Today, you’re going to read a lot of diaries — and you already probably have, revolving around Donna Brazille’s release of book excerpts on Politico. There are a lot of troubling discoveries in her book. However, I am far more concerned with the fact it comes 5 days before important elections in Virginia, New Jersey, Kansas, Missouri and many other places around the country.
Already today, I’ve had several emails and Facebook messages about this book and the excerpt. Great, I say. It is troubling, we should discuss. Give me until after next Tuesday — when her book is released and these elections are over.
But here is the cold hard truth I take away from this story: we are where we are because Democratic activists and voters ignore midterm and state & local elections. Her article points to atrophy and lack of fundraising and support into the party.. in off years.
While Republicans gin up the hate machine with absolutely horrific postal mail and email chains, focused on an election less than a week away, Democratic websites are now hyperventilating about an election that is almost a year old.
How did we get into the problem we have now? We focused on the presidential election to the exclusion of everything else.
What are we doing right now? We are focused on a prior presidential election to the exclusion of everything else.
There will be time to talk about this — I will certainly share my thoughts at some point.
If you are looking toward Donna’s reveal to tell you what you need about the 2016 primaries, fine. But if you look deeper — and I mean deep as in just below the surface, you’ll need to ask: why do these organizations face atrophy?
Because we as voters and activists get angry and walk away until a presidential election.
And our candidates, state, local and congressional suffer.
There are major races on the ballot next week which will shape our political future. We are building toward the races that will help determine the fairness of our census and the status of our districts.
Tonight, canvassers hit the streets for Hillary Shields, phone bank for Democratic candidates in non-partisan races, work on behalf of Justin Fairfax and Northram in Virginia.
There will be time to talk about Donna Brazille’s book. But the fact we are all chasing it now, when an election is pending, may be the best example of the problem we face as a party: we care about presidential elections and easily ignore the others.