Blogswarm - Online Political News Magazine

DNC Chair Election

Posted by Bob Brigham

On February 12, 2005, the 447 members of the Democratic National Committee will elect a new Party Chair, five Vice Chairs (including the President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs), a Treasurer, a Secretary, and a National Finance Chair.

Historically, this has been an insider only event. However, with record numbers of activists following the campaign on the internet, I am going to begin my coverage of the race with information on how this election is conducted. For further information, I suggest viewing the Democratic Party Charter and Bylaws (PDF).

The Chair will be selected by majority vote from among candidates who qualify for the race by submitting 20 nominations from current DNC members by 8 PM on February 10.

With a crowded field and competitive race there is a potential for none of the candidates to receive the necessary simple majority on the first vote. In this scenario, the candidate who garnered the fewest votes is removed and another round of voting occurs with the process repeating until a victory is achieved.

There are a number of important rules governing this election that should be known to understand the dynamics:

• The election will be open to the public and votes shall not be taken by secret ballot Charter, Article 9, Sect.12
• Roberts Rules of Order is used Charter, Article 9, Sect. 14
• Terry McAliffe will preside over the election Charter, Article 5, Sect. 3
• Of the five Vice-Chairs, three shall be of the opposite sex of the Chair Charter, Article 3, Sect 1(e)
• A roll call may be requested by 25% of the voting members present Bylaws, Article II, Sect B, (d)(ii)

Considering the make-up of the DNC, there is definitely potential for parliamentary maneuvering. Blocs operating under pre-defined strategies are most likely to be successful if such tactics are employed. It is important to note that McAliffe operated under a parliamentary games-player paradigm when changing the rules to shorten the 2004 primary election calendar. Remember, this is a fight for control of a budget that could exceed a half a billion dollars by the end of the 2006 cycle.

There are currently multiple lists of DNC members online, including: DNC List PDF (from Daily Kos): Draft Howard address list; Phraxos phone list. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD is in charge of the Cattle Call and also has a new Straw Poll of members at the Orlando Winter Meeting.

Democrats need to start winning again - for the good of our country and for the health of our democracy. The Republican Party is in a position of dominance unseen in our lifetimes. Their misguided agenda threatens to put our country on a dangerous downward path. It is up to us to offer an alternative way - a vision for our country and a smart political strategy to implement it.

I have no doubt that in the coming weeks, the conversation about where Democrats need to go and how to get there will grow in intensity - as it should.   It is a vital conversation that is essential to our party's future.

For the conversation to succeed in helping us tackle the challenges in front of us, it is crucial that we start first with an accurate assessment of where things stand today.

In the spirit of NDN's continuing mission to help build a better, stronger, winning Democratic party, here is our analysis of where we are.  In coming days, we will outline our ideas for a path forward.

Our Challenge:  Republicans Ascendant

1. The Republicans have become the dominant national party.  They control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court.  They now also control more governorships, more state legislative chambers and more state legislative seats than the Democrats.  They have more political power than any time since the 1920s.  Our 62-year run as the dominant Party in America - from 1932 to 1994 - has come to an end.  What worked for Democrats for so long is no longer working.  We need a new modern strategy that faces squarely where we are, and understands how to craft a new Democratic Majority for the 21st century.

2. The Republican/conservative alliance has built a superior information-age political machine.  By investing billions of dollars over 40 years in a vast array of powerful institutions and capacities, the Republicans have changed the national political playing field.  Their combination of mature and modern intellectual, political and media capacities is simply bigger, better, more coordinated and more strategic than the arrayed set of institutions on the progressive side.  We like to think of it as an information-age Tammany Hall.

Even at the campaign level they have a much more modern model for reaching voters.  They began investing heavily in databases and direct one-to-one marketing in the 1970s, and have built a campaign communications system that has much greater ability for "smart" narrowcasting - personalizing messages to specific groups and individual voters and reaching them through specialized communication.  Though we made great strides in the last two years, our campaigns are still built around an aging "dumb" broadcast model that blasts a more generalized message to a larger and much less differentiated audience - which in an era of Blackberrys, Amazon.com, Tivo, hundreds of television channels and even radio simply cannot compete with the personal, increasingly iterative, segmented "smart" model used by the other side.

3.  As an intellectually-based movement born when the Republicans were a true minority Party, their infrastructure is built on a foundation on the need to persuade.  At the very core of their collective institutional ethic is that they must persuade, persuade, persuade.  The institutions and leaders were born and grew when few listened to them, let alone agreed.  In a recent Washington Post piece, incoming RNC Chair Ken Mehlman talks about their plan to persuade - through issues and message - Republican voters to vote for the President.   All of their infrastructure, talk radio, direct mail, and television ads are built around a modern argument about where they want to take the country.  Our politics must become much more about sophisticated communication of a compelling message. We cannot assume voters know what we are talking about.

4.  9/11 gave the Republicans an opening that they have adroitly exploited.  The recent Republican gains have been much more pronounced at the federal level, than at the state level, where Democrats have gained ground.  While there are many issues that play differently at the Federal level, the basket of issues around security are the most electorally salient, and the area of the greatest Republican advantage.  Democrats must look hard at the new post-9/11 security environment as a major cause of the recent Republican surge.  Particularly study should be made of how these issues may have created their big gains with white women.

5.  Bush's brand of conservatism has had a particularly big impact in the South.   Often overlooked in the press is that George Bush is the first truly southern Republican incumbent president Democrats have ever faced.  While national polling numbers have never shown great strength for Bush, he has helped his party gain disproportionately in areas with high level of social conservatives, particularly the South.  Much of the gains Democrats made after 1994 in the South have been reversed.  Our Senate losses in 2002 and 2004 were largely in areas of high concentrations of social conservatives.  Reversing the very strong gains made by Republicans in the South during the Bush years has to be one of the Democrats' highest priorities.

Bush's politics has been less transformative in the more libertarian Mountain West, where even under Bush we've seen Democrats score significant wins in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and hold strong along the West Coast.   In 2004, Bush saw his winning margin decrease in 10 states that he also won in 2000 - 8 of them were the western states Montana, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming.

6.  The new Republican momentum with Hispanics is a grave threat.  With Hispanics projected to become a quarter of all voters in our lifetimes, Democrats must make reversing the Bush gains with Hispanics one of our highest strategic priorities.  In the last two elections, Bush has more than doubled the GOP share of the Hispanic vote, taking Dole's 21 percent in 1996 to 35 percent in 2000 and 40 to 44 percent in 2004.   If the Republicans can consolidate Bush's gains, and keep the Hispanic vote in the high 30 to low 40 percent range, Democrats will have a very hard time winning national elections.

However, with NDN's historic $6 million, multi-state Hispanic Project, we also learned in 2004 that when Democrats communicate directly and specifically to Hispanics, we gain ground.  With Hispanics only continuing to grow as a percentage of the population, the number of Asian-Americans growing nearly as fast, and African-Americans always remaining an essential part of the winning Democratic coalition, it is clear that NDN's Hispanic Project needs to be replicated across the party as a way of communicating persuasively with minority voters, particularly African-Americans.

Reasons for Optimism


1.  Democrats have kept it close in recent presidential elections.  Elections may be about winning, but not all losses are the same.  Our loss in 2004 was narrow, not a wipeout.  A few breaks in Ohio, a few more votes in NM and NV and we have a very different national narrative.  We've received 48% or more in the last three Presidential elections, 250-plus Electoral College votes in the last two, and have won more votes in three of the last four.  These numbers are not the numbers of a Party deeply out of touch with America, or that far away from the road back.

2.  The Democratic brand remains strong.  In a poll taken in mid-November, the Democratic Party had a 54%/39% favorable/unfavorable rating, a net positive of 15 points  The Republican Party, on the heals of its strong showing, had only a 49%/46% rating, a net positive of 3 points.  Despite losing, Kerry won independent voters, 49%/48%, and moderates 54%/45%.

3.  While the Washington party was weakened, the Democratic Party's national infrastructure became stronger. As NDN has been arguing for the last two years, we suffer from a capacity gap on our side.  Billions of dollars of investment, intrepid entrepreneurs and a forward looking-strategy has given the Republican/Conservatives a superior mechanism to develop and bring their ideas, values and politics to the American people.

In the last two years we've seen progressive investors and our own entrepreneurs working successfully to close the capacity gap.  New voices like Air America, Center for American Progress, Media Matters, Democracy for America, the Democracy Alliance, JohnKerry.com, MoveOn, ACT, America Votes, Democracy Radio, a revamped NDN, the influential blogosphere, and a revived and smarter DNC and state parties have given us a much greater capacity to bring our ideas and values to the American people, helping counter the vast message machine on the right.

4. We have the resources we need to compete.  Thanks in large part to the leadership of Chair Terry McAuliffe, who worked tirelessly to turn a moribund infrastructure into one that can sustain the party for the 21st century, the DNC outraised the RNC in 2004 for the first time on record. Defying predictions of a fundraising blowout for Bush and the Republicans after the passage of McCain-Feingold, Democrats actually raised and spent $925 million to the Republicans' $822 million in the presidential election.   The party and our presidential candidates adapted to the new fundraising reality, capitalized on Internet fundraising, and added millions of new small-dollar donors across the country.  We've built a strong and growing donor base to keep our party on solid fiscal ground.

5.  Our ground game is the most sophisticated it's ever been.  The DNC and the state parties,  America Coming Together, the America Votes partner organizations, the labor unions, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign combined in 2004 to create the strongest ground game our side has ever seen.  Nearly six million more voters turned out for Kerry in '04 than did for Gore in '02 - 554,000 more in Ohio alone.  Our ground operations contacted more voters, in more sophisticated and personalized ways, than ever before.  We know how to identify our voters, and how to get them to the polls.


6.  We can win back key Bush voters.   Bush won in 2004 in part by making gains with white women (particularly married women) and Hispanics - groups that have traditionally been strong sources of Democratic support.  Still, he did not win with insurmountable margins, and we still have the opportunity to prevent the Republicans from creating a solid, long-lasting majority.  We have won these groups before and we can win them again if we do not take their votes for granted, and instead make a smart, concerted effort to persuade them.  Moreover, with a strong message on national security, Democrats can close the gap among white male voters, including those in the South.

7.  Democrats are gaining ground at the state level in all regions of the country.  The red state/blue state maps that show the 18 states Kerry won in the presidential election only tell part of the story.  Despite losses at the Federal level in 2002 and 2004, we won elections at the state and local level in tough places at the same time, with strong candidates and state parties.  We flipped governorships to Democratic control in NJ and VA in 2001; in AZ, IL, KS, ME, MI, NM, PA, OK, and WY in 2002; in LA in 2003; and in NH and MT in 2004.  We held on to governorships in IA in '02 and WV and NC in `04, despite Bush's wins there, and had encouraging wins in the statehouses in Colorado and Montana.  Moreover, we protected Senate seats in IA, LA, and SD in '02 and ND in `04, and won Republican-held seats in AR in '02 and CO in '04.  Add all of these recent gains at the state level to Kerry's states in '04, and you see 33 "blue states" (including DC.)

8.  The Republicans are not a permanent majority party yet, and they're not proving to the country that they should be.  The numbers at the state level show convincingly that while the Republicans have built a sophisticated operation that is winning elections, they have not achieved permanent majority status yet.  Nor are they proving to the country that they deserve it.  Americans are less prosperous, our country is less safe, and our government is significantly less fiscally responsible than when Bush took office. Iraq has become a massive foreign policy disaster, and the Republican majority in Congress has succumbed to DeLay-style excess.  With complete control in their hands, Bush and the Republicans have no one to blame for the results but themselves.  By failing to govern successfully, they're leaving the door open for us to present a stark contrast and a winning message to the American people.  It's an opportunity for us to win in the near term, not just the long haul.

Swing State Project also discusses this.

Attack of the DLC

In response to my new American Prospect cover story, the corporate-backed Democratic Leadership Council has responded with a pathetic and laughable attack on me that is so defensive/dishonest/factually inaccurate it reeks of desperation. For those who are interested, here is a quick "Claim vs. Fact" on the DLC's attacks on me:

DLC CLAIM: "I hate to sound like a pointy-head here, but the argument Sirota's making--that economic 'populism' of the most atavistic sort trumps cultural conservatism--has been around for a long time, dating back at least to the early '70s."

FACT: The implication here, in classic-DLC denial, is that economic populism was tried and it failed. Yet, what goes unmentioned is that when the Democratic Party did fracture and factions did embrace the DLC's corporate model, Democrats lost the congressional majority for the first time in 40 years, and are now, unnecessarily, on the verge of permanent-minority status.

DLC CLAIM: "Schweitzer blasted Montana Republicans for corporate subsidies, government inefficiency, etc....[this is a] strateg[y] the DLC has strongly and repeatedly endorsed."

FACT: As just one example of how false this statement is, according to the New Democrat Coalition (the DLC's congressional arm) "New Democrats have long been supporters of the Export-Import Bank, and it has been a key part of our pro-trade agenda. This year, 96 percent of NDC Members supported the conference report on Ex-Im reauthorization." As you may recall, 80 percent of Ex-Im money goes to Fortune 500 companies including Boeing, General Electric, Catepillar Inc., Mobil Oil, Westinghouse, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Enron, IBM , FedEx, General Motors, Halliburton, Siemans, Raytheon, and United Technologies (many who bankroll the DLC). These companies are some of the biggest job cutters in the country, yet when progressives tried to prevent Ex-Im subisidies from going to companies that are sending jobs overseas, they were voted down with the help of DLC leaders in Congress. Even the Cato Institute notes that "the Export-Import Bank is corporate welfare - it benefits a small number of private businesses at the expense of other businesses and taxpaying citizens."

DLC CLAIM: "It's pretty clear Schweitzer himself didn't think populism made it unnecessary to deal with cultural issues on their own terms."

FACT: No one said that economic populism made it wholly uneccessary to deal with social issues. As the Prospect article specifically said, "The point is to follow red-region Democrats who have diminished the electoral impact of traditional social issues by redefining the values debate on economic and class terms. Granted, the progressive populists profiled above do not uniformly hew to the standard liberal line on social issues: some are pro-life, some pro-choice; some pro–gun ownership, some pro–gun control; some pro–gay marriage, some anti–gay marriage; some vociferous about religion, some subdued. But they have shown that there is another path that moves past wedge issues if the party is willing to fundamentally challenge the excesses of corporate America and big money."

DLC CLAIM: "Sirota goes on to list a lot of other red-state Democrats who have succeeded by defying the 'corporate/DLC argument,' and most of them are actually politicians with long-standing close connections with the DLC: Ken and John Salazar of CO, Janet Napolitano of AZ, John Spratt of SC, Eliot Spitzer of NY, and Stephanie Herseth of SD."

FACT: This shows how the chameleons at the DLC have shamelessly name any up and coming politician a "New Democrat" so as to cover their own hide inside the beltway - even if those politicians reject huge portions of the corporate DLC agenda. For instance, Sen.-elect Barack Obama rejected any “suggestion” that “inclusion of my name” on a DLC/New Democrat membership list amounted to “an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform.” Similarly, with the exception of Spratt, the leaders cited in the Prospect article broke with the corporate/DLC model in defining themselves, instead raising their profile on a populist progressive message. The Denver Post noted that Ken Salazar won his "Senate seat with [a] populist campaign" – not the DLC's Republican-lite model. CBS 4 Denver reports John Salazar won by "hammering home a populist message that included bashing tax cuts for the rich" – the same kind of "class warfare" the DLC criticizes. Janet Napolitano built her record going after big corporations like Arthur Andersen, who had contributed lavishly to one of the DLC's key leaders, Sen. Joe Lieberman. She also built up a record prosecuting Qwest, a company that has been a major backer of the New Democrats. Wall Street, which contributes heavily to the DLC, sees crusader Eliot Spitzer's "as a meddler poking into issues best left to federal regulators and as a rabble-rousing populist," according to the Washington Post. And Stephanie Herseth hammered her opponent for supporting pacts like the Australia free trade deal, while the DLC applauded its passage.

DLC CLAIM: "You don't have to be a political whiz to know that Rep. Bernie Sanders is the at-large Congressman from Vermont, a state that gave John Kerry a 20-point win over George Bush. That state's relevance to a discussion of "red-state and red region" Democrats is mystifying, to say the least."

FACT: This shows how dishonest – and desperate – the DLC has become. The article wasn't talking about Vermont as a whole - it was talking specifically about Sanders' success in Vermont's "'Northeast Kingdom,' the rock-ribbed Republican region along the New Hampshire border. Far from the Birkenstock-wearing, liberal caricature of Vermont, the Kingdom is one of the most culturally conservative hotbeds in New England, the place that helped fuel the 'Take Back Vermont' movement against gay civil unions." The DLC offers no refutation that Sanders continues to win big in this region despite its "traditionally conservative" slant.

DLC CLAIM: "The only way to shoehorn Sanders and [Rep. Gene] Taylor as fellow "populist progressives" is to make opposition to trade agreements the sole definition of both 'populist' and 'progressive,' and sometimes that seems to be the thrust of Sirota's argument."

FACT: Sanders, Taylor, and other populists have worked together not only on trade legislation, but on preventing tax subsidies to job exporters, protecting citizens' privacy, and increasing funding for veterans' benefits. That is, in part, the definition of a populist – though it is not surprising that the well-heeled suits at the DLC who have never been outside of the Beltway don't quite understand that.

Q. What's a new name for the Republican Party?

A. The Democratic Leadership Council.

-Will Durst

The irony is that the Democratic Party has lost access to its biggest source of revenue -- huge corporate soft dollar donations that once flowed in response to the DLC's corporatist agenda. The party now depends on small dollar contributions, something it has no long-term experience collecting. As much as the Dems like to think of themselves as the party of the people, the GOP has had a solid historical dominance in small dollar contributions (i.e. the churches).

Dean and Trippi spurred the party's small-dollar revolution, while Kerry took advantage of the strong ABB mood within the party to keep that money flowing. But the party can't take the $70 million raised by Kerry online for granted (not to mention tens of millions of offline small-dollor grassroots contributions) if assholes like From and Reed walk around pissing on the party's base -- something Josh says they actually enjoy doing

[...]

The DLC once owned the "New Democrat" space in the party, and that is no longer the case. Many in the party establishment see the critical need to maintain an energized party base, for both activism and money, and see the DLC as an impediment to that effect. Not everyone in the establishment is "status quo".

The DLC is a dying organization. But the quicker it dies, the better we'll be as a party. The path to success lies in finding common ground between the party's myriad constituencies, not in toeing the Gospel According to From and Reed.

[...]

The battle IS between the failed status quo establishment and Reform Democrats who span the party's left-right ideological spectrum

It's telling that the DLC, our party's version of the Flat Earth Society, insists on fighting the old ideological battles that have long since been abandoned by most of the party's various factions. The DLC may or may not have had a raison d'être in 1992, but the party and the political environment has changed dramatically in the subsequent 12 years.

Steve Gilliard on the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council):

Al From: shut the fuck up
Since everyone is going on about the DLC, I think I have the shortest essay possible on the subject.

They are losers. Al From is the political descendent of Pierre Laval.

Their 2002 was a disaster, and they backed the always pathetic Joe Lieberman for President, like he would have won one state.

So exactly why should we listen to them?

It's no longer 1992 and that's a long-ass losing record. They've been losing since 1994, so why the fuck do they think they have anything to bring to the table now?

[...]

I'll say this; there are no good folks at the DLC. Any more than there were kind people working for Petain. Unless they want to upend the organization, why are they still there?

Fuck these people. They're losers, big time losers and they act like they're the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1979. Al From is all too willing to betray the core principles of the Democratic Party because it doesn't make him a kingmaker anymore. If From wasn't an asshole, and his presence on the Journal's pages, or did he forget how Bob Bartley lied about Vince Foster, only proves it.

Look, the fact is that the Democratic Party is changing and the days of kingmakers like From is coming to an end. Howard Dean's candidacy for DNC chair should be like a slap in the face. Dean is hardly popular with the insiders, but the fact is Dean comes into the game with the most cards, including popular support. Al From couldn't get arrested in a Meetup. The fact that people care who the DNC chair is should matter. Vichyites like From represent no one but themselves. The fact that they think people still care about their opinions is amazing.

And it all boils down to this: they're losers.

Suffice it to say that I asked my friend whether he thought From and Reed were fully aware of the 'optics' of running such a 'Dems get your house in order' piece on the Journal's editorial page. He said yes, they did and that they enjoyed the optics of it. I responded, yes, I knew that; but still really didn't think they quite 'got it'.

Let me explain what I meant and didn't mean. I didn't mean that Democrats should boycott the Journal OpEd page or restrict their writing to house organs -- plenty of liberals write pieces there and that's fine; I wouldn't want it any other way. Nor do I mean that Democrats shouldn't air their dirty laundry. They should. And now, frankly, as far as you can get from an election, is the time to do it.

But to advise Democrats you've got to be a Democrat, part of the Democratic party. And what that means is a certain threshold level of lack of contempt for people who, day in and day out, are the Democratic party. I don't mean 'the base'. I mean everyone -- right, left and center, the volunteers, the funders and the intellectuals, the issue activists and the occasional voters. And this shows a basic unwillingness to do that -- even in the most simple symbolic ways, indeed, a delight in not doing so.

The point is that the DLC gives off the impression, quite understandably, that they're not actually interested in convincing anybody they're correct about whatever it is they're advocating that day. They just want to be smug and look down upon all the pissants who aren't on board. While they write about how the problem is that some people actually disagree with them, they don't really seem to concerned with changing anyone's mind. Peeing in people's cornflakes for fun and sport isn't a way to win friends and supporters.

The DLC  (Democratic Leadership Council) flat out sucks. It's been described as a front for Republicans, Republican's light, Republicans in Democrat's clothing. They attack candidates, using the same vitriol as right wing talk radio cretins like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and Glen what's his name.

[...]

The fact is, the Republicans have moved so far to the radical, revolutionary right, in their efforts, now being done in plain open sight, to re-make America, that the DLC, when it seeks the middle ground, is really seeking the ground that old-time Republicans took. If you stretch so far to the right and then find the new middle, then those on the far right are winning just by influencing you-- if you are a spineless faux democrat.

The democrats were led by the DLC in the failed mid-term elections. Gore was persuaded by the DLC to do Gore light. It's time to throw these loser, fake democrats out of the sphere of influence of the Democratic party. Even if that doesn't happen, it's likely that they'll get themselves thrown out. They've been getting uglier and nastier-- as though their make-up is melting off and underneath they are becoming seen for what they are ditto-head Republicans Soon enough their real selves will become so transparent they will be thrown out, or laughed out. I'm sure Tom DeLay will welcome them. He  is probably already good buddies with them.

The DLC would like us to believe that a "third way" can satisfy everyone -- that expanding our base does not mean neglecting our core supporters. But this is a fallacy. The definition of politics requires there to be a choice between competing interests. And when it comes down to that choice, we better know which side we are on. If we lose the support (or at least the enthusiasm) of the people who need us the most, then we do not deserve to win. And we will not win. In every Presidential election since 1976, the candidate that lost touch with his base lost the election.

As for the DLC, it's time to euthenize the organization. Whatever role it may have played is spent. As of now, it's the single most divisive Dem-affiliated organization, refusing to play nice with others even in these desperate ABB times. As such, it deserves nothing but exclusion and ridicule.

The DLC just doesn't get it. They follow big money corporations so closely that every time the big money corpos turn around the "New Dems" break their noses. The DLC attitude seems to be that "good management techniques" solve all problems. I guess of they can find a "New Democrat" with an MBA from the Harvard School of Business, he's their man. Hey, it works for the Republicans.

And if these DLC propeller-heads think that a little more praying and a little more quoting of the Scripture by their candidate is going to make a difference, they better go back to a little party history. As I recall, Jimmy Carter was the most praying, Bible reading President in my life time and he was defeated in 1980 by the least openly religious Republicans that I can remember, Ronald Reagan, but one who used it was a political weapon.

Jerks, just don't get it. When are these guys and gals of the DLC realize that you don't win votes by promising a plain, cold hamburger sandwich when the other guys are promising a Big Mac, special sauce, extra cheese.

To quote Zap Brannigan: "What makes a man turn neutral ... Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

And so the DLC continues to wallow in its self-made trough of mediocrity with its surefire recipe for losing election after election.

For those of us involved in elections and campaigns, those of us who bat about strategies and hypotheses and wedges and frames and the like (even in an armchair capacity), it's tempting to look at the 2004 election from a tactical perspective: i.e., we got beat on issues (a), (b) and (c), and we need to work harder at appealing to constituencies (x), (y) and (z). This is appealing because it simplifies the situation, reducing the scope of the next four years to a few small, targeted goals. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're up against. Addressing our electoral troubles with this approach would be like seeing Genghis Kahn's army on the horizon and suiting up to play a tennis match against it.
[...]
Friends, this is suicide. It's also insanity - doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. This attitude is understandable among the status quo Dems, who have institutionalized jobs to hold onto and outmoded theories to defend; they have a personal stake in not facing the facts. But for everyone else on the left, there's just no excuse for it.

This article is sure to become a blogosphere cult-classic. While the wingers are using 9/11 to say everything has changed it is refreshing to see a Good Democrat like Joe Drymala so convincingly prove the point of why our Party can't be afraid of change.

We will never win by merely altering stances on issues. We will never win by merely coming up with good ideas. We will never win by merely running a charismatic candidate, or debating more effectively than the Republicans. We will never win by making deals with them. We will never win by respecting their point of view (which is rootless and devoid of principle). We will never win with moderation. In short, we will never win by using the tactics that have won for us in the past. Whatever we say into large microphones can be twisted by those with larger ones. Whatever we claim to stand for can be twisted into an endorsement of the enemies of America. Whatever candidate runs will be mercilessly smeared over the airwaves of the most powerful message infrastructure in human history.

Mr. Drymala forces us to realize that we aren't fighting the GOP that our parents fought:

Consider this universal definition of radical conservatism: "Radical conservatism demands racial, ethnic, or cultural unity and the collective rebirth of a nation while seeking to purge demonized enemies that are often scapegoated as subversive and parasitic. Radical conservatism is a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism that glorifies action, violence, and a militarized culture. Radical conservatism can exist as an ideology, a mass movement, or a form of state government. Radical conservatism attacks both liberal democratic pluralism and left-wing revolutionary movements while proposing a totalitarian version of populist mass politics. Radical conservatism parasitizes other ideologies, juggles many internal tensions and contradictions, and produces chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize."

If this sounds like the modern conservative movement which controls all the levers of power in the United States, it is. Only the above definition was written to define radical conservatism by another name: Fascism.

Drymala expounds on this point for some time and in great depth. He examines how the far-right gained power and provides historical comparisions that will drive a shiver up your spine.

In addition, he debunks the myth that we can just wait for the Bush Administration to implode and gain power by being a moderate alternative:

After the election, I consoled myself with the belief that the Republicans were running the country into the ground, and that a military or financial crisis would finally bring them to their knees and usher in a Democratic president (and maybe even a Democratic Senate). I no longer believe such events would be enough to remove the Republican party from power. Here is why:

No accountability. Scandals require investigations, Congressional hearings, impeachment proceedings, and the like. We cannot hope for these things under the current Justice Department, Senate and Congress.

Financial crisis would inspire fear, which can easily be exploited to benefit the administration. George Bush and the Republican Noise Machine would have little trouble maintaining power for themselves in the event of a financial meltdown. Bush would likely take radical steps to further dismantle our social safety net, repackage it as a recovery plan, and be seen once again as a bold and decisive man of action. It is the same strategy over and over again; it worked in the past and it can work again, no matter what the facts are.

Military crisis, even requiring a draft, will also inspire fear and instinctive ultra-nationalism. Here they would have another opportunity to further clamp down on dissent and brand critics as offering comfort to the enemy.

The public-at-large does not understand that we have a one-party state. This is probably the most difficult obstacle to overcome. I have no empirical data on this, but feel free to take an informal poll of non-political people in your life. Chances are they don't know which party controls Congress. Or which party controls the Senate. Or which party appointed a majority of the Supreme Court Justices. The lack of awareness is very deep, and makes our situation seem far more benign than it is. Particularly confusing is the rhetoric which comes from the Republicans - listening to them speak, it sounds as though liberals hold all the keys and pull all the strings, while conservatives are fighting the evil liberal beast which threatens to engulf us all. For people to blame the Republicans for a national catastrophe on their watch, they must be convinced that the Republicans are indeed the party in power. It sounds insane, but most Americans don't know or understand this.

So everything is different, we're facing off against facists using the same tools we used to debate gentleman and the worse things get the more power our opponents yield. It would be pretty bleak, but keep reading and Mr. Drymala writes what we need to do as a Party.

And he isn't afraid to take on the vested interests. He doesn't hestitate to take on the issue of why our defense of liberty doesn't extend to the Second Amendment.

It is a must-read column, please enjoy it.

Also, I am bestowing the first ever Blogswarm Best Blog Post of the Week Award to Joe Drymala. Joe's prize is knowing that his well researched, well written and inspiring post was appreciated...at least by me. Thank you.

Be that as it may, I have been making the odd comment here and there, including one in the "Why Bash Lieberman" diary yesterday. My comment? "Because he's a fucking putz."

But David Podvin has a better answer, and after you read it, keep reading -- I have a few choice words of my own, after all.

by David Podvin

The disenfranchised rank and file of the Democratic Party can learn a valuable lesson from right wing radio talk show hosts who were angry with Congressional Republicans for ignoring constituent concerns. During the fall campaign, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of Clear Channel Communications affiliate KFI/AM 640 in Los Angeles organized a successful effort to intimidate the GOP hierarchy by conducting what they termed a "Political Human Sacrifice".

Kobylt and Chiampou announced that they would select a Republican member of Congress to be targeted for defeat based on the issue of illegal immigration. After much deliberation involving names ranging from Dana Rohrbacher to Mary Bono, the chosen victim was House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, who according to the hosts had the worst (most sympathetic) immigration voting record of any Republican in Washington. Daily on-air attacks and public rallies against Dreier soon followed, and as a result the congressman - who was running against an unfunded Democrat in a safe Republican district - saw his share of the vote drop from sixty four percent in 2002 to fifty three percent this year.

Although Dreier survived the conservative effort to unseat him, the uprising caused panic in the GOP. The party filed a lawsuit against the hosts, claiming that their broadcasts condemning the congressman constituted illegal corporate campaign contributions to his opponent. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly announced a get-tough attitude towards illegal immigrants, and Dreier pledged a newfound resolve to keep undocumented workers out of the country.

So did every one of the other GOP congressmen who had been considered as a possible target by the hosts. In fact, the impact of the anti-Dreier effort has been so profound that House Republicans are now delaying passage of the intelligence reform bill until the law includes tougher anti-immigration measures, a requirement they had not demanded in previous terrorism-related legislation.

The political human sacrifice had its intended impact. Republican voters who felt they were being ignored found an effective way to gain the attention of the national GOP with the targeting of a well-known member of Congress. By demonstrating the willingness to lose a seat in the House, right wingers finally forced their party to become responsive. As it turned out, conservatives communicated their discontent and the seat remained Republican.

GOP voters may have sincerely believed that they were being ignored, but only a liberal Democrat can truly understand what it is like to be taken for granted. Over the decades, Democratic politicians nationwide have assiduously neglected the needs of their most loyal supporters. This has been especially true in the United States Senate, where Democratic principles have consistently been sacrificed at the altar of "comity". Whether it was the failure of Senate Democrats to support the Congressional Black Caucus challenge of the 2000 presidential election or their rubberstamping of the failed Bush foreign policy, Democratic office holders have prioritized ingratiating themselves to Republicans at the expense of behaving honorably.

Some strategists believe the weakness of the Democrats will disappear as public outrage at increasingly irresponsible GOP policies creates a backlash that returns a revitalized Democratic Party to majority status. This is wishful thinking because the sequence is inverted. The Democratic Party must first be revitalized, or the GOP will retain power no matter how badly it mismanages the country. During George W. Bush's first term, America was terrorized and lost two million jobs, but in the subsequent election the Republicans won yet again because their Democratic opponents were too gutless to confront them forcefully. In the absence of a new dynamic, the unacceptable status quo remains intact.

Democratic voters have been reluctant to punish their wayward representatives because most party members fear that doing so would further empower malicious conservatives. This was a rational concept in the past, but the GOP now controls everything there is to control, and it will continue to rule until the Democrats in Congress are motivated to fight. Therefore, Democratic partisans must finally discard the argument that demanding resolve from their tremulous leaders merely helps the Republicans.

The meek may someday inherit the earth, but they will never gain control of the American government, so Congressional Democrats need to be battle hardened with a little tough love from their supporters. Given that Democratic voters currently lack any meaningful representation, it is necessary to conduct a purge, or at least to make it clear that a purge will be forthcoming unless things change for the better. The threat of such retribution will become viable only after a prominent Democratic official is made to experience the wrath of the betrayed.

The logical target for such vigilance is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut... a more deserving political human sacrifice you will never find. It is not that Lieberman is the worst human being in the Democratic Party, or that he has the worst record, or even that he is the soul mate of William Bennett. The relevant factor is that with Zell Miller and John Breaux having goose stepped off into the sunset, Lieberman is now the prominent Democrat who most consistently gives aid and comfort to the Republican enemy. That consideration - rather than ideology or personality - is the criterion for being heaved into a volcano as a deterrent to others who possess similar accommodationist tendencies.

Lieberman is the paradigm of a Democrat who always embraces capitulation as the first option. He has long believed in reciprocating deference for contempt. It was Lieberman who appeared on Meet The Press during the Florida recount and eagerly agreed with Tim Russert that illegally cast ballots for Bush should be counted. The masochistic senator did so even as the Bush campaign was accusing him of being an unpatriotic cheater.

Lieberman has spent the last four years offering only token resistance to the radical Republican agenda. The senator has become a popular foil for right wingers because he derives perverse pleasure from lauding reactionaries while disparaging liberals. He has functioned as an invaluable apologist for Bush, invariably providing the former Texas governor with the benefit of the doubt, even when there has been no doubt. Each Bush lie has been excused by Lieberman, each act of corruption has been tolerated. George W. Bush recently won another term in large part because Lieberman and the other Democratic squishies gave him a free pass on his brazenly unethical professional misconduct.

Following the 2004 election, when Congressional Republicans began changing longstanding procedural rules in order to disempower the Democrats, Lieberman responded by announcing that he intends to become less "obstructionist". His degrading attempts at appeasing implacable conservative foes are extremely destructive to the interests of Democrats nationwide. Joseph Lieberman is profoundly unfit to represent the hopes and aspirations of those Americans who prefer not to be chamber pots for the right wing.

In 2000, the senator received sixty four percent of the vote in heavily Democratic Connecticut, which is the same level of support that Dreier garnered prior to the human sacrifice campaign. It is highly unlikely that the well-entrenched Lieberman can be defeated by Republicans in 2006; in the extremely improbable event that were to occur, the loss should be viewed as the acceptable cost of reclaiming the soul of the Democratic party.  However, much more likely than a Lieberman defeat would be a repetition of the Dreier phenomenon in which the incumbent would be re-elected by a much smaller margin, thereby alerting the party establishment that it must respect its constituency.

Shorter term, if liberal activists can soon begin organizing a viable primary challenge to Lieberman, the very fact that he was being targeted in a serious way would quickly gain the attention of the senator's colleagues. Once they realize that the poor saps who have been supporting them are fed up to the point of singing the executioner's song, weak kneed Democratic legislators will experience a group epiphany accompanied by an infusion of the fighting spirit that is needed to combat the GOP legislative program.

Absent that change, Bush will succeed in destroying the best of this country by constantly pitting American against American, by incrementally decimating the Constitution, by relentlessly redistributing wealth upwards, and by irreparably destroying the environment. The future of the United States as a free society is dependent on the opposition party combating the right wing jihad, but the combat will not begin until there is a catalyst that alters the attitude of the Congressional Democrats.

Nothing is more catalytic than fear. Democrats across America will receive the stalwart representation they so desperately need only when Democratic politicians are made to fear their own voters more than they fear the Republicans. The first step in this process is for the grass roots to generate a little "Joementum" by sacrificing the politician who has always been so willing to betray the interests of the Democratic rank and file.

So toss the motherfucker into the volcano. And while we're at it, let us put on notice all the spineless, capitulating, groveling, sniveling so-called Democrats: BE DEMOCRATS, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

But that would leave, what, seven unscathed Democrats after our purge? How fucking depressing. This whole situation is scandalous and pathetic. We have no Party. We have a loosely knit group of politicians suffering from Battered Wife Syndrome who meet every once in a while to buck each other up so they can go crawling back to the House for another round with their abusers.

Frankly, you wanna know why I haven't written much lately? Because I want to fire them all, that's why. Because I am so goddamned disgusted with Kerry and Edwards and Kennedy and Biden and... jesus, is there a single Democrat with whom I am NOT disgusted? Boxer, maybe. We'll see.

It's easy for me to vilify Lieberman. He's obvious. But Kerry? My hero? It's taking me time to come to terms with the fact that John Kerry is not the Saviour of Democracy and America that I hoped he would be. And I still reserve the right to allow that he may know just a WEE bit more about politics and the way the world works in his rarified atmosphere than I do. That said, however: THE GODDAMNED WORLD IS COMING TO AN END. When, exactly, will it be acceptable to start SCREAMING YOUR HEAD OFF ABOUT IT? When, exactly, will the elected members of the Democratic Party stop acting as if the future of their individual political lives is more important than the future of the WHOLE CIVILIZED WORLD?

WHY is there not a unified voice coming from the Democratic Party, proclaiming loudly and clearly that George W. Bush and his Administration are RUINING THE WORLD? WHY is there not an outright WAR going on in the House and the Senate? Why is the first refuge of our elected Democrats always CONCESSION and bullshit BIPARTISANSHIP? For the love of motherfucking GOD, people, the Republicans have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in bipartisanship. What they want is to eradicate the concept of opposition. What they want is Republicans and RepublicansLite. Whipping boys. And THEY HAVE IT.

I feel a wee bit o' fire in the belly as I write this. I don't have any answers, but BOY OH BOY, there had better be some forthcoming from the so-called Democratic powers that be. Of myself, I may be a powerless being, but I am part of a rapidly growing entity that is Really Fucking Sick of Being Sold Down the Fucking River By Its Own Party.