I am sick of reading comments from people who say "why didn't the Dems run someone for XXX in my district?" or "Why aren't the Dems supporting Joe running for whatever?"
The obvious fact here is that if you have to ask this question, then I know that you are just an armchair quarterback and although you consider yourself a Democrat, you're really no more help than the people who don't vote. You feel that you are involved enough by verbally supporting the party, and maybe every once in a while you might throw a few dollars into the campaign of someone who you like. I'm going to scold you right now. This is not enough. You need to get off your butt and and step away from your computer and actually get involved in your local county Democratic party and help out!
The pervasive problem in the Democratic Party is that so very few people who hold strong opinions and are supportive of the Democratic party actually step up to the plate and help out.
When I moved 6 years ago I didn't know a soul in my new town and I knew I lived in a very conservative area. I was shocked to see the first time I voted that there were not many Democrats on the ballot for the local offices. This prompted me to seek out my county Democratic party and begin trying to understand what was going on. After almost 6 years of involvement I now clearly understand who's running and why some offices go uncontested.
The Democratic party's problems come from complacency from the general public who considers themselves Democrats. People sit home and read all kinds of stories on the party's support of candidates and stances on various issues and they think "the Dems should do this or that". What they fail to understand is that they are "the party". When they ask "why didn't the Dems do this?" I'm asking back to them "well...., why didn't you do it? you saw the need, so why didn't you volunteer to do it"
The bottom line here is that your Democratic party needs you to get involved. Very few people running the Party are paid, most are volunteers who just care about the issues enough so they try to make a difference. They need people to go the central committee meetings and talk about what they want the party to do. They need people to run for central committee. They need people to sit on committees and do things like amend bylaws or set up the yearly events calender, help plan events that raise money for the party , call to get people to attend events, help decorate and clean up after events. They need people to volunteer to help the party. They need people to answer the phones, to help candidates run their campaigns, to call for sign placement, to put up signs, to go to candidates nights and support the candidates, to write letters to the editor supporting candidates or highlighting complaints when onerous GOP policies are pushed through. I could go on but I hope you get the point.
You might think that everyone helping the candidates is getting paid and I'm going to surprise you by telling you that most of the people helping the candidates are volunteers. The candidates need you to attend events that they are speaking at so that you are well informed and you can talk to others about what they stand for. They need people in the audience who can ask informed intelligent questions that help spotlight their positions and show the public why they should vote for the Democrat. The candidates need money so that they can purchase ads, and the candidates need a lot of help running their campaigns.
If you get involved, what you will soon discover is that there is a distinct lack of bench strength in the ranks. Positions that go unchallenged at election time do so because they just could not find anyone willing to run. It's not that there aren't qualified people out there, it's the fact that most people are just too busy with their own lives to pay much attention and get involved.
You need to run for office yourself if nobody is going to run against the entrenched incumbent. This doesn't mean you need to spend a bucket of money. You can put your name on the ballot for a total sum of about $180. You can run a grass roots campaign that does not raise money and is run on door to door and local festival, newspaper endorsement interviews and candidate night campaigning, which all cost virtually nothing to do. Don't get me wrong here, it's a lot of time, work and stress. You'll find people who do not know you suddenly begin attacking you just because you are a Dem, and the campaign filings are a total pain in the butt to keep up with.
Conservatives realized a long time ago that all they needed to do was participate and they would win because so few people participated and wanted to open their lives up to the public's scrutiny. They made proactive efforts to begin taking over. They started at the local school boards and then pushed their people up from there into township trustees, city councilmen, county commissioners, auditors, mayors. When you see what is happening in the destruction of public education you need to realize that this is an agenda that has been in the works for over 20 years and they are now reaping the rewards of those agenda's instituted so long ago. If you want to reverse their gains then what you really need to do is stop complaining about what a bunch of volunteers didn't do and get involved yourself. Help out and/or run for office yourself. But for God's sake, STOP asking why the Dems didn't do something and DO IT YOURSELF!