Coasting Into Irrelevance -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2026/02/16/coasting-into-irrelevance/

On fighting, flexibility, and getting out of your own way

I'm not active in the party but it seems to me that Tom raises some very valid points. A long and worthwhile piece.

A couple of lengthy essays last week spoke to chronic problems (blind spots?) plaguing the Democratic Party. Handy advice for a party self-aware enough to recognize it. DNC Chair Ken Martin commissioned a post-2024 review and then buried it. So Mark Leibovich addressed the topic in The Atlantic, as did Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. But before we get to their critiques, indulge me. I'm just a simple country blogger.

I was the state party's Get Out The Vote Coordinator (GOTV) for NC-11 in 2006. A week ahead of Election Day, candidate Heath Shuler's field director and I made a tour of western counties to check on their preparations. We asked one group of county leaders what they'd done and/or still needed to do.

"We're done," they told us.

Excuse me?

"We called through the phone list and put out the signs."

They caught us looking sideways at each other.

"You mean, you want us to do ... more?"

Um, yes. They weren't being lazy. They'd done all they knew to do. They'd done all their county had ever done. What they'd learned from the people before them, who'd learned it from the people before them, etc.

. . .