Daily Kos: Please Start A 'Political Dating Service'
def: Political Dating Service - A communication center where fired-up, committed young people can discover city, county, and state legislative districts needing a good quality candidate -- and vice versa.
Throughout the long election season Daily Kos did a magnificent job of identifying worthy Senate and Congressional candidates and raising money for them. For me, and others perhaps, this became THE go-to place whenever I had spare change to donate or wanted to act on my political convictions in a tangible way.
Now is the time to start preparing for 2006 and beyond. You can bet Karl Rove is at it already.
Instead of money, for the moment, couldn't Daily Kos do a world of good by helping to identify SPECIFIC locales NOW where a new Democratic candidate might make the difference next time? Not just congressional races (although that, too) but statehouse districts and even lower level county elective offices where the Democrats either fielded a weak candidate or none at all.
I thought of this today when a young man approached me and said he is planning to move 'out West' but would like to pick a place where he'd have a good chance of being able to run for public office -- anywhere out West, he said. He knows he wouldn't win. That doesn't bother him. He wants to get the experience, begin to build name recognition, and at the same time help to 'fill in' the ticket. He figures (rightly, I think) he'll have a better chance of running if he picks a 'reddish' place where the Republican incumbent is so entrenched no Democrats want to run against him.
It also occurs to me that there may well be some smaller cities, counties, and districts who are in search of someone who is "reality based" to run next time for some local position or another. Where do they go? Why not Kos?
I know it's supposed to be job of the DNC and state party aparatchiks to find candidates to run in hard-to-campaign districts. But typically they first have to go through a wrenching reorganziation, and later their priority will be to field candidates for congressional and state races where the vote totals show a Democrat came within a hair's breadth of winning.
Second priority -- the one the official party types pretty well ignore -- should be districts and counties where NO Democrat ran at all or where the odds are so steep no conventional Democrat cares to try. There were a ton of them this year.
Even where the chances of victory are slim, working NOW to field GOOD Democratic candidates next time can materially help the ticket higher up and build for the future. Now and then, lightning can always strike, too. (Wasn't Joe Scarborough an unknown sacrificial lamb for the GOP when the Democratic incumbent unexpectedly died or got indicted or something?)
With Kos as a communication center matching up places with people, we could begin to seed the party, nationwide, with young, smart, ambitious candidates who will become the building blocks for a future, stronger reality-based party.