"Bloggers & Citizens" vs. the DNC

[housewolf]

From DailyKos: "bloggers and citizens"

An excellent read on our relationship with the DNC

<snip>

In part, that's due to Al Gore being a busy man...ahem...and in part...that was due to Al Gore not realizing that...like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tim Roemer, and, yes, John Kerry and John Edwards...he was bound to be an "old school" DC Democrat with no idea what the grassroots and the netroots are actually up to...so long as he stayed within his comfortable corridors of power.

They don't even know who we are, much less what we think and who we are fighting for.

And worse, they are so caught up in their inside the beltway, high-stakes power games that even if we screamed our lungs out over here in our little corner of the universe....we'd still appear as this tiny fraction of the equation. Be a dear and weight the pro-Dean, blog-driven dissent by any extra factor or two, would you, Harry....

We are bloggers and citizens, and our politics should no longer be about them....our politics should reflect who we are and who we fight for. In fact, the question I have tonight is not who will be chair of the DNC, but, with all due respect, if all we're doing is shoring up a "business-as-usual party" why should I care?

When I walk the streets and see my brothers and sisters..I know exactly who I'm fighting for. When I hold a newborn in my arms and think of my own life half over, I know who I'm fighting for. When I think of the rainbow of citizens every election day going to and from work at the West Oakland BART station, I realize how hollow the rhetoric coming from our Democratic leadership has been. When I think of Paul Wellstone, and all that his political life stood for, what direction that life was pointed in, I know the answer to my question.

<snip>

more...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/28/20200/060

[4morewars]

1. "They don't even know who we are,

much less what we think and who we are fighting for."

"It's not simply that the heads of Democratic Congressional delegations have seen fit to nominate an anti-choice, "concede before we've begun to fight" on Social Security Democrat...it's that in doing so they've proven to me that they have nothing whatsoever to do with our lives.

And when I say our lives I don't mean some kind of cheesy media version of us netizens. Anyone who did GOTV this fall knows who we are....we're the folks who give a shit...the ones with extra coffee cups rolling around in the back of our cars...the ones getting up in the early AM to bus to PA or NV or Ohio...the ones who show up...and there's something in each of our personal stories that makes us politically active, that makes us fight."

That's pretty much how I feel as well, me and a few million other suckers.

[John_H]

2. I'll say it a million times if I have to. There is only one way

to effect change in the party. One. And it starts with you.

Write the DNC an Email or letter which:

Lists all of your donations and your volunteer activities.

Explains that you will resume donating and working when:

1)each of the dead weight, three-time-losing staff, consultants, and operatives are jettisoned.

2)leadership is put in place who understands that fighting to win is how the rethugs turned their party around, and the only way we'll do the same.

3)the grass roots program begun in 03-04 is expanded, AT LEAST matching the scope of the rethugs' grass roots program.

Don't think this will matter? Fime with me. Who you think would be a better pres in 08?, Frist or Jeb?