Missing the Vast Left Wing Bus.

This afternoon I chose a title for today’s blog. I was going to call it “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.” Then I turned on The Daily Show and found out that some clown just wrote a BOOK by the same title. Not only that, it was about the same thing I was going to write about, only with more words!!! I’ve been saying since before the election that the democrats needed to form an interconnected web of liberal organizations patterned on the movement created by the republicans following the Goldwater defeat of 64. And now they’ve apparently gone and done it! And I’m still in school!

So I have missed the Vast Left Wing Bus. Oh well.

Actually, me and my conservative buddy JP really did get on the vast left wing bus back in 92. It was Jerry Brown’s campaign bus, and we were hanging out with his former chief of staff, who had organized a campaign rally for him on the capital steps in Sacramento. It was a big, psychedelic school bus, kind of a 90s version of the partridge family bus with Jerry Brown for President painted across the side. Everybody was whooping and hollering and pretending Jerry could actually win the nomination (I voted for him, and would again: Jerry is my dude).

But back to the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: what interests me is how, like the Right Wing version, it relies on manipulation of the media. Spin, that is. Not at its core—the foundation of the movement on the left is the same as the movement on the right, a collection of policy ideas coming out of liberal think-tanks bankrolled by big money donors like George Sorros and Ted Turner. It’s at the next level that the spin revolves. The VLWC™ is investing in talk radio via Air America and polemic journalism through Michael Moore. They are starting to release talking points. And I saw the passion that exists at the grassroots level when I volunteered for the Kerry campaign.

Might I suggest a one word plan of attack: conservative.

Do to the word “conservative” what Regan and Atwater did to the word “liberal.” Talk about the “conservative agenda,” label men like DeLay “among the most conservative men in congress,” and rail on their “conservative voting records.” Hammer on it again and again: conservative, conservative, conservative! Now is the time, because the conservatives’s power is such that they are getting fat and lazy. They are going way too far for most people with their statements about renewing the Patriot Act, and the whole Teri Schiavo fiasco, and social security. They are in total control and that makes them vulnerable. It has already started. The Dems have taken a page out of the GOP playbook by going after the republican speaker on ethics violations while hammering on an unpopular social initiative. They’ve got a real chance at the house in two years.

If they make “conservatrive” a dirty word: if they make “conservative” the new “liberal.”