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more attention needs to be paid to old-school mobilization.
one of the main practical reasons the right did as well as it did was because they organized at the grassroots level, using the churches that were politically sympathetic as their base networks. this mobilization explains more about the rise and usage of "moral" (read christian rightwing) issues than anything about the substance of these issues does.
obviously the seperation of church and state is irrelevant at this level for these folk.
the other major factor that will not last too long (i hope) is the iraq fiasco--i wonder if the right needs war to sell its ideology--this was the other boundary condition that bolstered the usage of fear as campaign tactic for them.
as for "suggestions" coming from the right about what the democrats need to do--they are almost entirely not worth paying attention to. they are disengenous, top to bottom. they are based on trying to turn the results of intensive, sustained, well-funded grassroots activity into something that can be explained ideologically. the premise is false.
but this is how it goes: the right is interested in total domination. the folk who run the show do not invest in this process in anything like the way the people who are mobilized within the show do. the latter might actually care about "moral" issues--the folk running the show care about getting in power and staying there.
gramsci was right: this is a war of position, a war over the frame of reference within which politics can function. what the democrats--and the left (they are far far from identical) needs to do is take this fact seriously. so far they have not.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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