Finding God

This article by Nicholas Kristoff is more of the "rush to the center" mentallity that I hate.

"Findin' Religion" to garnish votes is more of the middle ground pandering I think we need to stay away from. If middle America found it insincere of John Kerry to suddenly embrace his faith, they'll see through any attempt by the Democratic party to find God all of a sudden. If we listen to all of the pundits from outside we'll be running in circles. Their contradictions are clear and evidenced in this other NYT op-ed by by Daivd Brooks stating that its not values, its issues, stupid. So far we need to rush to the right, rush to the center, fire up the base, blah, blah, blah. Again, if we keep listening to everyone else, we will be letting the right define the political conversation while we scramble to find our voice.

We need to stop the madness. Analyzing why Bush won is constructive, but let's not over do it. We also need to analyze why we lost. We have allowed the right to define us. They use the word "liberal" as a pejorative term. We've allowed the right to imply that only certain areas of the country represent American values. We've allowed the name calling and divisive politicking to take root and haven't done enough about it. John Kerry lost because Bush was able to define him has a "liberal from Massachusettes" who is "out of touch with American Values" and John Kerry was never able to break free from that image. We need to stop letting the right control the conversation.

I think truly defining ourselves and making it clear that it comes from a firm moral center that has the best interest of America and American citizens in mind is the only way out. We need to set our agenda.