CAN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BE REVIVED?

A really great article appears in this week's Weekly Planet, written by Mitch E. Perry. It deals with the current condition of the Hillsborough County Democratic Party and wheather it can recover. A lot of the story deals with dissention among the ranks within the Democratic Executive Committee there, much of it aimed toward Chairwoman Janee Murphy.

But friends, the problems not only in Hillsborough County, but throughout much of the state, goes much farther than personal conflicts and backbiting. While such behaviour certainly breaks down the local organization and it's effectiveness, it's only part of the overall problem that we must begin now to resolve or ignore to our continued peril.

The county Democratic Executive Committee is supposed to be the LOCAL voice of the Party, concentrating on local issues, recruiting and supporting candidates for local office, and raising funds to provide that support. Too often I've seen much of the attention and support focused on national issues and national candidates at the local level, to the eventual downfall of many good candidates for county commissions, school boards, and other local offices.

It is certainly good and proper for the local party organization to serve as the grass roots voice to inform people about national issues such as the need to protect Social Security, the need for Karl Rove to be fired and/or prosecuted (preferably both), expressing our concerns about SCOTUS nominee John Roberts, Jr., and to begin preparing to bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. But we must begin focusing more on issues that directly affect our local citizens such as unbridled development and it's effects/consequences, the need to provide good, clean schools and the tools necessary to provide our young people with a quality education, the need to insure that our lower income and senior citizens have access to good health care at a reasonable cost, and insuring that our community can know about and celebrate the accomplishments that members of every segment of the community have made to it's quality of life...without being targets of official discrimination or disdain.

We must also get involved in so-called "non partisan" races such as those for school boards and city commissions. In many areas local Democratic party organizations have "played by the rules" and not aided Democrats and progressives who have run for those offices. Certainly, our opposition has continued to provide assistance and support to their candidates there, and as a result over the past several years right wing idiologues have basically had a free pass to win election. This cannot be allowed to continue.

I'm sure I'll have more on this later...