More on “Rebuilding the Farm System” in the Democratic Party, Part II
In the first part of this series I began an answer to Zandar’s question, “What kind of ideas do the assembled have for improving the Dems chances where you live at the state level?” with a brief recap of the deindustrialization of the US economy over the last 45 years and two of its consequences for the political climate we live in today: the optimization of the Republican party for class warfare and the optimization of the Democratic Party for, well, not much at all:
I’ll grant you whatever you might want to say about each and every reform won by the Obama administration — as far as I’m concerned they’re all good and all irrelevant to the point: we keep assuming that the Democratic Party is some kind of a fighting organization. It’s not. It never was. It will at some times and for its own reasons offer some support to fights that other people start, but its sole purpose is to put into power candidates who profess belief in its program and it doesn’t formally care about much more than that. As such it’s more of a force for social stability than social change; the impetus for change comes from outside the party and the party mediates it. And the adaptations that it’s made since it unmoored itself from its base in the unions have made it even less, rather than more of a fighting organization.
“Improving the Dems chances” begins with an analysis of the Dems’ situation. That needs to be done on a state-by-state basis [1], but the lesson from Wisconsin is that it is as though the DP were being optimized for mediocrity. And once such an organization has reached a really high level of mediocrity, for the people on the inside the only thing that’s worse than losing, is losing their influence. Or as commenter Kathleen put it, in one of the final comments on the first part,
I think one of the major problems with the Democratic Party is that it is led at the state and local level in a lot of places by people who are not that unhappy with being a minority party, so long as they get to be the people in charge. I mean, recruit “those people” ( outsiders, youth, soccer moms, whoever) who just don’t understand how things are done?
This nails the Wisconsin Democratic Party in two sentences. Here, it’s not that the DP is always bringing a knife to a gun fight. The DP is the knife in the gun fight.
Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future the DP is the only organization we’ve got in the field of electoral politics [2]. Third party initiatives like the Green Party are proven failures. They exist as a space in which liberals can exercise their endless search for some moral high ground, for some principle that’s more pure than any other liberal’s principle, for the chance to “vote against evil” and bathe themselves in righteousness, for an opportunity to use their righteousness to condemn other liberals less righteous than they. They’re talking organizations not fighting organizations. They don’t exist as a vehicle for taking and expanding political power: that’s what Republicans do.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We have to begin by taking some responsibility for the problems we face. Too often, progresssive/liberal activists will say, “If only the Democrats would do X [for us]…” or “If only the Democrats would fight for Y [for us]…” or “If only the Democrats would fight back against the Republicans [for us]…”. What the Democrats do, they do for themselves: they are not in it for us. If we want anything done for us we have to do it ourselves. Experimenting with letting the state DP organizations fix themselves (while we express our concern about their failures and shortcomings) has to end because the results are in: it doesn’t work. Left to their own devices — as a rule and with some exceptions — the state DP organizations have gone from bad to worse.
“How do we improve the Dems’ chances” is the wrong question to be asking, because our main goal should not be to improve the Dems’ chances. Our main goal has to be improving our chances of survival in a social and political context where we face an opposition willing to go to war against us. Whether or not the DP can be a means to that end is a conclusion that is both tactical and provisional, and varies from state to state. But in general, the DP only deserves our trust and support to the extent that it serves (or can be made to serve) our purposes.
To rely on the DP as a vehicle for our political aspirations is strategically foolhardy but tactically necessary. In other words we have to work with them while we figure out how to work around them. But the bottom line is, we have to fix this mess because it surely is not fixing itself.
Fixing the Democrats, One State at a Time
If you want to tackle the project of turning the DP in your state into a fighting organization, it’s up to you to do the triage:
If you live in one of the states where the DP seems to be doing a reasonable job, that’s great. Join up and join in, and the sooner the better. Whatever Party unit you join should be able to find valid and important work (not “busy work”) for you to do and should make you feel like both you and your contribution are welcomed. If that’s not the feeling you end up getting, trust your instincts. See Kathleen’s comment above, and read on to the content below.
If you live in one of the states where the DP seems to be “on the bubble”, you have a choice to make. Let’s assume you want to get in, get active, try to make some positive changes. In order to do this you have to be ready to organize an insurrection (or if you’re lucky, join an existing one) and take over control of the Party. Every situation is going to differ on the specifics but here are some general rules:
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- Soon after you join up you will begin to meet the people who are creating the problems you seek to fix. They will not be welcoming your suggestions. It won’t just be because you’re a newbie although they may try to make you think so.
- Therefore you need to be organized. You absolutely need to be part of a group of people that’s working on the same strategy to bring about the same set of changes. Alone and on your own, you will be defeated. The DP isn’t good for much but give them credit: what they are good at is defeating or co-opting idealists like you.
- If you can’t join up with like-minded friends you have to find them among the people who preceded you. This will take some time.
- The initial goal of your group is to take control of a local Party unit. Use that to increase your power by hooking up with other like-minded people both inside and outside the organization.
- Don’t make your goal winning one or another election. Don’t focus on temporary campaign organizations (like OFA) that fold up and disappear the day after the votes are counted. Aim for the permanent structures.
- Your group needs a plan. You also need some standards for what success looks like and what failure looks like, and an exit plan for what you’re going to do if reform from within isn’t working.
- Don’t run for some office yourself, get someone else to do that. Your focus needs to be on the level of the organization you’re trying to capture.
- However, your ultimate success will depend on your ability to win elections. You need to know what it takes to win an election on the level of the Party organization you’re trying to control. So you need to have a good working knowledge of campaign field support without letting it define the limits of your vision. You want the skillset for campaign mangers not candidates, and you want to leverage your skillset both inside and outside the organization.
- Be patient. You have to be willing to dedicate years to this project.
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If you live in one of the states where the DP is beyond redemption, attempts at internal reform will be met with so much resistance that they will prove to be futile. To try to reform such an organization from the inside puts you into conflict with the nominal “Democrats” who created the mess in the first place, rather than the Republicans. If that’s what you want, see above and best of luck. Or consider organizing outside the Party entirely. To do that, once again you need a power base only now you need to build it outside the Party. That’s what we’re doing in Milwaukee. To a first order of approximation our plan is the old “more and better Democrats” but the innovation we add is a political program to help us to define “better” and organizational resources to help us to win “more”. We always organize outside the Party and we organize continually, not just during elections. We try to find and elect good people, as Democrats in the elections where party identification is relevant; we just don’t rely on the Democratic Party to do so.
The basis for what we’re doing in Milwaukee was formed in the 2011-2012 campaign to recall Scott Walker, and the disillusionment that the betrayal of that effort by the Democrats left behind. Thanks to that we have the luxury of a critical organizational mass that may be lacking where you are. In that case you may want to consider getting involved in Move to Amend. In my experience, MtA is a great way to get out and start organizing activist-type people; it will provide a broad array of both opportunities to build an organization that can challenge entrenched interests in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and interesting problems that will have to be solved in the process of doing so. And, it’s already up and running nationally, you don’t have to build it from scratch. Rather than go on at length here, I’ll discuss more in the comments if people are interested.
If MtA does not seem that interesting to you or it’s not active in your state, look up the “Fight for $15” in your area and go volunteer. Lots of people do that here, it’s a very community-oriented movement. If you’re volunteering in this kind of effort though, be warned that inconsistent volunteers are almost worse than no volunteers at all: whatever you do, do it reliably.
[1] It’s a general consensus among liberal/progressive activists that Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” was a good idea and that things started to go to hell when the DNC bailed on that strategy. I don’t entirely agree with that analysis because I think it’s too simplistic but it isn’t totally wrong either. But how can you have a “50-state strategy” that means anything more than a slogan, without beginning with a “50-state analysis” on which to base it? And if you buy that, who’s doing the 50-state analysis? You can bet that the DNC isn’t; they reject the whole premise. Who does that leave? [2] Even worse: we don’t have much at all in the w/r/t organization outside the field of electoral politics. Again, compare this to the situation among the right wing.
Elizabelle
Thank you, Vida Loca. Great to see you here again. Reading up on your post now.
Um, you got a pet too?
VidaLoca
Elizabelle,
No, sadly, no pets. I’m a big fan of pets but it just would not work out to have one for me right now.
raven
And if you live in Georgia just punt!
VidaLoca
raven,
I’ve read that the “Moral Mondays” movement from North Carolina is trying to set up a group in Georgia. Have you heard anything about that and if so can you comment?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Cole, you forgot to close the itals tag. Please to fix.
VidaLoca
Mnemosyne,
Actually that’s my fault. I write this stuff up in a Word .doc and then send it to him. I forgot to close the tag. He just puts up the Word doc.
He’s probably off playing tank battles.
Omnes Omnibus
Thank for posting this.
Baud
Every word deserves to be italicized. They are all important.
raven
@VidaLoca: Yes, they are active in Atlanta and I do know folks who are involved. Here’s a link.
Omnes Omnibus
I think this is vital, I have seen far too many people get frustrated at the lack of immediate positive results in the political world and simply walk away.
raven
There is also People for a Better Athens that has a Facebook Page.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is also vital
A guy
As a wv democrat I say we start with a law that outlaws killing unborn kids. We start a national movement to eliminate the death penalty. We provide health care to anybody making under 35,000 per year and everybody else can figure it out themselves. Anybody receiving welfare needs to work, even if it means picking up trash. Burn coal and gas till it’s gone. Deport illegals. Make marijuana legal and tax the heck out of it. Repeal the patriot act. Pass a balanced budget act and pass term limits in congress. I’m just starting here
Steeplejack (phone)
Test.
brantl
The Democrats need to counter Frank Luintz most importantlty, Luntz has managed to “meatball” many things that people consider desirable (like all of the traits of ObamaCare) into something where he can frame them as undesirable (ObamaCare as a whole, in the light that the RePukes lie it into looking like), Coherent message wiill allow for coherent action, as votes can then be taken, and defended. Where has there been a coherent defense of Unions? Or benefits to the poor benefiting society as a whole? That’s why those defenses, by Democrats, have vanished. It is no more, and no less than that. The Democrats need an organization devoted to True Taking Points (capitalized) and they need to start hewing to them. Does anybody really not GET this?
Steeplejack (phone)
Test 2.
Baud
@A guy:
Go ahead. You have the same political rights as anyone else.
Southern Goth
It’s as if I have stumbled into an exchange amongst telepaths.
VidaLoca
raven,
Many thanks for that link. I think the idea that MM is trying is very interesting and I’d like to get a conversation about it started here.
I’ll read over what you sent after the discussion here dies down.
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Goth: And, quiet frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself. Some of your thoughts, oh boy.
Tommy
I live in a district for 70 straight years has elected Democrats. Let me say that again. 70 years. We elected a Republican to our House seat. Seems to me we are going something wrong.
Cervantes
Thanks.
One quick question:
Suppose for the sake of argument that, on the side of the Enlightenment, we have the Democrats and the Greens; and on the other side we have the Republicans and the Tea Party (and/or the Libertarians). If you accept that, would you also accept the following?
And if you accept that, then what are the salient differences between the Greens and the Tea Party? I assume you would not call the Tea Party a proven failure. To what extent did it start out as a third-party initiative? What makes it more successful than the Greens?
Anyhow, thanks again. I’m off for the evening but may stop in early tomorrow.
MomSense
The internal politics in the town and county committees can be brutal. One of the things that was so refreshing about the Obama campaign was the focus on voter contact, teaching volunteers new skills and lack of internal politics and fighting.
I went with a friend to a town committee meeting and at the end we both agreed that we would never do that again. The arguing and spending endless time discussing what should have been a simple matter of Internet service became a rehashing of old fights.
My friend and I will make phone calls or knock on doors or whatever we can to help but meetings shouldn’t be so horrible. We even ran our own phone banks out of our houses using the virtual phone bank feature. To be honest I think the field organizer was grateful we had our own thing happening. No drama and we made most of the phone calls.
VidaLoca
brantl,
Here, the Democrats talk almost constantly about “messaging”. They’re trying to employ ideas from George Lakoff and others in the field of psychology and marketing. Some of the concepts are sound I think.
But the biggest message they need to send is an answer to the question, “which side are you on?”
Southern Goth
@Omnes Omnibus:
I spend a lot of effort keeping most of them to myself. Don’t go and ruin it for me.
WaterGirl
@VidaLoca: In case you aren’t aware: If you look in the lower right hand corner of each comment box, you will find the word Reply with an arrow. If you click that, it automatically links to the original comment when you reply.
VidaLoca
Cervantes,
Excellent question. I’m going to have to think about it more but a quick off-the-cuff answer would be that from the little I know of the respective histories of the Greens and the Tea Party I think the similarities are coincidental and mask basic differences. But as I say, your question deserves more thought.
VidaLoca
MomSense,
I can’t tell you how many stories like that I’ve heard. And it’s such a pain. Meetings of political organizations can be a lot like meetings at work, there is a certain amount of BS, most people hate it but some people thrive on it and — guess what — the latter dominate the meetings. But yeah, it drives people out rather than pulling them in.
Greg
you forgot to close an italics tag and now everything on the blog is italicized
VidaLoca
WaterGirl,
Yup, but the “reply” link isn’t working, at least for me — and I assume it has to do with the unclosed italics tag. So I’m out of luck until one of the mods gets around to fixing the page.
I take it that the link works for you?
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: In my view, the Greens really were trying to form a new party. They are not and never were a faction of the Democratic Party. On the other hand, the so-called Tea Party is a faction of the Republican Party. It is drawn from and funded by the GOP.
Greg
dammit
VidaLoca
Omnes,
Good point. Very different trajectories for both groups, even at the moment of inception.
Tommy
@VidaLoca: It is a hard thing. Many times here we can’t seem to agree on this or that. We can agree on 90% of things but those 10% we fight like the worse enemies. Something I will never understand.
VidaLoca
Tommy,
Similar situation here. Milwaukee (city and county) has been run by Democrats since World War II. Nowadays, if a Republican wants to get elected, he (so far, all the cases I have in mind are he’s) runs as a Democrat. But if he gets elected, it’s all good I guess.
Seems like we’re doing something wrong too.
WaterGirl
@VidaLoca: Yep, definitely working for me and Omnes and Baud in this thread.
VidaLoca
WaterGirl,
Yeah, thanks. Would have been obvious to me if I had just looked. Grrr…
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca:
But before that by Socialists.
Keith P.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): And he also forgot to separate the post into volumes and chapters.
Tommy
@VidaLoca: We elected a far right tea party Republican. I do not know how this happened. Things are messed up more than a little.
VidaLoca
@Omnes Omnibus:
If my friends and I ever put together an organization worthy of a founding converntion, we’re going to have it at Turner Hall just to play off the Socialist theme.
Davis X. Machina
The DNC is the DemocraticNatonal Committee.
They’re resourced-constrained, too.
So they prioritize races and seats. Nationally.
They’re not evil. They’re what it says on the tin.
Might as well complain that ice cream isn’t hot.
VidaLoca
@Tommy:
Hell, we’ve elected far-right tea party Republicans at the County level here. And you may have heard about the one here that’s been elected, and re-elected twice at the state level.
The woman that ran against Walker in 2014 was a weak candidate running on an uninspiring platform. The guy that ran in the County race, for Sheriff, was a strong candidate who was betrayed by a dreadful campaign. There are all kinds of ways of losing an election and the Democrats here are methodically working through them, one by one, as they invent new ones.
Betty Cracker
Thanks so much for taking the time to outline your thoughts on this. Your description of state and local party dysfunction sure rings true from where I sit.
I volunteered for the 1st Obama campaign early (before the FL primary), and I remember being surprised at how disconnected it was from the state party apparatus. Later I realized WHY.
VidaLoca
@Davis X. Machina: That’s true although the DNC was resource-constrained under Howard Dean too and somehow they were having some success in dealing with the constraints.
Nowadays, there are something like 30 states that are controlled by the Republicans in both the legislative and executive branches. And that number keeps increasing. I don’t know what it looks like from the vantage point out there in the other 49 states but from my point of view here it’s pretty clear that the state DP is pretty messed up. And there’s no point in looking for the causes of that at the DNC level, in fact to look there is only going to mask the problems locally.
VidaLoca
@Betty Cracker: The disconnect with OFA was the same here. And it’s not surprising, as you realized. The national party people know exactly what the state organizations are like and they want no part of them so they set up a parallel structure and then they dictate as much as possible what the state organization does while keeping it at arm’s length. Which they have to do if they want to win; it makes sense in the short run. In the long run it’s a terrible idea because the campaign is torn down the day after the votes are counted, while the permanent organization isn’t strengthened or developed — it’s just kept in kind of an infantilized state.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not so at its inception, however.
The Brothers Koch have been at it for decades — their “Citizens for a Sound Economy” was founded in 1984 with Ron Paul nominally at the helm — and even as late as 2005-2007, during the Bush Administration, their “movement” was contemptuous of Republicans. Ben McGrath’s 2010 New Yorker article illustrates the point.
Question re-stated: Whereas the Tea Party has practically taken over the Republican Party, how much influence has the Green Party had on the Democratic Party? Why the difference in impact?
Jack Hughes
It’s not just organization — it’s propaganda. Republicans have been waging a lavishly funded 24/7/365/4D propaganda campaign for over a generation. For Republicans, every election — local, state and national — has candidates singing verbatim from the same choir book.
For Democrats? Not so much. No message discipline, no coordinated rhetoric. Democrats seem to find the very concept of propaganda to be distasteful.
It’s no surprise Dems get clobbered. Unopposed right-wing propaganda has become conventional wisdom among the rubes.
Davis X. Machina
@VidaLoca: Dean’s 50 state strategy here consisted of paying for 3 bodies for six months, and some IT support. The latter was more helpful than the former.
MomSense
@VidaLoca:
I did manage to out organize the local dems to get a Democratic candidate on the ballot for the house that was not the choice of the local committee. It meant that my friend and I called every single person we knew and everyone who showed up to phone bank and knocked on a ton of doors so the party would have no choice but to nominate her. To her credit she is great and is now embraced by the party but the level of effort required to break through the nonsense is not something I can sustain without quitting my job and neglecting my kids.
MomSense
@Jack Hughes:
The Obama campaign had excellent message discipline. And even before all the benefits of ObamaCare were in effect, they messaged on health care, reproductive choice, access to birth control, pre-existing conditions every single day.
They also started crafting their message well in advance by having seasoned volunteers make phone calls on health care and other issues into swing districts to try out the framing of the issues. It was coordinated and smart.
We know what works, but there is a lot of resentment in Democratic committees (town, county, state) toward the Obama method. That was one of the things they were fighting about in the town committee meeting I attended.
MomSense
@Davis X. Machina:
The 50 state strategy has been massively over hyped to prove that Obama abandoned it-blah blah blah.
VidaLoca
@Cervantes: If you look back to the beginnings of the modern conservative movement in the 1950’s, among the white supremacists that predominated in the south and the libertarians that predominated in the sunbelt, again and again you see that they had some incredibly good organizers in their leadership. Perlman in Before the Storm paints a picture of these right-wing activists taking over the Republican Party as they dragged Goldwater, against his will and his better instincts, into being their candidate. When he lost they didn’t skip a beat, they got behind Reagan. Along the way they drove out the RINOS and took over the Party structure. Once they had that they were set, they had their hands on the levers. And today, although those activists are gone, they left in their wake a new generation to carry on.
When the Tea Party came along the next generation were able to organize within it and co-opt it, merge it into the Party structure as they took it over and used it to leverage their own credibility and influence. Consistently, these folks across time show an advanced grasp of the relationship between organizational structure and political power.
I don’t think the Green Party people ever had more than a vague idea, if they had any idea at all, about political power. Unlike the Republicans with Goldwater, their seminal disaster was George McGovern and they have never gotten over it. They’re all intellectuals so they can debate ideas until hell freezes over but they can’t organize. I don’t know if they’re more afraid of power or more disgusted by it. So one answer to your question, “how much influence has the Green Party had on the Democratic Party?” would be: since the Greens don’t really threaten the Way Things Are Done in the Democratic Party, since they can’t or won’t or don’t have any way of organizing outside the Party, why should we expect the Democratic Party to care about the Greens at all? How could they have any influence?
Groucho48
@Cervantes:
Tea Party voters vote Republican. Green Party voters presumably vote for the Green Party. Big difference. And, one of the other things that make it a big difference is the huge sums of money and profession Republican operatives that actually run the Tea Party organizations.
What would really help is as much money coming in from very liberal left wing billionaires as there is money coming in from right wing billionaires. Subsidized news stations, newspapers, University departments,Young Democrat internships, “Senior Fellows” from left wing think tanks ready to go on the air at a moments notice and repeat carefully crafted left wing talking points for hours.
Do all that for 20 years and Dems will be in charge everywhere. We just need those billionaires.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cervantes: Stop right there. You are comparing apples and lizards.
The Green and Democratic parties are two very distinct and separate entities, who do not share many of the same goals or objectives.
The GOP and the Tea Party have 100% overlap – they are the same people, party, goals, who also share the same vision for America..
VidaLoca
@MomSense: Congratulations — that sounds like you all did a ton of work. The problem you point to is a real one, too, and I think it has an effect on local Party organizations. The DP people that I come into contact with here are in general late-career or early retirement (kids grown and gone, empty-nesters) with time on their hands and enough resources that they don’t need to worry too much about daily needs. They tend to be from the suburbs. They’re able to sustain a level of activism, in the face of the demands that you cite. They’re willing to do so partly, I think, because they have a memory of a time when our politics was not a total mess and so they believe more easily than younger people that it can be put right with sustained effort.
This is all good as far as it goes but the problem is that Milwaukee is predominantly made up of people of color, many of whom work at jobs where they have a hard time making enough to raise a family. So the demographic disconnect between the Party and the public is a problem, and one that the Party does not recognize. It has huge effects on the way they organize and the way they run campaigns however, and it has huge effects on their credibility.
Brachiator
@Tommy: Apart from the possibility that redistricting was involved, what were the issues and differences that got a Republican elected? And was it a close race?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Lot of good points in this thread about local orgs being all fucked up. I tell you, here in CA below the state level is a fucking disaster. No other way to put it. And it’s going to take just a couple of seats flipping in the Assembly to give de facto control of this state back to the GOP.
The CA GOP might be the most regressive and awful in the entire nation, so that is something I’d really like to avoid.
Brachiator
@VidaLoca: The Tea Party mobilized anger against regular Republicans to get elected. There were voters who liked what the Tea Party have to offer. The Tea Party claims to understand the primary political needs of their base. The aims of the Green Party are not seen as central to the average voter, or the average Democratic Party voter.
VidaLoca
@Groucho48: If you actually go back and look at the history of this stuff though, right-wing billionaires and left-wing billionaires have one thing in common: they don’t like to buy a pig in a poke. So the right-wing activists began by going to the right-wing billionaires with small-budget pilot projects to prove the point that they were capable of building local organizations that could wield political power, and leverage them up into bigger organizations. And when they did this the right-wing billionaires were impressed. And they started writing bigger checks [1].
You don’t see this kind of sophistication on the left. On the left, it’s build a debating club called the Green Party, or knock on doors for the Democrats. No vision of taking political power.
[1] Don’t have the texts in front of me so I’m going from memory — and not doing a good job. One example I can think of where this was done in the early 1970’s was the Kanawha Co. WVA textbook controversy. But that link doesn’t directly support my point about right-wing activists leveraging pilot projects.
Jack Hughes
@MomSense: I agree that the Obama campaign had excellent message discipline. The problem was that Democratic congressional candidates did not coordinate with the top of the ticket, nationalizing congressional races.
Too many Democratic congressional — and down ticket — candidates run as virtual independents, making the Democratic Party a national political party in name only. By contrast, Republicans exercise rigid party discipline that amplifies their messaging.
VidaLoca
Folks,
I have to get up early for work, so I’m going to have to go now.
Many thanks for the feedback, it’s been enjoyable.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: Thanks for posting. And if you do get something going at Turner Hall, let us know. It’s not all that far a drive for some of us.
Groucho48
@VidaLoca:
Yeah, the right wing billionaires do want a big bang for their buck. Which is kind of scary. After Citizens United, the billionaires really opened up their wallets but it mostly was wasted on grifters and ideologues. I’m hoping the same kind of thing will happen this election, but, kind of think they learned their lesson and will spend more wisely. Luckily, though, even if they don’t waste hundreds of millions on grifters, they still have a bunch of lousy candidates to work with.
And, they continue to pour money into the wingnut infrastructure. An area where Dems are sadly lacking, especially with the decline of unions.
Tommy
@Brachiator: We didn’t redistrict. I got no clue what happened.
VidaLoca
And we should be asking, why do they do this? Because it pays off for them, that’s why. The right wing has a vicious, insane, social disaster of a political program but the infrastructure they’ve built goes so far beyond the Republican Party that even when they lose elections they can bounce back politically. Their infrastructure allows them the ability to be tactically flexible — losing Presidential elections? No problem! Take over the country, one state at a time! Leaders get old, get tired, burn out? No problem! There’s a whole new crop of grads coming out of Liberty University, all trained up and ready to take their places!
Meanwhile here we sit, minutely discussing the chances of Hillary Clinton to be the next POTUS. For example, it’s the single focal point in thread after thread on this blog and others. Why? Because all our eggs are in her basket. And we know she’s not all that great a candidate. And we know we’re not all that excited about her in the first place because we look at her record.
Cervantes
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
No.
Apparently you missed this question: To what extent did [the Tea Party] start out as a third-party initiative?
Nor, apparently, did you see the answer.
Therefore you continue:
As I said earlier, none of this was true when the Tea Party arose. Something changed — and partly by design.
Moreover, if you think the Green Party in the US was always wholly “distinct and separate” from the Democratic Party, you’ve got another think coming. Just to take one (prominent) example: Ralph Nader was a Democrat for thirty years before joining the Green Party in the early ’90s.
brantl
@VidaLoca: No, what they need to answer is what do you stand for. They are currently against the craziness of the Repulicans, this is insufficient. They need to delineate actual policy, and provide the proof that it works. In some cases, they need to show that it is working in a plenitude of other countries.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Groucho48: Yeah, you hear about Tea Party Republicans all the time but there aren’t any Green Party Democrats out there. I guess Bernie Sanders might sort of be but he’s really not a Democrat and actually calls himself a Socialist.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
My question is how you tell whether the Democratic Party in your State is doing a “reasonably good” job. I live in Maryland. The State Assembly has been controlled by Democrats for forever, so in one sense they seem to be doing a good job. But…we just elected a Republican governor. Granted other Democratic States do that on occasion (see, Massachusetts), but I’m getting the impression that people are somewhat frustrated with high taxes here in Maryland, and for somewhat good reason.
The issue is twofold – the Maryland State government isn’t tremendously inefficient but I get the sense that they’re rather skilled at doing less with more rather than more with more. I’ve been a tax and spend liberal all my life but you need a higher level of services for your tax dollars for that to work for people. This State has the highest average household income in the nation and one of the highest overall tax rates. It should be drowning in revenue but we’re facing modest deficits yet again, this after raising taxes under O’Malley to close State budget deficits. People are pissed because they see other States doing as much for less.
Second, after raising said taxes throughout O’Malley’s terms, the State Party supported raising the estate tax exemption from $1 million to $5 million – this was a bipartisan, not merely Republican, effort, and O’Malley signed it. What do you do when your party betrays its principles by cutting taxes for the very wealthy while raising taxes on low and middle income people. I’m starting to worry that the Democratic party here, while it seems reasonably strong, is going to let inefficiency and stupidity drive it into irrelevance.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
The big problem with the Democratic party is that their plutocrats aren’t interested in winning local and state elections, whereas the Koch brothers have realized they’re cheap to buy and that investment buys you a lot down the road, because it gives you the farm team you need to fill congress with people beholden to you. They can’t buy Presidential elections because people are paying too much attention for the BS soundbites to work completely, but at the local and State levels, where elections are run on a shoestring and name recognition is 90% of the game, they can buy a lot of signs, a few sepia toned commercials, and people hear about their candidate and not the Democratic opponent. So, they enter the voting booth and pull the lever for the candidate whose name rings a bell.
Paul in KY
@A guy: Maybe you are a wv libertarian….
HelloRochester
I’ve said it before, but please let me reiterate: F*ck Rahm Emmanuel. With a toilet plunger. For bullying away everything good that Dean’s 50 State Strategy set up.