(I'm cross posting this from The Pennsylvania Progressive)
Barack Obama campaigned for President on the message of Change. Many changes were necessary amidst the failed policies of the Bush White House. The country was going in the wrong direction and we were in a major economic collapse. As President Barack Obama has made many changes, most for the good. One, however, was bad. He replaced Gov. Howard Dean as Chair of the DNC and appointed Tim Kaine who immediately dismissed the 183 DNC field organizers and terminated the 50 State Strategy. That concept is failing and, as a consequence, Democrats are suddenly losing elections. For four years under Howard Dean the Democratic National Committee funded a 50 state strategy which paid for DNC field organizers on the ground in every state. These organizers built local and county organizations which assisted candidates at every level. What happened and how do Democrats turn things around?
The program was officially called the State Partnership Project. The various state parties hired field staff who were paid and trained by the DNC. A high ranking party official with whom I spoke praised the program highly because it gave each state the independence to do what it needed: "we knew what was best in our state." The result was exciting as true grassroots organizing improved the Democratic Party from the precinct level up. This Blue Jersey story provides a glimpse. A Democratic activist and labor leader tells me this about how the program worked in his state:
I loved the 50 State Strategy rhetorically, strategically, politically. The SPP was a godsend -- and electorally really effective (we retained a governorship, won a swing Congressional seat, and took over the majority in both houses of our legislative in the 4 years we had the SPP). I raised about $120,000 for the DNC on my good word that the SPP and the 50SS were crucial.
It is a goddam shame that Tim Kaine, David Axelrod, and Rahm Emmanuel, three guys who probably don't agree upon much, were able to all but kill off the SPP and 50SS.
This is the sentiment I received from people all across the country as I researched this article. What happened?
In posts about the Bush Dogs, Chris and Matt call for "more and better Democrats". This actually implies two separate, but complementary goals, one to get More Democrats and another to get Better Democrats, and there are several complementary strategies to achieve each of these goals:
I get it - Clark's not running. Why he hasn't come out and said so is a mystery to me, and to the few people still paying any attention to Clark's continuing refusal to rule out a 2008 run definitively.
Nevertheless, Clark did recently direct attetion to ActBlue, and he did recently tell Charlie Rose on 7/26/2007 that lack of financial support is a key factor in his hesitation to get in the race. So, before he definitively backs out, I'm going to do what little I can to drum up some campaign-spendable support via ActBlue, so I can rest easy that my donation will not be wasted if Clark doesn't run, but instead will be used advance the same goals Clark himself has been working to advance.
Since Chris and Matt moved over to Open Left, one of the topics that seems to have dropped out of their commentary and reporting is what's going to happen to the 50 State Strategy, which is the most important and successful progressive political projects since the 70s.
The Nation's Bob Moser reports this about the 50 State Strategy (via Truthout):
Not a harsh word has been heard, at least publicly, from Dean's detractors since the Carville brouhaha. That's thanks not only to the intervention of saner voices but also to a study of the fifty-state strategy's impact on the 2006 midterm results by Elaine Kamarck. While the project had not been designed to win elections in the short run, Kamarck found that it had done just that, "increasing the Democratic vote share beyond the bounce of a national tide favoring Democrats." Comparing Democratic results in '06 with those of the '02 midterms, she found that the average Democratic vote went up by nearly 5 percent in 2006. But in the thirty-five Congressional districts where fifty-state staffers had worked on the campaigns, Democratic votes had soared by an average of nearly 10 percent.
Two things I'd like to say about this:
1) If you will be voting in a Democratic primary, remember that a vote for Hillary puts the 50 State Strategy at risk. I would like to see someone stand up at a debate and ask Hillary a question point-blank as to whether she will whole-heartedly support and expand the 50 State Strategy, and if she will denounce those among her camp who reject it.
I'm not advocating putting party before country, but the Republican party has become such a redoubt of foul anti-American authoritarianism, contempt for the constitution and corporate cronyism, you have to take into account the state of the Democratic party and the progressive movement in your primary vote as the most potent potential opposition and defence against these dangerous people.
2) I've noticed C & M moving toward acceptance of the possibility of a Clinton primary win. If that happens, one valuable advocacy action Chris, Matt and the blogosphere could take would be to lend our voice, power and support to the 50 State Strategy against any among the Clintonites who "loathe" it.
Clinton's advisors have long been the crowd that has bitterly opposed the strategy, and if she wins the presidency, she and her advisors will be in position to replace Dean (who doesn't want to serve past the end of his current term as DNC chair anyway) with someone who will run the DNC the way Republicans run the government.
Bob Moser again:
The real fear is that a second Clinton presidency would mean a return to the Washington-centric ways of the first-to party control by "the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grassroots in utter contempt," as Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos wrote in the Washington Post. The harshest public critics of Dean's strategy are also among Hillary Clinton's most trusted advisers: Emanuel, Carville, Begala. As Thomas Edsall reported in The New Republic last year, many top Clintonites so loathe and mistrust Dean that their campaign is "laying the groundwork to circumvent the DNC." There is talk of Clinton's team keeping its own field staff with the campaign after winning the primaries, rather than shifting them under the auspices of the DNC for the general election, as has been standard practice. "The DNC is going to be peripheral" if Hillary wins the nomination, one Clinton aide said. Clinton acolyte Harold Ickes Jr. has raised millions for a private voter database, to avoid relying on the DNC's.
In the event of a Clinton presidency, our power--our brand of angry strident passion--will best be put to use in defense of the 50 State Strategy.
I didn't start out to write an anti-Clinton diary but for now, I'd say to every Democratic primary voter, a vote for Clinton may be a vote to scuttle our great modern progressive-populist Democratic party building campaign--unless Clinton can convince us otherwise.
This year, Governor Dean is asking Democrats to get their hands dirty. We're dedicating our annual Democratic Reunion to an effort that is critically important-the fight for a cleaner environment.
Each year Democrats come together at Democratic Reunion events to build a stronger party. Last summer, we knocked on doors in thousands of neighborhoods right before the 2006 elections. We were supporting the important work of organizers on the ground, putting the 50-State Strategy into action and helping win back Congress in November.
