Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win (Paperback)
Review
A stand-up book from a stand-up guy, showing us how to put progress back into ?progressive.? From broad vision to minute details, Creamer offers an invaluable manual for those who want to reassert our country?s historic egalitarian values of fairness, justice, and opportunity for all. -- Jim Hightower, Best selling author, radio commentator and editor of the Hightower Lowdown.
Bob Creamer has been at the center of every major progressive political movement in America for four decades. If anyone in America knows how to run and win issue campaigns it is Bob. Stand Up Straight is nothing less than the bible for progressive political activists. - Brad Woodhouse, President, Americans United for Change --Brad Woodhouse, President, Americans United for Change
Creamer's classroom has been the frontlines and trenches of progressive organizing, from the Civil Rights Movement to the battle for children's health care. Here, he shows us how to replace fear with hope, to renew the call to commitment, and to create our society's next historical movement. -- Congressman John Lewis (D-GA)
If Progressives are ready to move beyond the Age of W into a winning era, they can start with Stand Up Straight. This is more than a call to arms. This is a battle plan from one of the best campaign minds in America. Bob Creamer takes his readers from values to votes with practical tactics and insight gathered over decades of experience. This book is for players...spectators need not apply. - Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois), Senate Democratic Whip --Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois), Senate Democratic Whip
If every activist in America read Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight, we could change our country. This book will help bring on the New Progressive Era. It's that good - Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) --Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)
Stand Up Straight is a straight up shot in the arm for progressives.Robert Creamer has successfully turned decades of campaign and organizing skills into an essential handbook for understanding political power, activism, and progressive values. Creamer rightly argues that progressives should embrace their core principles and fight for the real political center in American politics today--issues like universal health care and pre-k, energy independence, redeployment from Iraq, and a return to sane and sensible national security policies. -- John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress and former Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton
Stand up Straight is a one-stop, nuts-and-bolts manual on how to run a winning campaign ? and, in the process, return America to its progressive roots. Filled with learned-in-the-trenches lessons, Creamer?s book is a master?s class in electoral politics. -- Ariana Huffington, The Huffington Post
This former Congresswoman from Colorado feels a little silly recommending a book by the husband of one of Congress's greatest progressive current representatives, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Chicago! The real political experience of Robert Creamer makes "Listen to Your Mother, Stand Up Straight!" one of the best "how to do it" books around. Progressives are always accused of being policy wonks with no real political experience on how to deliver. Not the case here, you get the policy and but also how to make that policy a reality! -- Pat Schroeder, President Association of American Publishers, Former Member of Congress
Product Description
To turn this historic opportunity into long-term political realignment, Progressives must forcefully reassert our commitment to fundamental progressive values and to our vision for the future. Some people think that in order to win, Democrats need to move to the political center by adopting conservative values and splitting the difference between progressive and conservatives positions. History shows they are wrong. To win the next election and to win in the long term, we need to redefine the political center. In this book one of America s most experienced political strategists and organizers lays out a broad strategy for progressive victory and describes the tactics needed to win real-world political battles one at a time. The book analyzes: The self-interests of voters; Our targets for political communication; The principles of political messaging; The secrets of winning electoral and issue campaigns; What we mean by progressive values; How to describe a compelling progressive vision for the future.
Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win - Customer Reviews:
This book is bad for the environment since it was a waste of the paper it is written on!!!! The author wrote it while in prison for tax evasion. He is married to an Illinois legislator who is a liberal fascist that wants to actually do away with all private insurance companies and have all health insurance provided by the federal government. You know, the same government who cannot even get enough H1N1 vaccine and who has bankrupt Medicare. The Progressive Party failed 100 years ago and it will fail again because "Progressive" is an oxymoron when it comes to this political ideaology since it is anything but progressive. It is a repressive, totalinarian movement that wants nothing other than to control the lives of every man, woman and child not only in America but the World!!!
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I would rather eat glass than read this tome. As a convicted felon, invited to the White House State dinner, I really have to judge my president's choice of friends. This is a really scary book.
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Haven't read the book; don't plan to. The author is a convicted felon for writing bad checks and ripping off the non-profit organization he was running. I guess I'm not suprised that "Progressive" Democrats would look to some immoral low-life for their game plan.
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Based on four decades of hands-on experience, this book shows how, for political progressives, being right on the issues is less important than being the winner.
A campaign should concentrate their attention on two types of voters: persuadables, or swing voters, and mobilizables, supporters who need to be motivated to go to the polls. If a campaign can peel off the occasional GOP voter or two, that's great, but do not spend a lot of time or money on it. A campaign needs to find, and address, people's self interests: physical needs, need for structure, intellectual stimulation, control over your life, etc.
These days, it is tempting to base a campaign around new media, like blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Do not, for any reason, abandon old-fashioned Get Out the Vote methods, like phone banks, calling people several times during the campaign, and knocking on doors. People like to be asked for their vote.
All the effort in the world will be worthless if the candidate is boring or wishy-washy on the issues. People like to feel that the candidate is on their side, that they aren't afraid to stick to their values, that they have visionj and integrity, and that the candidate respects the voters. Next in importance after having a good candidate is having good organizers and a field operation that can cover the whole area (town, district, state).
It's tempting to think that the election of President Obama, and the current unpopularity of the national Republican Party makes this book not necessary or obsolete. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It's easy, in relative terms, to win one election, whether on the local, state or national level. The hard part is to continue the day-to-day work to get voters to realize that Progressivism can become the dominant American political philosophy. Besides, the Republicans will not stay unpopular forever. They will be back, perhaps in 2010, perhaps in 2012, and Progressives cannot wait for them to return before they start fighting for the future of America. They should be doing everything possible to change the playing field, now.
This book is an excellent place to start. It is full of information for people planning any sort of political campaign, and is extremely highly recommended.
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The goal of Creamer's book is to guide the "re-establishment of the dominance of progressive values" in America.
On pages 554-555, immigration reform is discussed as needed for illegal aliens so that they will work for higher wages and not continue to "drag down the wages of all workers across the board." Also he claims reform is good because it will keep families together in the USA.
Then Creamer's self-interest bursts into the open. He says that the "immigration battle [legalizing illegal aliens] is also important because it will have an enormous impact on the battle for power between the progressive and conservative forces in American Society." He emphasizes getting the illegal aliens on the path to citizenship so they will be eligible for "voting rights by 2012 and 2016."
Creamer then looks at the 30 million legal immigrants "who could apply for citizenship [and voting]." The end result: a "gigantic block of progressive voters - a block that could be decisive in the battle for the future."
The book can be of value to nearly anyone, right or left, new to politics, as it offers many strategies and guidance on successful political operations. The leftist / progressive goals may wear on some readers.
I must openly complain about the index. A book well over 600 pages needs a good index. I looked up "Charlie Wilson" in the Index and found the page referenced to be in the middle of the text of the MLK "I have a dream" speech. I never found the "Charlie Wilson" page. The pages on immigration reform are on 554-555 while the index says they are on pages 538-538, almost twenty pages off.
The book is inventive, engaging and broad-ranging. Credit must be given to the quiet contemplative months Creamer spent in prison writing it.
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This book will speak to some people more than it does to me. I've had it for several months now and finally was able to get around to making myself finish it.
I figure this book is for people who consider themselves to be political junkies. Large chunks of the book are essentially a how-to manual for running a campaign, or at the very least working or volunteering for one. If you're never going to do that, or if you're never going to be going door-to-door trying to talk people into voting for "your" candidate, much of this book will be of little value to you.
The sections of the book that outline Progressive platforms held my interest more, but to a certain extent it was also like reading my own thoughts or listening to myself think. So much of it is so close to my own ideals that I didn't really need to read it.
Having said all this, I think this book would be perfect for highschool or college students. So many people have been torpedoed by the endless waves of blind patriotism and false morality that the Republican party is always selling them that some sections of this book would be great for waking them up before it's too late. I think there is a certain window of opportunity where people can probably see things objectively or have their minds changed. After that window closes, people start to wear the propaganda they've bought into so much so that it becomes who they are.
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Progressive Propaganda, 
Extremely highly recommended, 
Progressive/ Demo plan for "Gigantic Block" of immigrant voters, 
