Sunday, October 01, 2006

An open letter to: Rahm Emmanuel, Chuck Schumer and Howard Dean.

Would you quit your bickering! See the Oct 1st NY Times article The Inside Agitator By Matt Bai. To use one of your campaign slogans, I've "had enough!" If Democrats had a strong message you wouldn’t' need to spend so many millions of dollars on commercials trying to say what we stand for.

I spent the past week in Washington D. C. attending an intensive training for aspiring female politicians. During the training, our small group of women met with politicians (Sen. Durbin, Sen. Reid), political think tanks (Economic Policy Institute, Center for Political Alternatives, DSCC) web masters (DNC) and journalists (Helen Thomas). At each meeting, I would ask, “"In one sentence, what is the Democratic Message?" I am sorry to say the best they could come up with was, "Time for a new direction". Sorry ----boring, and personally even though I consider myself a liberal, I certainly don't want to go in just any direction. Where do they want to take me? It was a bit unnerving when liberal journalist such as Helen Thomas asked our group. "What do Democrats stand for?"

One of the sessions by a pollster group, Lake Research Partners, presented research about people"s opinions and messages that work. The highest concerns of interviewees was the feeling that their children may be the first generation to be worse off than their parents. They felt there children had decreased opportunity for education, jobs and buying a first home. These were disappearing dreams. There was one statement that universally struck a chord with both conservatives and liberals. It was, "I think the people of our country are losing the ability to live the American Dream."

That’s it! Democratic values stated in two words, American Dream. People, Republicans and Democrats alike, fear we are losing the opportunity to live the American Dream. The American Dream of providing our children with the opportunity to live a healthy life, to make a living wage, to have a clean world and to live in a world in peace.

Here's your part now Democratic party. On Oct. 19th do a massive media blitz. Put our slogan everywhere. Have politicians say it on the Sunday morning talk shows, rent billboards, pass out bumper stickers, have every candidates running for office use it and put out TV commercials.

Democrat:: bringing back the American Dream.

Simple but everyone knows what it means.

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