This is not a story about Flint, Detroit, or Emergency Managers, but it is the story of what failures lead to them. At the time of this writing there are at least two other stories on the Rec list talking about how DNC chair is bad at their job, and others still how turn out is lower and we have an enthusiasm gap. So lets go back to 2010 when this mess started in Michigan.
Six years ago Michigan held it’s Gubernatorial race to see who would replace a two term (limited) Democratic incumbent, the race on our side came down to two a firebrand populist mayor, and an establishment leaning congressperson from the Detroit suburbs. The populist mayor won, but like so many other Democrats in 2010 was stomped, it so often felt like the MDP didn’t support the mayor who had pushed past the establishment. Now no candidate is perfect, and it didn’t help with the red wave we had to face that year. The kicker on top of it all? The establishment congressperson would join the new republican governors cabinet.
Move forward another four years to 2014, the MDP decided to “clear the field” so a year early we already knew who’d be facing the Republican the following fall. But even with almost a year of working at it we couldn’t unseat the incumbent even after that it just didn’t feel like the MDP was engaged with the people. This was after dumping the chair who had lost the last one.
Returning to present day, the DNC attempted to “clear the field” for the presidential race this cycle but a firebrand, a senator in this case challenged the establishment. But you have the DNC trying to purge a the field at this point, letting the other side suck up tons and tons of free media as they limit the number of debates allowed by the party. This lack of open exposure and engagement with the base may very well be lowering turn out at the polls so far.
The Establishment has started to feel threatened by the upstart senator, bringing out the big guns and to some degree started using talking points from the other side to attack core ideals of the Democratic Party since the New Deal. The last 30 years, so my entire life it’s seemed that the Democratic Party is more interested in running from it’s legacy and base rather than using them to win. Where the Republicans use their history even and even the lies about to amp their base, we have a chair who won’t support Democrats in their home state because the chair is “friends” with the republicans in said seats.
Some one third of republican held congress seats are currently uncontested, it’s the DNC’s job to bring victory to the party, each and every seat needs to have someone to carry the party flag. The chair needs to spent less time protecting “friends” and “hippy punching” and do their job trying to win more seats for the party. Or they should resign and let someone who wants to win at every level take the job.
Thanks for reading this far, one of the things I tried to do while writing this was to remove any mention of gender when talking about the people in this story, sticking with titles and as gender neutral pronouns as I can think of. With the record of the DNC the last 6 years anyone who wants the party to win should want heads to roll at the top. It doesn’t make me sexist to point out the flaws in their method or actions, there are framings that would.
On the other side we have a belligerent fascist, a theocratic creep, a kid who really wants to impress his rich friends, and a union buster in moderate’s clothing. This fall weather we feel the Bern or stand around the Hill (okay not one of my better wordings) , we need to win. If the DNC won’t take the actions to win they need to be replaced, and replaced quickly. Don’t let Michigan be yet another Canary first with industry and now in the political world.