Steps to Taking Back Our Country

After Ben's fantastic post, I wanted to post something positive. I've been trying to think about what we learned from this election and here are four points. I also want to ask one thing, if you're going to write something please try to refrain from stereotyping. People stop listening when you start stereotyping, however you may feel about those people that voted for George W. Bush, it helps no one to call them stupid. We all know and respect someone that voted for Bush. They obviously saw this whole thing differently. Everyone's vote is worth the same and they chose differently than you did. While I'm not claiming to understand them, name-calling towards anyone, including Bush, is not productive. Let's keep this civil and try to understand that they are people too, they just happen to be people who prioritize things differently.

With that said here are four points. Please feel free to comment and add anything you think I may have missed, let's start trying to get positive.

1. Continue to organize: Let's use what we have built here and not give up. We lost this one, but for the first time we have an infrastructure online that can do things like raise $173,000 in less than two hours. This whole online Democratic community is less than two years old. Of course the Republicans have four years to figure out how to build their own, but we've got a head-start, so let's take advantage of it.

2. Get the youth to vote: The lesson we've learned here is that 18- to 29-year-olds are full of it. They talked a lot of game, but when it came time to actually get in that booth they didn't carry through. How do we do better next time? This is a digital generation, maybe we need to try to make it easier to register and vote. How about we start pushing digital registration? Email voting? Don't know if these are possibilities, but let's start thinking. Clearly for those youth who got most involved, especially first-time voters, this loss is going to be a huge hit. Let's make sure they all stay involved and stay interested. We can't let Republicans do this better than we do.

3. Unite: Let's put our differences aside and unite as a party. We need to decide what we stand for (not against) and start standing for it. That means we need to stop all these useless protests where people show up for 2,000 different causes. If you want to make an impact, protest with one message. Show your solidarity. I know you all believe in lots of different things, but if it's an Iraq war protest leave the Palestinean flags at home. OK?

4. Define our position: This is the most important of the steps. I've written about it before. We need to stop being the anti-Republican party and become the Democratic party. Let's define our positions and tell the world. Let's be strong and resolute. Let's stand up for what we believe in. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Let's decide who we are.