There are two viable political parties in this country. The Evil Party and the Stupid Party. I’m a card carrying member of the Stupid Party. Always have been. Always will be. The Stupid Party was once known as The Party of the People. Now it’s just the Stupid Party. How else can one describe it? When a cataclysmic event is occurring only the Stupid Party would be oblivious to it. Only the Stupid Party wouldn’t have a clue about what to do about it. One such event is occurring now: the window of opportunity.

A window of opportunity occurs only rarely in American politics. In the last 100 years it’s only happened twice. It’s that moment in time when a tipping point occurs, when the American public as a polity steps back from business as usual, calls into question its deeply held assumptions which have governed its decision making and voting patterns. You might say it is the only time when the public has an open mind. It’s a time when even articles of faith are called into question. It’s a dangerous time for the party in power. It’s a glorious time for the party that has been marginalized and unable to get the ear of the American people. Of course, when someone gives you their ear you need to have something to say.

In the election of 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt sensed a window of opportunity. The government had been in conservative hands for the longest time. Herbert Hoover had done nothing about the deepening depression. Trapped by his conservative ideology Hoover believed that market forces would solve the problem. FDR pictured Hoover as Nero fiddling while Rome burned. He proposed a New Deal. An activist government on behalf of the average working person. He pictured Republicans as captives of the monied interests. In short, he made conservative a dirty word in American politics. As President he continued to promote his New Deal and ridicule conservatives through his fireside chats. His legacy is history. Truly, here was a man that knew what to do with a window of opportunity.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan and the Republican marketing machine took a look at the Jimmy Carter presidency and saw a window of opportunity. Carter had presided over high inflation, high unemployment, gas lines and of course the hostages. Carter added to his woes by blaming his inability to deal with these problems on the malaise of the American people. The right-wing sensed that for the first time since FDR’s New Deal they could launch a direct assault on liberalism (Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon accommodated New Deal programs and never really threatened them). They looked at how FDR had used events to destroy conservatism and returned the favor. They didn’t make the mistake of trying merely to destroy Carter. The hostages weren’t just Carter’s fault-they were the fault of weak-kneed liberal foreign policy. Inflation and high unemployment were the fault of liberal economics and so on with all the other issues. They proposed their own alternative conservative philosophy that has been marketed so well ever since: strong military, less spending, lower taxes. We as a country have been driftng to the right ever since.

Sometime between the defeat of Kerry and the 2006 midterm elections the window of opportunity opened again. The American public is a forgiving lot but even they could no longer put up with this worst administration of all time. The constant scandals, the insane and never ending war, government for and by the rich….etc, etc. The public’s ears were finally open to the other side. And what did they hear? Nothing. The Stupid Party’s campaign consisted of: We’re Not Them-Vote For Us. Of course, the public having no choice did. The politicians and activists seemed pleased that they had achieved a one vote Senate majority after 6 years of the worst administration in history. It’s a pathetic record, and if they don’t have the sense to be ashamed of it I’ll do it for them. Want proof? Ask yourself this: Why are all the Republican Presidential candidates tripping over one another to prove that they are the most conservative candidate? Because the sniveling pols and activists of the Stupid Party didn’t have the guts to equate the failures and disasters of the Bush administration with the conservative ideology that is destroying this country. Instead of seeking a sea-change they were content with an easy plurality. I fear they will do the same in 2008 and then sometime after the window will close. We must avoid this result at all costs.

The hardest change is the change we impose on ourselves. We need the courage to change what we are doing wrong. We must acknowledge that the country has drifted to the right for the last 40 years, and that very statement constitutes a failure on our part. What we have done has failed to stop that. As the cliche goes: Insanity is continuing to the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I propose that we take a hard look at the following areas of our activism:

1) How we and our candidates relate to the voters. It never fails to amaze me how little understanding there is on our side of what wins and loses elections. The Evil Party is light years ahead of us in this regard and we must close this gap fast.

2) We are the only party in the history of the world that outsources its election and message. In the Evil party the 501’s, NRA and swiftboat type groups are allies and adjuncts to the in-house campaign. The message and talking points are developed within the party and disseminate outward through the party infrastructure. In the Stupid Party these groups are the campaign. This confuses our message, puts people as spokesmen for you that you wouldn’t elect dogcatcher in your own town, and makes our candidates have to overcome the damage that these groups do in the field.

3) Polarization on the Left - the growing tendency of absolutism on the left destroys our chances of taking our message to the American people. When the Reverend Martin Luthur King Jr. conducted his Civil Rights crusade he was accompanied by whites, blacks, Jews, atheists and progressives from all walks of life. They put aside their differences to work for a progressive cause. If King were here today could he even get started? The atheists would say he believes in myths like Zeus; the Christians would say the atheists are going to hell; the Jews and the blacks would be at war over the state of Israel and the Palestinians. The right doesn’t want us to grow up and accept our differences because if we do, it spells real trouble for them.

In the next couple of issues I will be writing essays on all three of these points. I hope it will spark a debate and introspection on the left so that we activists can develop a plan to walk our party through the window of opportunity and cause the sea-change that we all desire for America. We must seize this moment in history to make our party , once again, The Party of the People. Or we could do nothing and remain the Stupid Party.

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