Mother Jones Article

Michael Kazin wrote this magnificent article in Mother Jones about some of the problems with the Democratic party and what it needs to do to shore up its support. I have highlighted a few quotes from the article that I think are pretty important.

I did a lot of volunteering during the election through the Kerry website and I have one huge complaint, one that could have tipped the balance in this election.

Since last Nov/Dec I have attended meetups. I was living in Phoenix at the time. I went to Kerry meetups, Dean meetups and Democrat meetups. There were huge numbers of people who were showing up at these meetups just begging for something to do. They wanted a concrete plan for electing a democratic president and getting Bush out of office. I really do have to say, the only people who had anything like an organized effort were the Dean people. When Kerry became the nominee, I thought the Kerry campaign would become more organized and supportive of the local initiative that was taking place. I didn't see that. Even after I moved to Virginia and started volunteering through the Kerry website for voter registration, I saw no effort from the Kerry machine to organize local energy.

Now, it could be that since I was just a volunteer and not a staff member that I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but other people I talked to felt the same way. While the Kerry website had thousands of people signed up to volunteer, they did not actually tap into all of that energy and enthusiasm. It seemed that the only events on the site were fundraising parties. And unless you lived in an area where someone independently organized events such as voter registratioin drives, there wasn't much else going on. One guy in our area did organize some events and tons of people showed up who were just dying to do something. After much searching and networking in my local area, I did actually have one or two days where I did make my way down to the Kerry headquarters in Alexandria and they were begging for volunteers. Apparantly, the Kerry campaign collected all sorts volunteer information and did not disseminate that information down to the local level. I don't know if it was any different in battleground states, but I felt the organization was very disorganized.

So, unless you searched endlessly for volunteer opportunities in your local area, organized your own events or lived in a battleground states, you had difficulty building up a base. And honestly, people who don't do campaigning for a living, such as myself, do not know what it takes to run a campaign, when we sign up in droves to volunteer, we need direction and organization coming from somewhere. Now, I'm fortunate in that I now live in a very politically active community where are there are lots of people who have done this before and have some idea on how to organize, but most of America lives outside the beltway. If the Kerry camp had used that long list of people willing to volunteer to tap into the local energy, I can assure you, Karl Rove would have needed more than Ken Blackwell in his pocket to ensure a Bush victory.

"Neglected amid the rush to explain Kerry’s defeat was the simple fact that he didn’t have a strong, broadly rooted party behind him.
...

The upsurge of progressive activism in the 2004 campaign was quite thrilling to behold. First-time activists worked alongside veteran organizers to make the case against the incumbent, register new voters, and get them to the polls. But, like any new movement, this one was a freelance affair, haphazardly coordinated and badly in need of the direction only a strong, motivated party can provide.

...

The upsurge of progressive activism in the 2004 campaign was quite thrilling to behold. First-time activists worked alongside veteran organizers to make the case against the incumbent, register new voters, and get them to the polls. But, like any new movement, this one was a freelance affair, haphazardly coordinated and badly in need of the direction only a strong, motivated party can provide.

...

The need to redemocratize the Democratic Party is as urgent as the task of shoring up its tattered infrastructure."