The media is full of Katrina recollections and evaluations right now, and by Labor Day, they'll be gone.  Democrats can't let America forget Katrina.

I say this because those responsible for the unnecessary tragedies in the Gulf, and the sickening fact that they continue, must be held accountable, and must be prevented from endangering more lives. This is a dangerous situation for the American present and future, and just about all the nation can do about it at this point is to break the Republican rule of the federal government by electing Democrats to Congress.

So I am going to be unapologetically political here.  What follows is my first draft script for a Katrina campaign ad, simple enough for amateurs to produce but designed for wide distribution. I've posted a version with photos at Dreaming Up Daily that gives a rough idea of what it might look like.    

It's crunch time.  It's time to get the main messages out. With candidate speeches and blogs, big money ads and homemade video, with all the means there are.

It's time for Democrats to tell their story, and the first thing the party must recognize is that they need to tell it from the beginning.  That's where most good stories start, but there are real world reasons for what I mean.

From the beginning means: don't assume.  Don't assume voters know a lot.  Don't be condescending or phony, but just deal with that fact.  And understand the story they want to hear this election year.  

When I learned about Thomas Jefferson in grade school I was thrilled. Maybe it had something to do with the adventures of Johnny Tremain and the Sons of Liberty fighting for independence on Disneyland.  But he was a tonic in my Catholic classrooms: reason and rebellion in one package that the nuns couldn't touch.

In fourth grade I copied the entire Declaration of Independence from a textbook facsimile in Jefferson's hand.  I even imitated the handwriting.  In fifth grade when I ran a history class in our one and only "student teaches a class" day, I used Jefferson's "Have we found angels in the form of kings" for my punchline.

Here are a few quotes from Jefferson relevant to the moment.  Feel free to add your own.

If the 2006 elections were held in March or April instead of November, just about all any Democrat would have to do to win would be to buy 15 seconds of TV time and mutter three words--Iraq, Dubai, Katrina--then go home and plan the victory party.

Well, not really, but you get the idea. Unfortunately the election isn't till November, and the issue with the greatest staying power and most potential isn't either of the obvious ones: it's Katrina. It's the Democrats' 9-11.

Dubai may fade, Iraq may change, but Katrina is firmly fixed in the public mind.

Bushites have made shameless and effective political use of 9-11. But Democrats have not effectively focused on an equally powerful phenomenon, with its equally powerful associated images, that is ready-made to tell the tawdry story of Bush administration failure. The Democrats have Katrina. And it's about time they used it.

  On the one hand, this conference is the occasion for the latest research to be announced, which is telling us one story.  

On the other, there is the diplomatic dithering, posturing and above all, the distance between what action is proposed---not only in degree but in kind---and what science is telling us about the problem.

When political activists aren't ignoring the phenomenon that is going to dominate political life for the foreseeable future, they are arguing about the wrong actions.  And Democrats who talk about nothing except Kyoto and fossil fuel emissions are setting themselves up to be co-opted.

Sooner or later the Republicans are going to do a 180 and admit that global heating is real---but there is nothing we can do to stop it.

And they will be right.

Then what are you going to do?

Part of the problem is that there isn't one problem: there are two.

There is the Climate Crisis, which will affect everything for the next fifty years.   And then there is the possible end-game of the far future, which I call Earth=Mars.

Two sets of problems with different actions required. Getting this wrong is politically suicidal, not to mention self-destructive on a vastly larger scale.

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