More than one of my correspondents has forwarded me this article on frustration among Democrats across the country at the Democratic National Committee’s focus on winning the White House over building deep state and local benches. This disappointed Dems miss Howard Dean:
The Nebraska Democratic Party, for example, paid five full-time staff members during Dean’s tenure. But when Dean’s “50-state strategy” ended, it was hard to keep one and pay the rent, said Maureen Monahan, a vice president of the Association for State Democratic Chairs from Nebraska. Some states, such Mississippi, do not pay their party chairs. Even in Michigan, a staff that once stood at more than a dozen now is between five and seven employees, party chairs said.
“The past eight years we have not had any focus on the state parties,” Monahan said. “There’s been a sense that the DNC is a building in Washington” [Kathleen Ronayne, “State Level Dems Frustrated with DNC,” Talking Points Memo, 2017.01.02].
But how does the DNC promote the Democratic brand in red places like South Dakota? Not by retreating from inclusive politics as European progressives did in the face of 1930s fascism:
The European left at that time didn’t effectively speak to large numbers of working-class and middle-class citizens, particularly in small towns and cities, and created a vacuum that the far-right was all too eager to fill. In fear of alienating the majority, leftists also failed to defend the rights of Jews, Gypsies, and others who were targeted as the economic scapegoats for the Depression. They failed to have a sense of their own power and their ability to go on the offensive, and went into a reactive mode, defining themselves by what they were against rather than what they were for.
We can see these trends today, as many white progressives propose stepping back from defending so-called “identity politics,” in order to gain more votes from the white, straight majority. Many progressives and radicals likewise seem to be stepping back from class-based “unity politics,” by writing off huge areas of the country’s interior as a backward and hopeless “Trumpland.” Both knee-jerk reactions are enormous, strategic movement-killers at this moment in history [Zoltan Grossman, “In 2017, Fusing Identity and Class Politics in ‘Trumpland’,” Counterpunch, 2017.01.03].
Geographer Grossman finds a model for bringing identity and class politics together right here in South Dakota, where there’s red, and there’s red:
Again, asking the question about what could have been done in Europe during the rise of fascism, we have to look to U.S. models that have actually included rural whites in a common cause with marginalized communities. There is perhaps no better example than the Cowboy Indian Alliance, which has so far blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline in the deep-red states of South Dakota and Nebraska. The unlikely alliance combined the treaty rights of Indigenous nations with the populist grievances of their historic enemies: white farmers and ranchers. People power fused identity and economic values, and strengthened Native sovereignty, by defending the land and water from corporate power [Grossman, 2017.01.03].
And who founded the Cowboy Indian Alliance? South Dakota’s Faith Spotted Eagle, who in 2016 won a seventeenth of George McGovern’s 1972 Electoral College vote without even trying. Spotted Eagle also protested the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock.
Hmm… if Faith Spotted Eagle is the exemplar of successful progressive activism in the Trumpist den, maybe she should be the next DNC chair.
Before promoting the Democratic brand, it needs to be clearly defined. Part of the defeat of Secretary Clinton came from Democrats not identifying with what she represented as a “Democrat.”
Every county, every state!
That may be, o, but the defeat of Secretary Clinton didn’t come at the hands of the voters. She won the popular vote by a 2.865 million margin. The defeat came by way of the electoral college. The Democratic Party has some outreach to do, and a 50-state strategy is the place to start. It worked before and should not have been abandoned.
The successful 50 state strategy was abandoned by Obama, for his own reasons I guess. This for sure needs to be resurrected with an emphasis on the racial economy. In the electoral vote, it is clear why Don won, the racism and jobs combination. We cannot look the other way and say that it was one thing only, it was both. Bill Moyers says it best http://billmoyers.com/story/%EF%BB%BF-how-populists-like-bernie-sanders-should-talk-about-racism/
Automation is taking over the game more and more so each passing day. Robots are getting to the point that they will soon be doing it all. Here is a fascinating piece on a luxury car being built in Germany. There are a few humans, but the most work is done by robots, interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_qjydhPpe0
The DNC was not paying attention during the Obama years, they were simply taking too much for granted because of President success.
In each election cycle during those years Democrats were slowly losing ground while the DNC concentrated only on national politics.
President Obama had many successes during his tenure as president, especially with economics and saving our economy.
It has been reported that during the Obama years Democrats lost 1030 seats to state legislatures, governorships, congressional and senate races nationwide.
Alarm bells should have been sounded starting with our heavy loses in 2010, 2012 and 2014 when we lost control of the senate and congress.
The writing is on the wall, if the DNC continue their concentration on just the presidency we will continue to lose.
I became so frustrated with the DNC and our own state party that I made no financial contributions to either, instead I made direct contributions to our local candidates.
The 2016 election is the result of 25 years of Democrat support for neoliberal policies. Support for privatization, financialization, and militarization doomed the Democrats. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama paid lip service to working class issues as they allowed unions to be gutted by Republicans. Bill’s triangulation maneuvers were admired by pseudo-liberals but the net result was an end to to the New Deal policies of FDR. NAFTA, Welfare reform, mass incarceration, deregulation of banks and Wall Street. That is the legacy of Bill Clinton and his Democratic successors.
Shall we combine Roger’s and Jason’s critiques? The DNC got lazy on local organizing, and it drifted away from the liberal soul of the party, the Democrats’ very reason for being?
https://www.sheilakennedy.net/2017/01/rubber-meet-road/
This might be interesting. If you are up to speed on bills in state lege that info could be a big help to this guy’s website. Another grassroots effort to combat the commies.
The South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP) receives a subsidy of up to $10000.00 from the DNC each month as a remnant of Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy. This subsidy may have worked during Dean’s tenure as DNC chair (2005-2008) during which South Dakota Democrats retained the two federal offices they held and increased their seats in the South Dakota Legislature. The Party’s momentum stalled in 2010 and since then it has descended toward political irrelevance. They have lost both Federal offices, dropped from 35 to 15 seats in the Legislature, and watched Democratic registration drop 41,000 voters from a high of 207,000 in 2009 to 166,000 in 2016.
Could it be that the monthly DNC subsidy allows the Democrats who currently control the SDDP to avoid accountability for these results? They seem less inclined to explain their performance, adjust their message, broaden their base, or change tactics to appease donors and maintain a revenue stream. Instead, following their last two defeats, the Party has congratulated itself for its hard work and distributed bonuses to its staff. Perhaps less support from the DNC would focus their attention.
Let’s be clear though: whatever criticism we’d like to heap on Obama or the modern DNC for the breakdown of the Democratic party since 2008, quite a bit of it can be explained by (a) poor polling/polling errors, particularly during mid-terms (remember than the degree of GOP success in 2010 and 2014 was a bit of a shock), which means it was difficult for the DNC to have predicted the effort necessary, (b) that the opposition party usually does better except when the opposition party tries to impeach a president over lying about extramarital affairs, (c) incredibly high levels of party polarization, destroying mixed-ticket voting tendencies.
While I think a strong Democratic party needs to both push ‘identity politics’ (inclusiveness, being polite to the mistreated…) and an economic message, its unclear what either of those will look like for an opposition party under Trump, especially the latter if he keeps pushing false narratives about job growth due to him alone.
Kingleon, perhaps even before we compose a grand message of political and economic inclusiveness, we focus on seizing the mantle of simple Truth. We need to make clear that we aren’t the liars. Telling the truth has to count for something.
This new piece by George Lakoff offers detailed and specific analysis explaining his scientific theory how loser Trump became our minority President, how the polls failed to predict this outcome, how the Democratic campaign backfired by inadvertently promoting Trump, and how Democrats can begin to turn it around. It addresses these specific points, using a scientific approach based on years of research the brain and the nature of our physical minds.
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minority-president-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-can-do/
Here is an interview of Lakoff about the article:
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/15/dont-think-of-a-rampaging-elephant-linguist-george-lakoff-explains-how-the-democrats-helped-elect-trump/?source=newsletter