My response to the DNC feedback email

[hatrack]

Dear DNC:

Way to go! With Bob Shrum, Al From & Terry McAuliffe's inspired leadership, the DNC has lost a presidential race against the worst, lyingest and stupidest sitting president in living memory, lost seats in the Senate and lost seats in the House of Representatives.

According to your statement, this means that the Democratic Party "is stronger than it has ever been before." By the same logic, the reduction of the Democratic presence in Congress to 15 Senators & 65 Representatives in the 2006 mid-terms would qualify as a "triumph" and the outlawing of the party and the confinement of its leaders and members in concentration camps would be evidence of of "a new age of unchallenged Democratic Party leadership." Whatever it is that you're smoking in DC, can I have some? Pretty please?

Item One: It Is Not About The Money. You've expanded your donor base seven-fold. Congratulations. Now, ask yourselves a simple question - how much of that is the DNC responsible for? The answer may not please you - not very bloody much. It's not that the DNC suddenly hit its stride and wrote up a big batch of absolutely irresistible emails that people simply couldn't delete. It's that a whole bunch of ordinary people like myself found themselves worried enough about another four years of Bush that we reached down and scraped together whatever we could to try and help.

Oh, and by the way, in case you haven't been keeping up with current affairs, the Democrats did indeed outraise the GOP this year, and lost the presidential race, lost seats in the Senate and lost seats in the House. So, with all that money on hand, you . . . . what DID you do with all of it?

Item Two: It Is About The Grassroots (and you didn't discover them). This is supremely ironic. The DNC, the ultimate in top-down organizations, suddenly discovering a spontaneous grassroots revolution and promptly trying to claim credit for it. Let me clue you in on something - grassroots movements don't come from Washington. Oh, sure, you can cobble together some Astroturf just like your GOP dopplegangers, but that doesn't exactly make you Talleyrand. It doesn't even make you Karl Rove.

What Howard Dean did (and I'm speaking as a Kerry supporter throughout the election cycle) wasn't "using the Internet to raise money." That concept alone is no different from pimping Internet stocks back in 1998. No, it was about using the Internet to get people - in most cases strangers - to sit down in each others' living rooms and talk politics. When that happens, when that starts to really take off, it's because the ground is ripe, the sun is warm and seeds are sprouting all over the place.

Gov. Dean recognized this. He recognized that people all over this country, from flaming liberals to pretty standard-issue conservatives, are seriously worried about the future and about the nature of American politics. He took those worries, those concerns and those fundamentally postive attitudes ("IF we ACT, we CAN make changes in how things work") and built them into a tidal wave of citizen activism - a tidal wave for which you are now merrily claiming credit.

Item Three: F*&$*#G FIGHT BACK!!!! Where was the DNC during week after week of Swift Boat Slime? Where were party leaders as free replays of John O'Neill's ranting played over and over again in an endless tape loop of hate on network news and within the cable infotainment echo chamber? Where were the seasoned campaign professionals when the same purveyors of "news" screeched about "flip-flops", whined about Senator Kerry's "French" appearance, and howled about his "unamerican" attacks on the USA, where were the counterattacks? Most of all, where was the simple and powerful truth about who paid for these endless shameless lies?

Well, "centrist" campaign leaders like Shrum and Cahill were urging restraint and calm, even when Senator Kerry was ready to strike back within days. After all, we couldn't have a Democratic presidential candidate looking "partisan", now could we? That might upset Grover Norquist, and he might not vote for us!! Worse still, he might not come to our cocktail parties when all this unpleasant election business is over!!

Some elusive signs of life remain within the Democratic party. Senator Reid stood up and said what he thought of Clarence Thomas. Senator Dodd stood up and said what he though of Rumsfeld's transparent and appalling lies on armored vehicles in Iraq. But whatever signs of life remain, they're not to be found within your organization.

We do not want a dirty party, a party of lies and a party of smear, as your GOP counterparts. What we DO want is a party that is not afraid to stand up and fight back; to fight back with facts, with truth and with pride. We have yet to see evidence of any such shift on the part of your organization.

Any future contributions, either of time or money, may well hinge upon the decision which the DNC will face in February. If someone like Governor Dean becomes the next DNC Chair, then I think there may be hope that a Democratic Party which is UNAFRAID of its liberal traditions, may be on the comeback trail. But if we get more of the same, more Republican-Lite, more of the mushy corporate goo which the DNC has peddled for the last ten years, you can kiss my contributions and my efforts goodbye.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXXXX

Oh, and BTW, unless untraceable, proprietary and astoundingly inaccurate electronic voting systems are stopped now - and I mean RIGHT NOW - the whole matter is academic.


--- Democratic Party <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> Democratic News
> ---------------
> Dear hatrack,
>
> Two months from now, the members of the Democratic
> National Committee will elect a new party chairman.
> And we welcome the spirited discussion among
> candidates, activists, and progressive organizations
> on the direction and future of the Democratic Party.
>
> Under Chairman Terry McAuliffe's leadership, the DNC
> has spent the past four years making the power of
> grassroots activism a top priority. Thanks to those
> efforts, the Democratic Party is stronger than it
> has ever been before.
>
> * In 2000, the DNC only raised $35 million in small
> donations. Most of our resources -- over $150
> million -- came in large donations. But in 2004,
> there was a remarkable turnaround. This year, the
> vast majority of our funding -- over $248 million --
> came from average Americans donating what they
> could, while large donations actually went down to
> just $105 million -- less than a third of our total.
>
> * In the past four years, the DNC expanded its
> small donor base seven fold, from 400,000 in 2000 to
> 2.7 million in 2004.
>
> * The DNC invested $80 million in grassroots field
> organizing in 2004 -- 166 percent over 2000.
>
> * The DNC fielded more than 2000 organizers in
> battleground states, and conducted 530 organizing
> conventions across the country, training nearly
> 80,000 attendees.
>
> * We also mobilized 233,000 volunteers, knocking on
> 11 million doors, and making 38 million volunteer
> phone calls.
>
> These remarkable accomplishments could not have been
> achieved without your tireless dedication to our
> party and to the enacting the strategic plans we put
> in place over the past four years.
>
> One thing is certain: The gains of the past cannot
> be reversed. The power of the grassroots will not
> put back in the bottle. And the future of the
> Democratic Party looks stronger than ever. We all
> need to pull together and work together.
>
> We want your opinion on our party's future. Use this
> link to give us your ideas.
>
> http://www.democrats.org/feedback
>
> The DNC Internet Team,
> Doug, Jesse, Nancy, Morra, and Eric
>
>
> **************************************************************
> Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National
> Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is
> not authorized by any candidate or candidate's
> committee.
> **************************************************************
>
> Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National
> Committee are not deductible as charitable
> contributions for federal income tax purposes.
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, click the
> link below:
>
>
> http://www.democrats.org/unsubscribe/index.html?c=002Yy01PJW&h=52b3a9c571
>
> DNC, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington DC 20003
>

[Us vs Them]

1. Nice! My response hit the same two major topics:

Endorsing dean for Chair, getting rid of electronic voting. Glad to read this is the inspiration behind other replies, and I really hope they learn something from it.

[purduejake]

2. I couldn't have expressed my feelings better

:kick:

[mrdmk]

3. Great letter, easy to read and to the point

Did the DNC or the DLC brother to read it? By the response you received by The DNC Internet Team, I really doubt it!

[hatrack]

4. Actually, the order is reversed

My response is first, the solicitation second (shoulda reversed it, I know!) :hi:

[mrdmk]

5. Let us know what the response is!

Thank you in advance,

mrdmk

[struggle4progress]

7. You can bet it's "Thanks for your important input. Please send money."

[joanski01]

6. That was a great response!

Expressed my sentiments exactly. Thank you for sending it and posting it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. My response was shorter, but expressed many of the same sentiments

about getting rid of electronic voting and not disrespecting the grassroots. I also told them that I would be contributing to individual canddiates who stood up for Democratic principles but that the national party could beg in vain unless I saw evidence of its growing a spine.

I also suggested cutting off the national campaign funding of any Democrat who sucks up to Bush in the mass media or votes with the Republicans on major issues such as Social Security.

[mrdmk]

9. Kick...

:kick: