Radical Georgia Moderate

I found this on Tony Simon’s site. Hilarious. If you can get past the tone and the language and quit laughing for a few seconds, there are several solid points raised. Here’s my favorite:

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we’re-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

I first saw that statistic on Stockton and Tweed’s site, though I wasn’t able to find the exact URL for the post. The moral of that story is, umm, that the Religious Right doesn’t have a monopoly on morals. Obviously, it will take a little more civility to get that point across.

Well, that was embarrassing. Yaaarr was down for about a day and a half — long enough for me to think the company hosting it had crapped out permanently — and now all the sudden it’s back up. I’ve already made my transition here, and I’m already moving Reggie over, but at least I can redirect people here instead of them thinking I just fell off the face of the Earth. Go take in your last bit of nostalgia while it lasts.

What about this for a general theme in 2006? One way a lot of people (Cobb Democratic Party chairman Guy Drexinger for instance) are talking about revitalizing the Georgia Democratic Party is to widen the scope of what “values” actually mean to people. This is how Drexinger is quoted in the Marietta Daily Journal:

“Moral issues now seem to now be a single issue - gay marriage,” [Drexinger] said. “Moral issues go well beyond gay marriage and how the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be replaced by the Republican Party as the party that is the party most in tune with moral issues. I am not sure I have a full understanding of how that has come about.”

I think the theme for Georgia Democrats in 2006 should be “Make Georgia a Family Again.” This slogan works on several levels.

It works as a central rallying point for Dems to talk about what Drexinger suggested above, that the discussion of values needs to be expanded beyond divisive wedge issues into what our obligations as a society are.

It appeals to people who are fed up with the divisive mud slinging that typically defines electoral politics, and would prefer the tone of the rhetoric to be calmed down.

Even many people who are very conservative or very liberal would likely agree that one-party government is a recipe for inefficiency. This appeal could even be made to very conservative people.

It implies without actually saying that the one party Republican state is like a single parent household, which is contrary to what most Georgians value.

It is not a concept the Republicans can co-opt because they are the party in power.

The stream of ads that could come from this theme is endless. What do ya’ll think?

I‘ve been throwing around the idea of writing a “Moderate Manifesto,” though I have yet to start it. There are a lot of people who, like me, wouldn’t necessarily call themselves “progressive” or “conservative” (two words that are practically meaningless now anyway, having been thoroughly bastardized by politicians, the media, etc.) who feel alienated by the political process. I’m going to use this post to brainstorm some disjointed thoughts about my personal goals for electoral politics and how they’d apply to writing such a document.

My long-term goal is to elect a government which provides checks and balances between opposing interests, ensuring that:

• Large groups of minorities have a voice that’s strong enough to keep slim majorities from imposing their will on the rest of the population
• Responsible budgets are passed
• Practical compromises are made, rather than knee-jerk solutions

The drift to the far left and far right by the two respective American political parties wasn’t unexpected, and is perfectly healthy as long as both parties are equally competent in promoting their goals. The problem we’ve got now is the Democratic Party has grown incompetent at promoting its agenda, while the Republican Party promotion machine has been growing stronger for almost 40 years.

That leads me to my short-term goal for Georgia and national politics: to help strengthen the Democratic Party. This is not because my “values” and goals are totally in line with theirs, but is in the interest of having a strong and competent voice of opposition to the majority party’s plans. The most difficult thing about being a conscience moderate is it means consistently siding with the interest struggling to get its message across, whether you agree with what it’s pushing or not.

Everyone has their own opinion about how to dig the Democratic Party from the trenches. Here are some of mine:

• Regardless of what the agenda is going to be, pick one, stick with it, and promote it consistently. It was not John Kerry’s so-called “liberal” voting record that destroyed his presidential election campaign, but rather perceived inconsistencies in that record and in his statements. Those perceived inconsistencies created uncertainty about his principles. Bush also had many inconsistencies in the execution of his goals, but people believed he had a consistent set of principles he used to determine what those goals were.
• Quit assuming people who don’t agree with you are stupid. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
• Reach out to Christian groups. Convince them that Jesus’ values were more in line with a “progressive” agenda than with a “conservative” agenda.
• Georgia Dems should reach out to rural Georgia. National Dems should reach out to middle America. I live in metro Atlanta, so I’m not the person to determine how to talk to rural Georgians. Instead, politicians, pollsters, and operatives in those rural districts should try this radical concept: asking rural Georgians what their concerns are in an honest way, and not in a way meant to skew poll results. The urban-centric, government-is-here-to-hold-your-hand approach was fine 60 or 70 years ago when rural areas were so sparsely populated, but the past 30 years of election results should tell you that approach needs to be changed.
• Get over the utopian fantasy of political correctness in language. In the real world, people offend each other on a daily basis. Politicians who try to be everything to everybody come off as vacillating pussies.

My apologies for the unannounced death of Yaaarr, and the havoc that brings to our NCAA picks contest. Luckily, only David and I had submitted our picks, and I have email records of those two. I’ll update this post with last week’s results when I get the time to format them, but I wanted to go ahead and get the odds back up so people would have time to place bets.

UPDATE: I added last week’s full results in, added the usual instructions and deadline information, and uploaded the full spreadsheet.

Largely ignored among the talk of Republican mandates and shrieks of horror from Democrats over losing control of the state House, a couple of Democrats made unprecedented inroads in southern Cobb County.

AJC photo of Annette Kesting, the Cobb County Commission’s lone Democrat
Doug Stoner, from his website

Cobb County Commission District 4 - Annette Kesting beats Woody Thompson, becoming the lone Democrat and the first African American on the five-member board. One-third of her South Cobb district is comprised of African Americans, according to the AJC. Before the election, Thompson’s internal polling said the district is now 46 percent Republican, which is close to how the results turned out. Kesting beat Thompson by a 51-48 margin.

Georgia Democrats should take note of Kesting’s willingness to talk about her Christianity. The AJC quoted her (login) as saying, “You just have to have faith and stay strong and have Christ in your life. . . . I’m a Christian woman. That’s what I believe.”

State Senate 6th District - Doug Stoner edges out incumbent Sen. Ginger Collins. Stoner’s district has one of the county’s largest Latino and African American constituencies, which he apparently benefited from.

(UPDATE: Tony lives in Stoner’s district, and noted a lot of Flaggers were pissed with Collins, which likely contributed as well)

Guy Drexinger, chairman of the Cobb Democratic Party, told the AJC (login) state House Districts 34 and 38 will be vulnerable in the next election. Additionally, many think District 41 (where I live) may be vulnerable soon. Maybe not 2006 though.

Some other signs things may be picking up for the Dems in Cobb:

Even though Republican incumbent Phil Gingrey trounced Rick Crawford in the 11th U.S. House District, Gingrey lost Cobb County by 2,000 votes.

Only 16.4 percent of Cobb voters went for Mike Sheffield in the Court of Appeals race. You’ll recall Sheffield was the openly-conservative candidate backed by Sadie Field’s Christian Coalition.

No! You’ve robbed me of my goofy borderline-alcoholic pirate cynicism! I can almost hear the outcry. Yes, the new title, appearance, theme, etc. give that impression, but fear not… there’s plenty of cynicism, bitterness, piss, vinegar, and sarcasm left to dish out. It’s going to take me a few weeks to find the right tone for this blog. It won’t be totally stuffy and portentous like a position paper, but it probably won’t be as goofy and vulgar as the last one either. Here was the explanation I wrote for ending Yaaarr, tis me blog! that never actually got posted because the servers just died without warning one dreary day.

Cap’n Brickliver is rumored to be sailing somewhere off the coast of Costa Rica

Given the troubles of Bloghosts, the company which hosts this website, a decision had to be made about how much longer I wanted to continue my blog under this format. Rather than let it wither on the vine until it rotted and fell off, the timing seemed right to move on to something new. So, when Bloghosts dies in January, so will this blog.

An experience I had at a recent Halloween party was in part the inspiration for my decision. Everyone except me and a couple of others dressed for the occasion. It’s not that I wouldn’t have, it’s that I simply forgot. There was a distinct Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe in the room that night. We were shooting saki, the elixir of choice for angry Japanese men. My friend Aaron was looking pretty queer as some sort of vampire syth lord thing, topped off with dark lipstick and no fangs. A large bearded man who was a friend of a friend showed up wearing a red dress, looking like Little Orphan Annie injected with a lethal dose of testosterone and the growth hormones used in chicken feed. The absurdity of the moment hit me when he and I were standing on the porch having a serious discussion about… something. It doesn’t really matter what, and I don’t remember.

That, my friends, is this blog in a nutshell: a serious discussion with a large bearded man in a dress.

If I forgot to say it earlier, thanks to everyone who read me at my old place, and I hope you’ll keep reading what I have to say here. Further, while I primarily think of this as my blog, I am open to the idea of guest posts. I’d like for the discussion here to resemble a marketplace of ideas more so than a purely liberal or conservative or other viewpoint. A lot of the problem with the “blogosphere” as I see it is it’s segregated itself into partisan camps that blindly push one ideology to solve all problems. I was as much a part of that problem as anyone else, and I’m hoping to change that somewhat here.

It shouldn’t surprise you given the title that I plan to write a lot about politics, but it’d be pretty boring if that was all I wrote about. We’ll still have NCAA football picks (starting with the bowl games in late December), and I’m still planning an NCAA basketball tournament contest. I’ll still cry into my beer when the Tennessee Volunteers football squad puts up another lackluster bowl performance under Phil Fulmer. I might write some actual movie reviews. We’ll just have to see what else. The beauty of blogs is they often seem to evolve into something other than what they were originally intended for.