Stateside With Rosalea Barker
Torquing Heads
Torque is a measure of how much a force acting on an object causes that object to rotate. So if you put a handful of
folks together who are determined to move conservative people's politics towards the progressive end of the spectrum
then you have the torquing heads at the panel discussion I attended last week, What Are Americans Voting For?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0611/f9b1341b9816f0748e91.jpeg
Click for big version
The moderator, in the centre, is Bruce Cain, a well-known local and national commentator on politics. To his immediate
left is George Lakoff, who believes there is no spectrum with progressives at one end and conservatives at the other;
rather, we are all bi-conceptual. And on Lakoff's left is Paul Pierson, a Yale-trained political scientist and
last-minute substitute for former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich who was unable to attend.
At the opposite end of the line-up is Joan Blades, co-founder of Moveon.org and Momsrising.org, both of which are
Internet-based grassroots organising entities. Next to her is Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, a political
blogging site that draws over 20 million unique visitors each month.
Moulitsas opened the discussion by talking about how the Democratic Party has lost touch with those parts of the country
that either aren't on the East or West Coast or aren't a battleground state, whereas Republicans understand that every
vote, everywhere, counts.
Pierson quoted a June 2006 Congressional Quarterly comment that "Republicans have everything going for them, except
popularity", to demonstrate his theory that the media has a "senior class president" view of politics and as a result
only follows races that fit that mould.
Joan Blades, wearing a Momsrising.org T-shirt upon which Rosie the Riveter holds a baby instead of rolling up her sleeve
to build bombers, said that although the issues that organisation addresses are not front page issues, they are the
kinds of issues that will get people out to vote.
Lakoff stressed that "it's very important to know that nobody makes it on their own in this country" and that taxes are
the common wealth being used for the common good, an idea that underpinned much of what the Founding Fathers were
seeking to create with the constitution.
At the end of the discussion, Cain asked the panelists for their predictions of Democratic gains on November 7.
Moulitsas gave a range of between 10 and 45 and Pierson predicted 22-25. Blades said there'll be a big mid-term turnout
for the progressives, with Moveon.org members already having made more than 2 million get-out-the-vote phone calls.
Lakoff countered that there are 60,000 Republicans in California alone standing by to make phone calls in the last 72
hours.
MP3 audio is available at the World Affairs Council website at http://wacsf.vportal.net/
If you sort by date, the event was on 10/26/06
PS: This post was going to be accompanied by photos of 5 pairs of feet, but my focus wasn't all that good and besides,
someone got to that idea before me in a completely different context, judging by this photo from a recent copy of the
Bay Area's Spanish language weekly el Mansajero:
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rosalea.barker@gmail.com
--PEACE--