Reply #41: The best dissection of the '04 race was Bill Bradley's [View All]

[TayTay]

in the NYTimes in April of this year (I think.) The Rethugs have a permanent pyramid structure that includes a very strong organizational base, a strong set of institutional think tanks that produce talkers who can appear on TV and radio and enunciate a consistent set of talking points that come across very strongly as a united front. The Repubs can basically just switch out the top of the pyramid every 4 to 8 years when they select a new candidate for Pres. But they don't re-invent the wheel every 4 years. This saves them time, unites their base quicker and forms a distinct organizational advantage over the Dems.

The Dems have an inverted pyramid structure. They begin to form an organization based on who the nominee is and then expect a fully formed organization to emerge as the nominee assumes the role of Party Standard. This approach does re-invent the wheel every four years and makes the Democratic Party look unorganized, off message and beholden to a dis-united group of interest groups that can sway the nominee and the PArty to whatever the whim of the week is.

The Rethug approach is a superior organizational tool. The Dems are moving to adapt some of this for our Party so that whoever is nominated next time will have a better built-in advantage and won't have to form the entire structure from scratch once the title 'presumptive nominee' is bestowed on him or her.

We will unite, undertake a structure that doesn't outsource the voter registration and GOTV vote to third parties like MoveOn and America Coming Together and come up with a consistent, if loose, set of principles that all Democrats can coalesce around or we will fail again, no matter who the nominee is. We lack the discipline, the structure and the organization to be effective every year, not just the 5-7 months that we are waging Presidential politics. This needs to be fixed. Organization is not a tool from hell; it is not evil. It can, in fact, win elections.