Proud to Be A Democrat

Toward the tail-end of one of our open threads yesterday, there was some discussion about how the Democratic Party is performing at the local and state level. I suspect many of us care deeply about this and are involved in our districts. But we don’t discuss it a lot here because this is a sprawling, global, almost-top-10K blog, and these issues are hyper-local.

But it’s worth discussing because the party has lost a shit-ton of ground at the local and state level over the years. There are many reasons for that, including a concerted effort by Republicans to destroy unions, which used to form a pillar of institutional support for Democrats, and a hyper-national focus among party members. We have to address it, and I know many of us are involved in that struggle.

So let’s talk about it: How’s it going in your local meth laboratory of democracy? Is your county-level party effective? How about the state level? Is the DNC helpful, or are they AWOL? What’s your understanding of their role? How do you see governor and state legislature campaigns shaking out? How are you directing contributions, if any? What non-party political organizations do you support?

I’ll start us off by answering these questions for my area. Our county party has done a terrific job; we’ve steadily made progress electing Democrats and ousting Republicans. After the election, the party had to find larger meeting spaces because so many more people became involved. There have been challenges harnessing all that new energy, but I am hopeful.

At the state level, I’m worried, but that’s nothing new. We’ve fielded such crappy candidates for governor that an obvious crook like Rick Scott was able to win not once but twice, albeit with less than 50% of the vote both times. And it looks like we might be getting ready to screw the pooch again, unless the state’s most famous ambulance chaser decides to throw his hat in the ring as a celebrity candidate for the Democrats. We could do worse, to be honest, but it frustrates me that we can’t do so much better.

I believe the outlook at the state legislative level is better. We recently won a special election in a district that Republicans thought was safe and where the Democrat was heavily outspent. County parties did phone banking across the state to help make that happen, and disgust with Trump is thought to have been a key factor too.

As for the DNC, I confess I don’t really know how much to expect of them at the state and local level. Maybe someone who understands how that’s supposed to work can enlighten me. I was an early supporter of Tom Perez for party chair, but the jury is out on his performance so far, IMO. Since I focus on ground-level stuff, I have no real sense what’s going on there except what I read in the media, which is geared toward peddling “Dems in Disarray!” narratives.

In addition to my local party, I’m involved in political organizations that support women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and immigrants’ rights, and I donate paltry sums to those causes. I also contribute to and volunteer for organizations that protect enfranchisement. (Reading this over, I realize it sounds like I do a lot, but that’s not really true — I probably spend more time watching cooking shows and sports than I do on all of these activities combined. I should be doing more.)

Anyhoo, before turning it over to you, a plea: Let’s not rehash the 2016 primary in this thread. I realize lingering hard feelings among factions within the party might be relevant to your response, and if so, please feel free to describe that. But gratuitous bashing will just derail the thread, so can we not? Thanks!

Local and State: How’s It Going?Post + Comments (249)