Tweaking

I wrote this as an editorial commentary, but turns out, no one wanted to publish it. Here goes…

“I don’t think tweaking is going to do it.

This year the Democratic Party lost a lot of elections by narrow margins, so I can see why there’s a desire to just tweak a few things and think all will be well.

That’s not going to work. It may be time to trash the whole thing and start from scratch. I have a few suggestions.

First, any Democratic leader who gets a big check for giving a speech on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley should be drummed out of the party. Public service, at any level, should not be considered a road to riches.

I can imagine that it’s more fun hanging out with billionaires instead of roofers or LPNs, but most billionaires did not get where they are by caring about the American public, which as a leader of the Democratic Party is your actual job. When the housing bubble burst in 2008, bankers and investors should have gone to jail. The fact that none did is perhaps the earliest indication of a party gone astray.

And another thing. The stock market is not the economy. Find other indicators that reflect how regular folks are doing. Unemployment, median wages, GDP, consumer spending - pick a couple of those and just stop caring about the stock market, because most of us don’t.

Next, when choosing candidates, I’d suggest people who’ve worked for wages, met a payroll and served on a school board.

Doesn’t have to be school board, but it should be one of those low-level, important positions where there is no glory, a budget needs to be balanced, and the taxpayers have your home phone number. Having worked for wages is important because there is nothing like the educational experience of paying your bills on Thursday with the money you hope will be in your paycheck of Friday. Met a payroll? Everyone in public office should have a handle on what a burden government regulation can be and hopefully know the feeling of not cashing your paycheck until you know your employee's check has cleared the bank.

Fire everyone involved with crafting an image and massaging a message. If you want to be a candidate, be a real person. That means when asked about an issue, you say what you really think. If you do that and lose, maybe you’re not a good candidate.

If you need to rely on focus groups and polls to tell you how the voters feel, you’re doing it wrong. Gobsmackingly obscene amounts of money were spent on this election cycle. Did that pay off for Democrats? The people telling you to raise more money are the people who are benefiting from all that money. There are literally thousands of highly paid individuals whose livelihood depends on continuing our present dysfunctional system.

Who am I to think my opinion matters? Nobody special. I did win six races for county commissioner running as a bleeding-heart liberal in a conservative county. I won my last two races with a Black Lives Matter sign at the end of my driveway while the majority of the county was voting for President Trump (twice). Plus, while I’m nothing special, the leaders of the Democratic Party have lost two elections to the most unqualified candidate, not to mention the worst human being, to ever run for the office. Ritual suicide is a horrible idea, but mass resignations shouldn’t be.

Almost a hundred years ago, during the Harlan County War, union organizer Florences Reeves wrote a song titled, “Which Side Are You On?” The chorus repeats that question over and over. Listen to the song and then answer the question. If you’re really a Democrat, it should be easy.”