November 4 was a disaster for the Democratic party, which was once again trounced in a mid-term election. Despite a much touted get-out-the-vote operation, early numbers look like the Democratic party did even worse than 2010.
The question I think we all had the morning of November 5, right after "what just happened," was "what now?" Here on DKos, we've seen great suggestions and discussions surrounding that question. We should face facts. We should clean house at the DNC - maybe even the entire Democratic Party. We should stop selling watered down beer, and get back to basics. We need to use our values and our brains.
Like many others, I think the Democratic party has lost its way. How do we get back on track? I found inspiration right here on Daily Kos. In a great rec list diary, we saw what I hope is the start of a Progressive Great Awakening I wish I could link every single comment I've seen over the last couple days where people are responding by rolling up their sleeves. If we want to get back on track, we're going to need to all pitch in. We must start the hard and slow work of organizing a progressive supplement to the Democratic Party. Once we've organized, we won't have to wonder how to improve the party - we'll demand it.
This site's motto is more and better Democrats. If we want better Democrats, we should avoid trying to influence any national campaigns for a long time. They're a lost cause. What happens when we put all of our time and effort into getting a progressive-insurgent candidate elected on the national stage? We lose - and no wonder.
In the era of billion dollar presidential campaigns, insurgent candidates don't have the money to compete. Even if they did, the machine finds ways to crush anyone who opposes it - see what happened to Howard Dean. If by some impossible confluence of events you beat the odds, what then? What's one insurgent against an entire political system hostile to your philosophy? Even worse, you may find your insurgent swallowed up by the machine he once vowed to fight.
What can we do? Way more on that over the fold.
Let me tell you about a place where we can compete and get better Democrats. Do you know who won the vast majority of state legislative elections in my home state? "Uncontested." In the elections that don't cost millions of dollars, where you don't need to reach hundreds of thousands of voters, Democrats didn't even try. It's the same further down the ballot, in races for city council, county commissioners, school board members, etc. These are races where only a few hundred or thousand people vote, where no money is raised or spent at all.
If we want better Democrats, those tiny races are the place to start. Just because they're tiny, doesn't mean they're easy. This is a much harder thing than giving $3 in response to a fundraising email. It'll take work - a lot of it. I'm talking about fielding thousands, tens of thousands even, of candidates - every single year. It's not a project from the top-down, but from the bottom-up - and every pyramid is broadest at the base.
Every state, county, town, and precinct is different, and what works in one place won't work somewhere else. That's why progressives, while coordinating and associating on a large scale, should organize locally. Every organization will have its own methods, but I think the pattern should generally be the same:
1. Regularly meet with and organize fellow progressives.
2. Get involved in the community
3. Run progressives for office with door knocking campaigns.
That's how you improve the Democratic party - with thousands of progressive organizations grabbing the party right by the roots, working in communities all across the country. This isn't an every 2 or 4 year campaign, but a campaign fought one community event or voter registration drive at a time. It's a battle of ideas and perceptions out there - we've got to get out there and win it.
Start at the bottom. There's nothing glamorous about the bottom. It's still the roots, underground and invisible to most people. But it's the perfect resume experience when you're trying for the next rung up the political ladder. Keep working at it. Keep organizing, staying involved, moving up the rungs. Pretty soon, it won't be just the roots underground that are progressive - we'll have captured the trees too, from trunk to tip.
And I'll emphasize, you do this everywhere, not just in places where the Cook Report makes a win look likely. We run everywhere because it's the right thing to do, and we should be confident in our message. And at the same time, it's the right political strategy if we ever want Democrats to succeed in mid-term elections. What if instead of losing rural areas 80/20 or 75/25, you cut that to a 60/40 margin? Cutting the huge leads Republicans bank in areas not even contested is the path to victory for progressive Democrats.
This is a long road that won't bear fruit for many years. In 2016, it'd be imperceptible to a national media focused on Presidential politics. But if this really caught on, if we all kept at it - could we win state houses in 2020, in time for the next round of Census redistricting? Could we win state wide offices, on a true progressive message? And if we could do that in state elections, what then?
Certainly, none of what I'm suggesting here is new. Dean suggested this with his 50 state strategy. And we have groups on Daily Kos already that are doing this type of thing - grass roots, local, and the Connect! Unite! groups. We have the tools in place, but will we use them?
I can only speak for myself. No more excuses. I'm getting out from behind the keyboard, so to speak, and getting involved. I don't know if I can do much, but I'll do what I can.
What will you do?
This diary started as a comment on Dallasdoc's No Scapegoats diary. Thanks to Dallasdoc for writing the diary in the first place, and to peregrine kate and others for encouraging me to expand it into a diary.