanuel, and now Robert Gibbs, too.

They’ve got a whole month, after all.

Dems are smart people, right? They should be at least half as smart as all those independent and progressives who won’t vote for them unless they do those things, right?

After all, Obama and the democrats can’t possibly be stupid enough to actually believe that independents and liberals are stupid enough to to vote to continue being screwed by them, can they?

And really, all they really need to do is just one of those things and the republicans would be history in November.

This is not a sport. It is, however, the future of the country, and a choice of who rules it. Bought and paid for politicians. Or voters.

If Republicans got their way they would arrange for a trojan horse ‘democrat’ to be elected president who would let bush and cheney and most of the previous republican administration of the hook effectively pardoning them for torture and all their other war crimes, expand the number of US troops sent to the overseas occupations the republicans started, give tens of trillions of dollars to wall street and other republican corporate cronies while ensuring the Military Industrial complex remains the most profitable racket in the history of humanity ¹, and then fall all over himself bending over backwards to give the republicans anything and everything else they demanded and more while conning the democratic base with an ‘incremental bipartisanship’ fantasy story to coopt that base into supporting republican policies across the board while insulting that base at every opportunity, and generally just screw the working classes every ways possible, while sending out scare letters to that democratic base demanding support and votes because republicans are scary.

All so that he could guarantee himself a lucrative post presidential career continuing to work for his constituents.

I hope republicans never get their way. They’re scary.

¹ U.S. War Spending Now Exceeds That Of All States

If Republicans got their way fear would rule, and people would be terrorized into voting only out of fear rather than using their vote as the the only leverage they have to force concessions and progressive legislation out of the democrats.

If Republicans got their way fear would rule, and people would roll over and accept any amount of bipartisan bullshit and lies from Democrats instead of using fear to rule the Democrats and turn them into winners while destroying the Republicans.

If Republicans got their way fear would rule, and people would be bullied into accepting that nothing would ever change, instead of taking control.

That’s kind of how we got in this MESS, in the first place … by letting Republicans GET their Whiny Way … for far TOO Many Years.