Here's the wrapup of tonight's Democratic Party meetup in Philadelphia. Prognosis is not good.
from my earlier diary post, Going to the Democratic Meet-Up Tonight
The question is, should I wear my Howard Dean button?
I think I will. And bring some kneepads. They'll be tackling me, pinning me down, administering loyalty oaths and demanding to know my voting record.
Haha!
Here are the bullet points.
- Pennsylvania's primary is on April 27. There is a block on registering new voters from March 23 - April 28. March 23 is in six weeks and by all accounts, GOTV is barely even starting.
- The Mid-County Dem Committee chair, who hosted the meetup, was a likeable enough fellow but very disorganized.. even he admitted a massive lack of organization and the inability to get in touch with party organizers in many counties for lack of websites, phone lists and other sources of information. It all boils down to knowing some guy who knows another guy in another precinct who may or may not have the voter list.. or something.. I took copious notes but even I'm confused.
- The first full 30 minutes was spent trying to figure out who was there for the Dem Party meetup, who was there for the Congressman-who-wants-to-be-a-Senator Joe Hoeffel (who mysteriously scheduled his own meetup at the same time & place as the Dem meetup).. and of course a local State-rep wannabe sidelined the whole process by standing up and giving her stump speech, unasked for, in the middle of the proceedings. [Yeah OK, that's nice now sit down, we have a sitting President to depose.]
- Then of course there was the self-masturbatory Moveon.Org petition to Censure the President that was laughable.. a nice idea, but what a waste of time and money. a) it's not going to go anywhere, and b) it's too late for all that, and c) wouldn't this money and time be better spent registering new voters and doing something substantive than asking for a futile measure in the Senate? Fortunately I was able to dissuade the folks at my table from taking it seriously.
- OK, getting back to Joe Hoeffel, a state representative looking to become PA's new junior Senator, challenging moderate Republican Arlen Spector. Hoeffel's entire campaign is built on the following assumption: That right-wing looney toon Jim Toomey will swing the incumbent Spector far enough to the right for him to scoop up some of those yummy white middle-class suburban families. I say, any Democrat relying on a social reactionary to do well is probably running a shitty and cynical campaign that doesn't have a chance in hell. But that's just my opinion.
- Noticing there was not one black face in the room, I ventured the question about the overwhelming victory the Black voters of West Philadelphia delivered to incumbent mayor John Street over the the insurgent moderate republican Sam Katz a few months previous.. and was Hoeffel or the PA Dem Party reaching out to the Street and Fattah people to plug into their GOTV efforts. Hoeffel's rather well-groomed young supporters up front harrumphed and shook their heads at me.. one claimed "Street had a million dollars, that's all that was".. [Later on, one of them made snide comments in front of the group about the direction of the Dean campaign and the title of Trippi's new blog.. I wanted to lean over and smack that little fucker.. why do they dress and groom like Republicans? And why are they so young? One supposes they hate the Dean campaign because they couldn't run the show..]
- Someone knowledgeable pointed out that it was the 527 Partnership For Working Families that helped register 86,000 Black and Hispanic voters in Philadelphia in advance of that mayoral race, and even tore out an article in this month's The American Prospect ("The GOP Deploys") that outlined the success of PFWF in Philadelphia last year. Thanks again for that.
- But then I read further into The GOP Deploys in The American Prospect, which discusses Bush's shadow grassroots campaign which, by all accounts, is a lean and mean fighting machine a la the Dean campaign. Looking around at the confusion and discombobulation of the Democratic Party tonight and reading this article's account of the massive GOP mobilization opened up a huge yawning pit in my stomach.
I got off the train early so I could walk the 10 blocks home in the cold Philadelphia evening and think. Wrapping the scarf tightly against the cold, I had a moment where I felt as if I could see the future. Walking through my little radical enclave of West Philadelphia, past the Green Mile Cafe and the warm mugs of coffee, the kid with the upright bass and the guitar players.. so oblivious and innocent.. I felt as if I could see the future, and that future had a name.
And its name was George W. Bush.
Howard Dean, won't you please come home ?