Mom has been invited to a lunch with Diane Denish, the democratic gubernatorial candidate for New Mexico. She's trying to get me a ticket so I can join her.
A little history, Diane Denish was the Bernalillo County President for the democratic party and Mom was 2nd Vice President many years ago. I was a ward chair at that time, so we rubbed shoulders a few times. I was sponsoring YMCA's Youth and Government at my school and Diane graciously spoke to the entire group in Santa Fe during our mock legislatures. I even gave her some literature on William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold Speech. In August of 2009 coming back from a trip to Oklahoma we ran into her and her husband at a curio rest stop on I-40 and she said hello to me. Mom had a nice little chat with her.
This means I might have 30 seconds to speak to power. What do I say? Obviously I won't have time to say it all, so I thought I'd post my thoughts here.
1. Stop the duck and cover. Not just in this campaign, but all over the country the reptilian party is giving shock and awe. The democrats are only ducking and covering. By this I don't mean throw the mud back, that's the strategy that's killing them. Get a backbone and be proud of your accomplishments: The Health Care Reform bill, restored regulations on Wall Street and Banks, pulling back from Iraq, the stimulus package. The reptilians are screaming all these were too much and the progressives (including me) are screaming they're not enough. But they are accomplishments. Shout them from the tree tops.
2. Stimulus package: all the reptilian commercials hit the theme of a FAILED 800 billion stimulus. Not one democrat has refuted this accusation. This is suicide!
When Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996 every speech he boasted of 100,000 more police officers on streets, 100,000 more teachers in the classrooms. Use the same strategy. The stimulus package for the last two years saved thousands of police and firefighter jobs, it saved thousands of teaching positions, it saved thousands of construction jobs. Those salaries that were saved meant more spending in the economy saving thousands of retail jobs. Yes unemployment is high, yes APS is right now considering laying off nearly 500 teaching position for next month. What we need is not to accuse the stimulus package as being a failure, what we need is more federal spending to keep police officers, fire fighters, teachers, construction workers on the job. Without that stimulus package what we are facing now would have been reality two years ago.
3. This election is about saving jobs, and that means more governmental spending, not less. The reptilian party wants to destroy jobs by keeping a tax break for the top 1% of our population that has already led to a loss of revenue in the last ten years of 2.7 trillion dollars, and if retained would do the same in the next ten years. That's what the reptilians are offering. Ten more years of everything going to the top 1% and the bottom 99% getting squeezed. How much could we handle the budget deficit, provide decent health care for all, and have a jobs package by only raising the top income tax bracket from the current 36% back to the 39% it was at during the Clinton Administration. Remember when we actually had a balanced budget and were paying off the national debt?
When little miss reptile talks about our national debt being too high, laugh in her face and at all those who mindlessly make this ludicrous statement. They were the ones who ran up the debt, don't blame the one's trying to clean up their mess.
4. Let Bill Richardson campaign for her. Joe Biden was here and tied up rush hour traffic morning and evening, not the best way to get votes. Bill Clinton is planning on a stop. Why not use the one guy who's in the round house's adjoining office? It's mind boggling that the latest poll had little miss reptile leading Denish 47% to 41%. Little miss reptile has been hitting her over the head for nine months about how bad Richardson was as governor. The man won two elections very handily with Denish as his running mate. Turn him loose to crow the praises of his eight years running this state. Let him explain how much better New Mexico would be if Bush had not starved the states of federal support making them dip into their reserves when the economy was strong. This could turn the campaign around.
5. In conclusion: If Al Gore had been assertive instead of wooden and let Bill Clinton campaign for him in 2000 he would have been elected president (well he actually was, but it wouldn't have been so close that Bush could steal it).
Denish is making the same mistakes. Stop the duck and cover and nit picking mud slinging. Richardson would gain her votes if she'd only let him.
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