The DNC has alot of soul searching to do these days. These red states are only going to grow, the slim margin that minnesota that gave kerry victory is a far cry from when they used to be firm democrat strongholds from the clinton days. in the next election, if the trend continues, theyll break off and join the red states. Much like Ohio. Ohio used to be uncontested clinton-country.

I agree that foreign policy takes precedent over gay marraige. Abortion isnt as important to the voter as is heath care. But this election turned to these factors beacuse most of america agreed with Bush on foreign policy. And for that i believe rightly so. Bush never wavered from his mark. Sure the reasons for going into iraq were wrong, but he clearly did not lie, as the 911 comission or psudeowitchhunt plainly said. John Edwards whos on the Intelligence comittee said he saw the same reports as W and came away w/ the same conlusions. reasons for entry aside, i dont think its debateable at all if bringing freedom to iraq is good. It is a wholly worthy cause to give a nation a helping hand to shake off the grip of tyrrany. I have a slightly baised view of this perhaps beacuse my parents are products of american generosity w/ freedom and democracy, bringing it to south korea by the crack of the rifle, a nation which might never have done it on its own. The democracy there is FAAR from perfect but its far better than wut exsisted before. corrupt monarchy if not Japnese colonial slavery.The nations surrounding Iraq would like nothing more than the collapse of our experiment over there and that again is not debateble. To those who say we are being arrogant for trying to impose our values there, you forget that ours is the best system on earth so far. if u have reason to contest w/ the finding of a better one, u should move. and in fact tell me, so i can go w/ you. There is such thing as respecting other cultures, but it is another to stamp out a barbaric behaviors where women are treated worse than rabid dogs here in america and dont even have the right to vote. behaviors and ppl that encourage young men to run into pizza parlors and markets to suicide bomb women and children, only to be promised 1000 virgins after death. Men who think nothing wrong with waging a war against an "inferior infidel" while hiding in a mosque with women and children standing at the windows. nonsense. the world is far better off without these ppl. I think there is a huge question however whether or not this is even possible. Most critics seem to think it isnt. Not only did it work in Korea, history is written by the ppl that do, not the critics. There is a valid question of whether or not it is americas duty to go forth in search of evil dragons to slay. The question is not new. Perhaps Bush, as well as i, believes that hte only thing worse than bad men doing bad is good men doing nothing. i dont see how the issues cant focus on domestic rather than foreign policy.

With that deal sealed, the domestic issues at hand deal w/ the fundamental beliefs in every man. Gay marraige, Abortion, these may not be things that affect every one of us every day but they are matters of principle, the very things that guide our actions. Education does only so much for us. it is our core beliefs on which we act every day. We can debate night and day until the coming of christ over abortion and homosexuality, and there will be no winner. To despise the redstates for this i think is folly. to them, ppl like you are taking this nation to hell. to you, ppl like them are taking this nation to hell. Might i remind you, in this majority rules democracy, we have the right to make our society the best, and likewise we have every right to go to straight to hell. tragic i kno.

I also agree with you that they came outta nowhere and packed enough of a punch to set the DNC back a decade. And ive seen two views within democrats lately, 1. is to try to pander to these ppl, aka water down your beliefs. the other is like you 2. why bother? they arent worth the hoot. You claim the first is defeatist, and ur completely right. If there are two choices A and B, to get Bs vote, u cannot be ab. Theres no such thing. However i think there is a third way of looking at all this. With your thought u assume that these new red folk are the only keys to the next election. i beg to differe. there are still a shitload of ppl out there. just cuz karl rove was able to turn out an insane vote of mostly conservative church ppl doesnt mean u have to pander to them. There are sooo many ppl in america. just do what rove did? the democrats seriously failed on the ground. there was no effective organization. my ex gf worked at the GOP HQ in virginia this summer and would tell me how insanely organized it was. if it sold stuff for money, it could be renamed amway. There are millions of other voters out there. these reserves that rove mustered up this election arent garunteed to vote again in the next one and even if they are, the democrats seriously just need to reamass their base. Spending 70 million on getting out a youth vote by having lazy children and lazy minoroties register to vote is ineffective. MTV had its real world contestants go out into philly to register ppl to vote, the theory going that if they register theyll feel responsible enough to vote. BULLSHIT. and you kno it. With that much money time and effort wasted like that, no wonder roves reserves saved the GOP day. Giving up and moving right is wrong. But so is bunkering in with anger, with a kind of siege mentality. THat will garuntee another loss in 2008. Take a page from the rove playbook, and strike up the fire of a new constituency with professional organization. After all Liberals for the past four years, have had intense fire.

The part where u bring up the civil rights movement i think is the weakest part of ur arguement romitash. Certainly this nation usually in the north has had to pull the rest of the nation by the bootstraps when it came to slavery, and then civil rights. But in those cases, we have an obivious right and wrong side. In the issues at hand now, we certainly dont. abortion? gay rights? those debates arent predicated on superfical preference. Until there is some kind of conclusion on when life begins, the abortion drama will continue. W/ gay rights you have ppl that seem to honestly be in love, and the institution of marraige borders closer and closer on a big joke. However, what right does that small of a minority have to impose itself into a at least once hallowed tradition that has been for thousands of years? a tradition that even for our parents when they got married, there was no real debate over. If its the rights and legal recognition they want, why dont they clamor for civil unions? why insist on that word? clearly not to fit in, cuz if they wanted that they would have stayed in the closet for good. Any how i digress, my point is these are issues unlike civil rights, which needed some forcible leverage. But also what is this nonsense that the red states now are trying to "impose" their "conservative" values on the blue states? by being organized and turningout to vote, they are imposing their beliefs? sorry. If there is any imposing, it was the female judge of massachusetts, accountable to no one, who ordered the massacusettes legislature, accountable to everyone, to make a law no one voted for. It was a mayor of san francisco who daringly used his position to override the law without a vote or informal plebecite outside his little realm and married gays. To me, if you wanna start using the word "force upon" it started there. Feinstien the today lamented that san fran mayor for his brash actions that catalyzed the republican machine. And you make the mistake of believing that only the liberals were for the passage of civil rights. The liberals of today are more like hyperliberals. the "liberals" of the past who did all this are hugely more conservative than the protestors in SF now are. Martin Luther King for example would be called homophobic. all the ppl of that generation would thus be called reactionary? i think not. The lines arent so cut and dry. DOnt for a second think liberals did it alone. If u watch the footage of the marches at selma there are alottta white ppl in there too. im sure they definitly on most other issues were more conservative than the blacks like interracial marraige etc. No one calls them reactionary.

There absolutely is no reason to be saddned by ones education, if by education you mean schooling in college. The common person indeed is stupid. and ugly. and fat. and diabetic. and on some fad diet. yet they all have college diplomas. We have a unique ability to think for ourselves romit and its hard not to have an elitist attitude. i still have the belif that onyl the knowledgable and those who have proved to posess logic beyond Homo-erectus should be allowed to vote. of course then id lierally be 1000 total votes. and at that point its not voting. more sitting around a table w/ some beers and deciding. oh and cigarettes. Whereas its not wrong to be educated i would advise you to rethink ur value of "education." i have seen far stupider and arrogant kids in college than outside the ivory tower. Just cuz you flitted through 4 years of any school and have along the way, learned a gaggle of statistics, figures, and facts through your four years of sleeping and drinking or devoting a calc book to memory, that still doesnt mean youre a fully thinking developed human being. to me if there is anyhting worse than the ignorant person that never went to college, it is the igorant person that has gone to college and come out just as stupid. all of berkley being liberal in some respect doesnt mean smart ppl are liberal and dumb ppl arent. it just means either by personal thought and decision or by someone near you spoonfeeding you ideas, u come to the same conclusion. whereas you can logically and eloquently state ur beliefs with reason, most ppl cant. i think thats the same regardless of red/blue/liberal/conservative. It is stupid, mediocre, and pathetic to have voted for bush simply beacuse they were stupid enough to be tricked by Rove's tactics. But i dont think thats wut happened. You say they are illiterate, uneducated fanatics. I totally agree. Esp around the movie "passion of the christ." you had ppl all over the midwest/south put up posters of a bloody jesus as if to guilt trip you into faith. 99 percent of those maggots have never opened up their own dusty bible. The southern, midwest states have some of the lowest IQ. however, you these factors are all irrelevant when it comes to what you believe in. it doesnt matter if you have a phd or not. if you believe life begins at conception, then abortion will be wrong. whether u believe gays are simply sexually promiscuous deviants or u believe theyre naturally occuring, if u still believe marraige is between man and woman, and if the gays want somethin like it they can make up their own, that kind of conclusion doesnt require knowledge of the human lipid bilayer system or wut other nonsense colleges feed you nowadays. COlleges that growingly replace classical literature with nonsense minority written books for the sake of mixing up the races of authors, cuz tahts true diversity you kno rohit, when ppl all look different. i dont think ull debate me when i say college curriculum is slowly becoming nonsense as the linear subjects are tossed aside for quixotic ventures of half-academics/half pleasing the NAACP. I digress again. The Rove reserves as i call them, did not vote on stupidity or fanaticism as u suggest. Principles are born of much simpler things than psychology 101. The ability to stick to them is also something not taught in colleges. Beacuse they were well organized does not mean they are fanatics. Democrats were pitifully, almost curiously unorganized. This time around your vote, had little effect? perhaps. youre one of my smarter friends and i have no doubt, were u multiplied by the htousands, the democrats would have no problem figuring out a new campaign strategy, that LEAVES OUT MTV/HOLLYWOOD, and handles itself professionally, they can win or at least have a shot. After all karl rove isnt God. What kind of a party puts Kerry out campaigning in america with a blatant boston redsox hat on? esp in the south? what kind of party encourages him to go windsurfing and seem even more out of touch? Moreover now that i think about it, there really is no choice in action from here on out for liberals. The way this nation is set up, which was to keep it from being a true mobocracy, you need the southern midwest votes. Cali and NY may be the coolest (Cali being the coolest of them all [and by cali i mean SOCAL]) doenst matter. Efforts to turn out the vote and teach its followers to logically contend wherever they go on a 1 to 1 basis instead of burn flags and puppets in streets are no longer optional. I consider myself american and i seriously resent the fact that out of the left comes this lambasting ntion that we america is the terror and evil of the world. If we so are, they wony dont those bastards leave? How can u not anger and help the cohesion of the "red states" when u have ppl like that? it makes no sense. u wont find me in an uncle sam costume come independence day but u can bet ur ass i belive there are far worse evils than bush or america. blaming everyone but yourself doesnt get you anywhere. Neither does the blind hatred that has fueled the DNC since 4 years ago. Even our mothers say " dont get mad, get even." and that adage works for a reason. Repubilcans have every right to be mad. George bush has every right to excoriate and be vindictive towards liberals. hell even i am sometimes and i dont even vote. but they dont. they get even. the dems need to learn this lesson. had the dems had karl rove, they woulda won by a landslide. if ur tellin me thats impossible with THAT kinda media imbalance, thats absurd.

lastly id like to note how usay consider me on my intellect abilities, instead of race/religion. sadly i think its inherent human laziness that makes ppl first look at race/religion etc, more easily identifiaable markers. It takes time to consider intellect and ability. When u apply for jobs or even colleges, you are first nothing more than a name, race, religion, age, and sex. there isnt possibly enough time to kno everyones intellect and ability. i think thats just how the world is.

Georrge bush, possibly one of the most cretinously stupid public figures of our time, won with good margins. margins not seen since reagan. RONALD REAGAN. a man in his death is more eloquent than i will be in my life. It is impossible that it was republican revolution, but rather a democrat failure. there is no time to hate for democrats. no time to fume. but rather time to retool and rearm. God knows they need it. hint: start w/ terry mcauliffe.

jesus that was a long ass rant. sorry but i had to get some things off my mind as i watch a party w/ so many valid points and a crucial role in american politics slowly steps back onto the old path that got them nowhere fast in the first place. btw has anyone seen that 911 conspiracy question stuff? simply airing that would have retired Bush in a day.

Ed said:

The part where u bring up the civil rights movement i think is the weakest part of ur arguement romitash. Certainly this nation usually in the north has had to pull the rest of the nation by the bootstraps when it came to slavery, and then civil rights. But in those cases, we have an obivious right and wrong side.

Hindsight is 20/20, Ed. These issues only seem clear because we've moved so far past them. Almost everyone who had a full life during a time when there were actually two sides to those issues is dead now.

There are still a lot of people around that think that the Vietnam war was a good idea. But they'll be dead soon. And when they are, I'm sure the historical opinion will settle down to: "Utter folly."

I'm sure history will be as discourteous to Republican decisions today as those in the past. The central idea of the Republican party--fiscal conservatism--is much harder to honestly condemn. Unfortunately, this policy has been tainted by religious and moral values. If we could somehow seperate those two almost-contrasting ideals into two parties, the democrats would run the country.

It's funny that this article is titled "Better Dead Than Red," because a young liberal from Georgia just blew his brains out at Ground Zero in protest of Bush's election. And just yesterday NBC news ran a story about a huge emigration to Canada that is actually starting to happen. So I guess "Better a Hoser Than Red" is also true.