I would put Security first just to hammer into people's brains that Democrats can keep the country safe.

How about "republicans suck"?  Hey, it fits on a bumper sticker. 

Somewhere in the Reform equation we need to talk about securing jobs, economic growth, and healthcare. Now that Canada will no longer be able to provide Americans with cheaper medications, I think a whole lot of folks will be ready to listen to commonsense healthcare reform.

Cute but not helpful.

How about:

Strength, Safety, Responsibility.

or

Transparency, Justice, Democracy.

or

Virtue, Action, Change.

It's meaningless without content.  And the content may not lead in the direction you want it to.  

I certainly think of freedom from want as an issue of economic security, but I'm not sure we've won that rhetorical fight yet, and I do think a word that alludes to the massive unpopularity of Bush's economic agenda deserves a slot.  Maybe something like "Prosperity" which has the added benefit of sounding more optimistic than the rest of the group, but on the other hand sounds a little grandiose and is mostly something people think of as rising or falling based on the President.  "Opportunity" I think gets closer, and is definitely something you can have more or less of even holding terrible White House leadership constant.  I think "Honesty" and "Reform" can be collapsed together, and I'd suggest "Honesty" get the boot, only because I think it's impact is more likely than "Reform"'s to fall victim to a cynicism in a good number of American voters about the integrity of politicians (reform sounds more achievable, I'd say, because it gestures at the integrity of the process rather than of the people involved).  So that would leave us something like:

Security.  Opportunity.  Reform.

Honesty would have to come first (if used), because the frame would be that the Radicals promised security, but lied about it.

sPh 

That's excellent.

I too think security should come first.

1. Small business

2. Anti-corruption

3. The deficit

1. Simply put, I think this is the message for a new Democratic party. Most business are small businesses, but it's the large multi-nationals that have taken our lives. The Democrats must make the distinction between small business and big business so as not to alienate the former while seeking to reign in the latter. We're not anti-business. We love business. We love a regulated free market because that ensures both equality of opportunity and progress. Democrats don't like corporations telling us what to do anymore than the Founding Fathers liked taking orders from a monarchy. Works on every level, economic, social, and historical.

2. "Anti-corruption" is a better frame since "reform" is as much a Republican buzzword these days as a Democrat one (Medicare reform, Social Security, the U.N., etc.) And what they mean is not reformation but transformation, so the meaning itself has been corrupted. What are Delay and Ohio and Plamegate but vivid examples of corrupution, both inside the White House and also up and down the extremist wing currently controlling the Republican party? George W. Bush needs to be hammered as the poster child of corruption. Everything he got in life was the result of a crooked deal.

3. The deficit means that our children will have it worse off. Kitchen table stuff. The checkbook's not balanced. My small hometown had a mile of parked cars overflowing the high school where Ross Perot spoke in 1992 (speaking of whom, where the hell is he these days?). His major issue, as I recall, was the deficit. People ate it up. Clinton made reducing the deficit a priority, mainly because Perot put the issue on map. And it's worse now.

I like the idea of emphasizing values which at first sight seem tame--like an obvious given-- but with the implication that they are alien to the party in power, as they most certainly are. It would be a revolution if a party that set some store by honesty, however imperfectly, replaced the present lot. Like Staleync, however, I worry that "reform" has lost all meaning in the hands of the Repbulicans. Perhaps "decency" or 'fairness" would make a good replacement? The latter especially might signal the Democrats domestic social agenda.

Iraq is going to be front and center in 2006, no matter how bad things are on the domestic front. 

So how about "Peace With Honor"? It worked back in '68.

Look, we should ask for the support of the American people without banging them over the head with the "We told you so" message implicit with the promise of honesty and security. Nobody likes to admit that they've been fooled, or duped, or that they live in a country with leaders that they can't trust with their safety.

So let's return to my flippant suggestion.  Nixon didn't say "Vote Republican because the Democrats you voted for in 1964 lied about the Gulf of Tonkin and got us into this mess in Vietnam." 

He simply said that he would make things better.
 
And it worked.

Veni, Vidi, Vici.

I was kind of thinking something along the lines of Duty, Honor, Country.

Mainly pointing out how the Republican President and legislators have been doing what's best for them... not what's best for the country.

But I like your Honesty, Security, Reform.  The simpler the better.  No more of this 40 paragraph diatribes to explain what we stand for.

We have to educate the peace wing.  I don't mean educate them to shut up.  I mean educate themto understand that we have more in common than not.

You go talk to most of them, and start asking them specific questions about what the US should do if attacked, etc. and they are totally in line with everybody else.

The problem is, they keep using rhetoric which makes them seem totally nuts.  We need to help them change the rhetoric, quit feeding into the stereotypes.

Duty. Empowerment. Merit.

Being a Democrat means duty to country, community, and party.

Being a Democrat means empowering Americans to live better, make your own decisions, and create opportunity for everyone.

Being a Democrat means knowing everyone has worth, everyone deserves to be treated fairly and have a chance to succeed. In the Democratic Party, ideas are judged by their benefit to ALL Americans, not just to those who donate to us or vote for us.

-- 

Ok I'm not too good at this... One for the activists:

Dare. Engage. Mobilize.

Pointless.

Americans should first be saying

"Count My Vote" 

Here's a variation on the theme:

Strait Talk

(A) Strong America

Open Government

How about "Practical Idealism?" Oh wait, that sounds kind of familiar...

Equal Opportunity for All, Special Privilige for None

A responsible member of the world community since 1776 

Democrats share your values: Work, family, personal responsibility, individual liberty, faith, tolerance, and inclusion

Asserting Repsonsible Global Leadership 

or reform (we don't have a simple plan)

Yeah but we do have gifts from the other side Dan, DeLay, Cunningham, Coingate, Abramoff/Scanlon, etc...

Why not take advantage?

I wonder if "honesty, security, opportunity" might be more meaningful. To my ears, it also sounds better.

Every time I hear a politician say he's for "reform," I want to puke.  Certainly I agree with the concept, just not with the trivialization of it.  How about the same concept using a different keyword?  "Redeem?" Hitches on to christian redeemer rhetoric, but sounds sorta petulant.  "Fix?" Simple, but unfortunately tarred now by association with "fixing the intelligence."  "Renew?"

We could go on and on, but maybe someone will grab a few of our words and piece them together.

Security.  Responsibility.  Progress.

I'd avoid Peace - too much connotation there for "Peacenik."

"Getting America Back on Track" - because I think we all feel sidetracked do we not?

I think that is the overall feeling of all Americans, no matter what Party they are affiliated with.

Therefore it might have broad appeal, it might connect with flip flop voters.

No, no, no.  This has to be a positive campaign.  It isn't about them, it's about us.  We need to focus the public's attention on our strengths.

Our greatest strength, I believe, can be summed up as "We're not the corrupt incompetent hypocrite hog-trough party."

Remember, the Moral High Ground doesn't mean holding morally correct principles and remaining high above the untidy fray.  It means taking the least assailable piece of terrain and continually blowing the shit out of the disadvantaged enemy.

I suggest somehow working "Stable" or "Stability" into the mix. Something like "Economically Stable And Secure: Without This, We Can Not Maintain Security." or "Strong, Stable, Secure."

As the party dedicated to governing for the benefit of all America, I think it's our responsibility to come up with two campaign slogans, one for us and one for the GOP, and to market them both assiduously to assure brand identification.

For the GOP, I propose "We are the corrupt incompetent hypocrite hog-trough party, and we're proud of it!"  Possibly with "We just can't help ourselves!" worked into it somewhere.

As we Democrats await an uplifting Clintonesque slogan, and the fitting time to unveil it, I'd suggest that "We're not them!" will do just fine for an extended interim.

Josh's suggestion sounds like a good "after the colon" sub-head to whatever we title our platform (Contract On America 2K6?  Just kidding.), followed by 10 concrete but succinct planks.

Will this garner immediate ridicule from Fox, talk radio, and the wingnutosphere for being a cheap knock-off of the CWA?

1)  Of course it will.

2)  Who gives a crap?  They're not our target audience.  CNN, the networks, and all major papers would most likely give it a fair, unironic airing.  Most people won't even remember the CWA in more than the vaguest of terms anyhow.

I believe this slogan is what Gordon Brown advanced as Labour's theme after the recent election in Great Britain.

I could not help but notice that "Justice" placed very high in Frank Luntz's survey. I think justice always has to be part of the message of the Democratic Party. Justice can be defined in varying ways. The GOP, of course, likes to equate the idea of social or economic justice with forced equality, which can be attacked as a threat to freedom. To get around this, I would suggest a Democratic definition or guiding ethic of "Justice" as "Simple and Basic Fairness" (an equality of opportunity but not necessarily of results). This would include election reform, an issue of political justice potentially having much to do with achieving economic and social justice.

How about:

Responsibility.  We don't start wars without knowing how to win them.  We will be fiscally responsible and pay our own way, instead of having our kids and grandkids pay for us.  The environment doesn't exist for the sole purpose of exploiting it and belongs to everyone, not just big corporations.  We will shore up medicare and social security without dismantling them.

Fairness.  All Americans should pay their fair share of taxes.  Our constituents are more important than lobbyists and CEOs.

Family.  Family decisions are made by the family, not the government.  All families need some basic health insurance and I think it could be shown to be fiscally prudent over today's dysfunctional system.

You wrote ... "I see a future history textbook title: 'After the Colon: The American Presidency, 2009-2037' "

Thus, the required prequel ... "Inflammed Colon: The American Presidency, 2001-2009" :)

Noticed that if you rearrange those letters it is S-O-S and I"m sure someone on Fox will notice that and run it ad nauseum in the banner across the bottom of the screen. Good ideas, but change the wording 

I think the word "Change" is more powerful than "Reform." "Reform" is bureaucratic, "Change" is personal.

And what was the expression about honesty and counting your spoons?

I think America is feeling very jittery about our long-term competitiveness in the world. Rising China, jobs going overseas, deficits, failing education... not good.

How about:

Security. Fairness. Change.