A great American died today.
His name was Eli Segal. He was a Democrat. He fought to make his country liberal, just, and free.
R.I.P.
If you were for Clark for President in '04, you may vaguely remember the name. Eli was Wes's campaign chairman. He was gray-haired and slightly jowly by then, but the organizing instincts were still intact. Over the rugged course of 160 turbulent, high-velocity days, it was Eli who held the Clark Army intact. It was Eli who moved much of the critical, early high-dollar seed money into Clark's column. It was Eli who spoke the Clark legend to DC's workerbees, New York's financiers, Arkansas's faithful, and New Hampshire's skeptics convincingly enough in late summer 2003 to enable the General to debut on the national political stage at number one. With. A. Bullet.
But as is always the case with guys like Eli - this wasn't his first time. Eli, always an insurgent and forever a populist, had simply come home again.
In 1968, Eli was one of the leading organizers behind the McCarthy Insurgency of 1968 and was chief-of-staff of the DNC's McGovern Commission that in changing a few obscure but key convention rules, laying a death trap for bossism in the Democratic Party, finally giving women and minorities the proportionate representation they deserved, and generally making the Democratic Party more democratic.
In 1972, Eli was a part of the inner-circle of the McGovern insurgency that began as a few pebbles dropped into the heartland and grew into great grassroots waves that swept away the old, established order in the Democratic Party and put the then-latest incarnation of "the people" back in charge.
Coincidentally, in 1992, Eli led yet another populist campaign, this time working for a man he hired to work on the McGovern effort in '72 - Bill Clinton.
I don't know Eli well enough to tell you the full story of his life. But I think that when one of our best - a true master and prophet of Democracy - passes, we probably ought to say something. Hopefully you've gotten a sense of what we've just lost, and I encourage you to wish him a peaceful journey to the other side.