Even as Democrats feared having to spend as much as $40 million for a bruising, bloody fight expected to drag on for months, this makeshift group of California Democratic operatives needed just weeks to pummel a Republican-funded push for a ballot measure that threatened to change the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.
The ruthlessly effective battle plan of the California Democrats' group raises the specter that, as the 2008 election looms, Republicans may have to confront a far more aggressive Democratic ground game that has revived the old "Clinton war room" philosophy.
"We need to fight back and not be reluctant - that if they come after you with a knife, to pull out a gun," said California Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former spokesman for President Bill Clinton's White House and Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
I heartily approve of shootin' 'em in the kneecaps and then jammin' their own knife up their ass! That's just me showing my bleeding-heart compassionate side.
The rest of the article is good, but I'm using it to lead into a personal opinion.
While we decry the Dems' constant caving in to Bush instead of givin' him what for, and rightly so, perhaps they're really onto something.
We elected a very bare majority of Dems, expecting them to fight like the blazes and undo the damage Bush and his Repugs have done. I'm beginning to see that they can't. Not yet. There's not enough of them. Yet.
For the disorganized Dems to take on the highly organized Repugs is somewhat akin to twenty nuns taking on ten Hell's Angels: they outnumber them, but not by enough. The best they can do is to get their asses kicked a little slower until they can get many, many more nuns.
The numbers as they stand aren't enough. Even with the majority, the Dems are up against a formidable enemy. They are backing up a little slower than they were before, but they have to put their resources where they'll do the most good until they can get overwhelming numerical superiority.
That opportunity will come next November. As much as we would like to see the Dems put an end to the Iraq flusterpluck and administration lawlessness in general right fuckin' now, it ain't got a snowball's chance in Hell until then.
The Repugs know they're going to lose big time in election '08. The California case shows the lengths to which they will go to try to get any advantage, along with their tried-and-true election-stealing, caging, voter disenfranchisement, etc., etc. They're damn good at it, and with their backs against the wall, even in a weakened state, they're still damn dangerous.
What is shown by the defeat of the proposed measure in California is that the Dems can get together and fight these bastards when they have to. And win.
It's all about the next election. Even if you're not happy with the Dems, and I'm not and you're not, they are our ONLY CHOICE. Yes, we want change NOW, but it ain't gonna happen. We don't like it, but that's the way it is. Period. If Bush decides not to leave, then it's a whole different ball game, but the way it stands now, we can only affect the change we want with a Democratic President and an OVERWHELMING Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Think of it as 'air superiority' - deny the sky to the enemy and you can bomb and strafe his ground forces at will. it's simply a matter of numbers and raw power, not of ideas.
The way we're going to get it is by putting aside differences on the finer points of philosophy and progressive ideology, and holding our noses and voting Democratic. We can get back to hammering on the Dems once the Repugs are knocked back to insignificance. This will be the Armaggedon of elections, a fight between good and evil, perhaps our last chance. Very simple. The only thing necessary to assure the continued dominance of evil will be to stay away from the polls in disgust or to vote for a third, or fourth, or fifth party candidate that will subtract from the Dems.
We need to come out for the Dems in such numbers that the Repugs can't cheat enough to beat us.
We are not in a position to pick our fights. This fight against the Bush cabal was thrust upon us by bad people, and it is the fight of our lives. And the lives of generations yet to come. We will not win by saying we're too weak to fight back. We win by ganging up on the bad guys. There are enough of us if we pull together.
To complete my metaphor, we need a veritable ocean of habits and wimples and a din of clacking rosary beads to beat the shit out of the bad guys.
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