i can appreciate the focus of 2006 here at dailykos, and can certainly appreciate the proactive thinkers plotting 2008. what i don't understand is why no one talks about 2005.
i burst onto the political scene in late 2003 as a kucinich idealist, brought into the activism fold by the inspiring thought that he could make a difference.
the irony is the difference i would make.
being thrown into the political process into a highly contested presidential election year like 2004 was a complete nightmare. i live in a red county, in a red state, where absolutely no organization was present. we had no mailing list. our voter registration list was several years old. there were no organized precincts. it was total chaos. we worked really hard and did as much as we could and a dozen or so new radicals like myself successfully infiltrated the party.
in 2005, less people vote. we are using this small election as an opportunity to develop our processes. to take advantage of early voting and develop a method of eliminating daily those who vote early from our list of people to contact in our gotv campaign. now is such a great time to work on this process because it is small. to try to work out the kinks before 2006 and god forbid 2008.
democrats are grossly outnumbered in this county. we are teaching our democrats to undervote in these elections where more than one seat is present so that their votes are concentrated on one or two democratic candidates giving us an advantage and hopefully getting our folks elected.
only die hard political junkies vote in municipal elections, this is the time to reach your base. out of 22,000 registered democrats in our county, only 1908 voted in 2003. if we can't reach out and personally touch 1908 people, we need to just trade our snouts for trunks right now. these are our potential volunteers for next year and we need to knock on every door.
also, you can't afford not to be contacting your democratic party officials in this off year election. these are the contacts you'll need to be successful next year and in 2008. i am certain they have fall fundraisers or festivals or registration drives where they could use volunteers.
a familiar face is the face that gets nominated to the state executive committee. the state executive committee passes the platforms and resolutions of the party, chooses the state chair, and all sorts of other boring stuff that decides how liberal or how conservative your party is going to be.
in nc this year, our progressives went out in force and got themselves elected to the sec. they ended up defying our grossly conservative governor, and choosing a very progressive state party chair. our platform has collective bargaining rights for public employees. there are all sorts of small success stories coming out of this backwards red state.
it's not glamorous. sec meetings are the most boring things i've ever been to. but it's worth it.
our county has a long way to go. a long way. we don't have a single democrat in an elected position (other than a couple non-partisan spots on school board and city council) no county commissioners, no nc house of representatives seats.
but all that's gonna change. it's gonna change because of me. because of those that i have joined and the countless others that have joined me. it's slow and painful, but it's sure.