Saturday, March 11, 2017

Whether it's the local or the national Democratic Party, cluelessness prevails.


The current count is three.

For weeks, I've been asking Floyd County Democratic Party members to set me straight (privately or publicly) and try to explain why an eroding entity with no coherent platform and no apparent purpose, save for acting as garbage detail and all-purpose apologist for a mayor who seldom emits anything even remotely democratic while pursuing an ever more ludicrous cult of personality, continues to double down on the same losing bets.

Specifically, why re-enthrone Adam Dickey as chairman? In terms of results, doesn't Dickey make Tom Crean look like the second coming of John Wooden?

Three Democrats have accepted the challenge, and each has offered a variant on the same exculpatory theme: Times are tough, and Dickey is the only one who'll do the work, and he busts his ass to get it done.

But if your dysfunctional contraption is losing elections, hemorrhaging support, failing to develop young talent and facing oblivion in the next round of municipal elections, then exactly to what end is this hard work being done?

It's more of the same buffed and polished corporate propaganda daintily draping a rotting carcass, isn't it?

Look, if you're going to maintain status as a boy wonder, then at least one of two conditions must apply -- that you're a boy, although simple chronology eventually overtakes the feverish air brushing, and that you're in some way wondrous.

Hmm.

Zero for two, which hereabouts is grounds to serve as chairman for life. Verily, 2019 can't come soon enough.

KING: The Democratic Party seems to have no earthly idea why it is so damn unpopular, by Shaun King (New York Daily News)

 ... The Democratic Party is deeply unpopular – period. It’s a fact. Don’t look away. Don’t call me a Bernie Bro. It’s a problem that must be seriously addressed. Not a day goes by when I don’t have people reach out to me and ask if it would be worth it to start a credible alternative to what the Democrats are offering. Most people, I believe, would also be open to a brand new way of business for the Democratic Party, but core leaders seem hell bent on doing the same old crap.

When good people who are frustrated with the Democratic Party express their genuine concerns, I see them being told to shut up and unify. “Now is not the time for public complaints,” they are told. “We must all work together.”

But what this apparently means to the people who are calling for unity is getting behind the corporate, suit and tie, lobbyist-driven agenda of the establishment. But let me break it to you – the establishment has almost no grassroots momentum. Virtually every progressive grassroots movement in America right now is fueled by people outside of the Democratic Party establishment and this is a huge reason why the party is so outrageously unpopular.

Huge grassroots movements, made up of millions and millions of people, are fueling the fight for a $15 minimum wage, fighting back against fossil fuels and the Dakota Access Pipeline, fighting to end fracking, fighting to remove lobbyist money from politics, fighting to end senseless wars and international violence, fighting for universal healthcare, fighting for the legalization of marijuana, fighting for free college tuition, fighting against systems of mass incarceration, and so much more.

But mainstream Democrats aren’t really a central part of any of those battles, and, to be clear, each of those issues have deep networks, energized volunteers, and serious donors, but corporate Democrats virtually ignore them ...

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