than contribute any more of my time or money to electing congressional Democrats. Yesterday I received one of those "surveys" from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D triple C) asking me to take a few moments to fill out what my agenda is for the future of the country.
If you're a registered Democrat you've received these little "tell us your priorities" missives many times over the years. After you check off the boxes that say you support healthcare reform, protecting and preserving the environment, rescuing our failing economy, expanding educational opportunities, and not starting any unnecessary wars, you are supposed to be so moved by the fact that your answers match the Democratic agenda, you will return the survey with a nice healthy donation to the Democratic Party.
The problem is that while your answers may match the Democratic agenda, they don't match the actions of many of the Democrats your money goes towards electing. As many of us who worked so hard in the 2008 election have found out over the past eleven months, electing a sizeable majority of Democrats to Congress and putting a Democrat in the White House means diddly-squat in advancing the Democratic agenda. After watching the stimulus brouhaha, the cap and trade travesty and now the healthcare debacle it has become abundantly clear that the only thing our money and votes gets us for supporting Democrats is more people in Washington DC with "D's" after their names.
Which is why my first impulse was to toss the DCCC survey in my recycle bin in disgust and move on to doing something more useful with my time like arranging my record albums (yes I still have albums) in alphabetical order. But the more I thought about it the more convinced I became that the DCCC needed to hear from me. However, instead of filling out the useless survey, I decided to send it back in its postage paid envelope with a note attached telling them that until the Democrats passed meaningful healthcare reform that included a robust public option, enacted real regulations to rein in the corruption and greed on Wall Street and in our financial institutions, and ended our deplorable and dangerous occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, they would not get another dollar of my money or hour of my time supporting their impotent and thoroughly compromised party.
If you get the survey in the mail, or a phone call from the national Democratic party in the evening, ignore that impulse to throw it away or hang up. Tell them what you think. It feels good.