Isn't it time for the Democrats to dump their phony "consultants" and find people who can generate real campaign heat with real issues?

Note: This post was written before I read Howie's musings based on Larry Sabato's latest crystal-balling. I'm still not persuaded, but even if the most fantastic electoral predictions come true, and Democrats retake both houses of Congress and lots of statehouses, I'm extremely skeptical of how much good can come from a governing coaliton of "Democrats" who have no political identity except "not Bush."

This is just some stray thinking prompted by Howie's recent post regarding the new film by Robert Greenwald (right) about the war profiteers, as well as the terrific William Rivers Pitt column on Truth-Out that's referenced therein, which I too recommend highly.

Here's what it made me think: If people like Rahm Emanuel and all those DLC triangulators spent less time shivering in their socks about the possibility that some voter might discover that they actually believe in something--something other than their own career niches, that is--and more time figuring out how to make issues like this real and urgent to average voters, then there might not be more than a few congressional districts in the entire U.S. where a supporter of the policies of the Bush administration would stand any chance of being elected.

After all, Karl Rove and the other GOP strategists have learned how to make people care about issues that aren't even issues! Why should it be so difficult to make them care about things that really affect their lives?

Why is it that the only thing Democratic consultants and media advisers seem to be able to do (or advise) is to pretend to be Republicans?

After all, the foreign policy of the Bush administration shouldn't even appeal to people who consider themselves "conservative." Yes, such people do typically place high emphasis on issues of national security, but as Pitt points out in his column about the gazillion-dollar American stake in international arms trafficking:

"This does not make the world safer, but only reinforces the permanent state of peril we find ourselves in. Meanwhile, a few people get paid handsomely."

We know that the Republicans are going to continue running on 9/11 until it stops working, and Democrats can't win on any large scale until they can defuse the issue. However, isn't it obvious that on the facts the national-security issue should be one-sided in Democrats' favor? Provided they know how to make the case.

One way not to do it is via the strategy of Boss Rahm (left): having his hand-picked Republican Lite candidates say nothing at all about Iraq.

Then, once the bogus GOP national-security issue is turned around, there are a half dozen or more other basic quality-of-living issues that real Democrats could be working on with real consultants, to figure out how to make them real and urgent for average American voters.

There is, for starters, the Republican "culture of corruption." This is not a propaganda phrase. It's real.

Hey, I understand that overwhelmingly people don't care about it. I know that average voters either find it too abstract or remote, or just chalk it up to "they all do it." But my guess is that anyone reading Down With Tyranny knows better, and understands that this is an issue that should matter to every American. Why, think what could be done with all those billions of dollars going down the sinkhole of Republican corruption! We could begin to reverse some of the devastation caused by two terms of the Bushworld slash-and-burn assault on America and the world.

I keep thinking of the remarkable quote from Dwight Eisenhower which Pitt uses as an epigraph for his column:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

I don't think it's a wild leap to the idea: Democrats can win elections by standing for something that matters to the voters.

Why aren't Democratic strategists studying that Eisenhower quote and figuring out how to take it that one step further and translate it into campaign format? (I'm afraid I know the answer. While the Democratic share may be only a small fraction of the Republican one, there are too many Democrats doing too much business with the war profiteers.)

Unfortunately, as DWT readers know only too well, thanks to the efforts of the Democratic campaign committees in both the House and the Senate, the party is going to be quite poorly endowed in November with candidates ready, willing and able to carry the kinds of fights I'm talking about to the voters. But there will be some, and if they succeed, in succeeding elections there will be more.

Eventually even the mainstream media may catch on. They always insist that the struggle for control of the Democratic Party is between extremist liberals and blog fanatics on the one hand and "pragmatists" and "centrists" on the other. Maybe one day soon that struggle will be seen as being between committed progressives with an agenda to restore this country to greatness and extreme, do-nothing, ass-covering status quo-ers.