Rachel Maddow: The People's Budget

[vaberella]

How can we organize to marry both The Progressive Cacucus budget plan, The People's Budget, with Obama's view---which is basically the same (albeit a bit more conservative); to the public.

What I mean is...how do we organize and start creating our own townhalls in our area to get people informed as to what is going on? I strongly believe, and I've said this on other forums, and those who have read what I have written know this, that the way we push the progressive view point is to clearly explain. Unfortunately I feel that Democrats present these things poorly. We know that "liberal" views are seen as socialist. But if the information is being filtered more so by people like us...and not so much our local reps it might help the progressive agenda moving forward.

People like hearing information from friends. They like layman's terms, they like proper explanation and detailed that they can understand. They like dialogue given to them in a way that is more correlated to themselves. Instead of pushing an Obama plan or even labeling it the "Progressive Budget"----we put forth the main ideas of the plan and ask their opinion. If they like it then we can say, put your differences aside, ignore the fact that Obama or even a "liberal" caucus put this forth and see how fundamentally important and beneficial this could be for you and our nation.

I think at this point people will be more receptive. I think the townhalls are great for our presentation. But community leaders should also think about doing this. If you're part of a neighborhood watch team--maybe it would be good to have local meetings or even a barbecue organized around talking about this.

I think this would help us then motivate, even those wary and/or jaded, with the establishment to take get motivated and get things done. We don't always have to agree with the President, but we can get together and agree on something that we think would work.

I'm not sure who may start doing something. I regret I can't do much since I'm in Paris. But maybe we can organize something here on DemocratsforProgress and from there put up videos of townhalls sans politicians that are pushing the Progressive budget and getting people excited. We can send the "home movies" on Youtube and then from there... Possibly then we can see this method to Rachel's show, Tweety's---shoot maybe even Anderson Cooper 360 will be willing to come down and cover this.

Movements start small but can create big waves and I think some of us need to get a bit more aggressive in how we approach this.

I would do this on another liberal website---but there are so many more whingers than there are people who want to get motivated. I had one person tell me that when John Kerry gave up so easily after she worked so hard for his election---she feels that the Presidents should be the one delivering. This shows the a sense of selfish, disillusionment. I think we need to move out of that funk.

What do you guys think?

[vaberella]

~kick~ Thanks for the edit nofurylike.

[Julie]

I think it's a good idea. Frankly I am going to concentrate on the nightmare in MI but would love to see this happen too.

Julie

[There Is No Spoon]

...but she really laid in the the MSM for ignoring/pooh-poohing all things liberal - including this fantastic "People's Budget" that is not only the only one to actually reach a balanced budget 20 years earlier than any other plan, it also does so using progressive policies.

This is the answer to all of your right-wing friends who ask "where's your budget". This is it. Shout it from the rooftops. I'd like to see the Obama administration coopt some of the better ideas from this budget. Yes, I haven't read the details, but Rachel was high on it and I KNOW that she does her homework before reporting on a story. This is the type of budget we want to push.