We have a lot of work to do

Vibinc stood up and offered 50 days of his service at no charge, many of us in the liberal Tennessee blogosphere are working on organizational efforts as we speak, and are all talking about both the national victory and the statewide defeat at the polls on Tuesday.

We're mighty damn frustrated, because I see what happened in Tennessee in 2008 as a reflection of what happened to Congressional Democrats in 1994. Especially in the House, the Democratic leadership had just been in power so long they forgot why they were put there, and were reduced to fighting endless series of holding actions to preserve their power, which they then did not use enough to protect the people.

I understand that if you took out Shelby and Davidson counties, this state would lurch so far to the right it would be uninhabitable, but you cannot be just Republican-lite and expect to stay in power here. You have to fight back, to be aggressive, and to do what's RIGHT rather than what your big-money donors (who will leave you now that you're no longer in power) want you to do.

So, am I suggesting we all move into yurts, take up co-op farming and withdraw from society? Hardly. We have to rebuild FROM THE GROUND UP.

For now, stay away from wedge issues (as the Goopers are now going to try to ram them down our throats). Work on ECONOMIC ISSUES, and GET YOUR MESSAGE OUT. Nobody really cares about the inside-baseball reasons you kicked out Kurita (which, while I eventually agreed with it, I also know that on some levels it hurt us), they want to see real action taken to help their lives.

I'm not going to bash Gray Sasser for his shot at bloggers, which our Blogfather, Randy Neal, so eloquently refuted, I just want to say that we want to help, but we are not just going to parrot the message if we don't think it addresses the situation properly. We write what we believe, and we are not just shills. Work with us, as we have all worked in elections and campaigns repeatedly.

As I said the other day, we need to ORGANIZE. We can't get into campaigns where all they do is out-negative each other; I wouldn't have voted for EITHER candidate in the Camp-Gresham race based on their commercials. Vicious attacks are the Republicans' game, and we need to tell people why they should vote FOR our candidates.

So, while I am deeply happy about the Obama-Biden victory, I know that it is only a sign that our work has just started. We in the blogosphere want to help this party rebuild from the ground up, because that's the any way it can be sustainable.

And, I offer this invitation: All of you who seek the TDP Chairmanship, come to Memphis for Drinking Liberally and we will do our damndest to have a crowd for you. Be prepared to answer tough questions, but we want to move this state to the left where it belongs, and we are prepared to work with any of you, if you are willing to work with us.

My email address is sjs1959 at gmail dot com if you are interested.

Deal?