The Precinctist Manifesto

Its like I must continually justify to myself this increasingly odd political hobby of mine.  Think of this: registered voters: a couple dozen people run a couple hundred people at every level of every political organization, or any organization for that matter.  The parties are supposedly set up for democratic participation, but most people want to party in the social sense rather than go to those boring meetings, so only people who want to do that tedious work actually do it.  Most of it is volunteer, most of the paid is poverty wages.  So there are very few of us political "activists" meaning we are politically active.  It is in many ways a distasteful activity, like drain cleaning, but has to be done.  I've learned that it is possible to call anything "fun."  A bit of political activity, like a certain amount of physical exercise or a certain amount of food, makes me feel better.

I've talked with lots of neighborhood people as a result of this activity, so its good for me at least, I tend to be otherwise a bit stay-at-home & don't see anybody much.  I see the possibility of real neighborhood association.  An exceptionally peaceable group of people live here.  Something could perhaps be done, but until now it hasn't been.

Then there is the Wake County Democratic Party.  The two key elements of organizational progress from one point to another are transmission of existing administrative structures by the old guard and innovation.  At the moment this process is in critical transition point all over the world in the shift away from paper.  WakeDems is in the middle of that migration too.  The old guard looks at its institutions & can't tell which ones are now useless but as usual there is a protector of the process to lobby for continuation of every single thing that was previously done, not to mention the money appropriated to that traditional activity.  Young people full of ideas but mostly don't know how to do them in some crucial aspect.  Old people not helping with facilitative support.  Dynastic tendencies in play as usual in politics, acorn don't fall far from tree.  Political turfs develop, occasionally little baronies, occasionally continued dynastically.

There is a hole in leadership/management in WakeDems at the moment.  What happens is that the elected positions in the party are mostly filled by old guard or proteges, people insurge, every now & then an insurgent wins a post, life goes on thinks the old guard.

I have no interest in the meeting lifestyle that is required in political administration.  That is too bad because that is where all of the mischief gets (mostly incompetently) made.  Someone's got to do it.  But not me, my interest is voter education.  A lot of them don't know, think its boring, some of them vote anyway, a lot of them actually, without knowing anything about any of the candidates.  Oh, that name, I've heard of that one.  I used to do that.  I'm into political education, not the exercise of political power.  Leave that to the sociopaths lol.  Just kidding, people who are holding the levers of power.  Just kidding.

So we have about half of the precincts organized in Wake Co & it has been that way for years.  Most of the precincts are only formally organized with officers & nothing is done.  A few have dynamic officers who do things.  At HQ there is a chronic disconnect with the precincts.  There is a kind of vibe, occasionally worded, that "precinct work" is prosaic & boring, accompanied by thoughts that candidate work is somehow exciting, perhaps in a rah-rah sense.  I, on the other hand, think that precinct work with the neighbor thing & the civic engagement, is where its at, and candidate stuff is lots of icky pandering, money grubbing, clownish theatrics.  So HQ doesn't help the precincts.  They like to tell the precincts what to do, but never a HQ vol shows up to help out a precinct project, not even to organize one.  The precincts are supposed to generate their own organization, then HQ will be happy to give them work to do and tell them how to do it.

I'm thinking that's backward.  HQ should be out there actively finding the people to organize the unorganized precincts.  Since they're not doing it over years of time I think the existing precinct officers can usefully get together to organize the unorganized precincts and to also join together as precinct officers, who obviously have a different set of interests than HQ, that is so even though the goal of more Dem votes is the same.  I would like to talk with other precinct officers about the usefulness to party organizing of a conscious organization, caucus perhaps, of the precinct officers.  Anyone?

gloom

My essential reading for politics includes Jacques Ellul's Propaganda.  Can get it on Amazon.

Propaganda like chocolate if you like chocolate.  You hear something you like, want to hear it again.  At some level they put something in the chocolate that they want in it, they don't care if you like that thing or not, long as you keep eating the chocolate.  You like the chocolate enough you keep eating it, especially they tell you to listen carefully all the time to the chocolate propaganda.  You get your steady dose of poison in the chocolate but it tastes good, everyone's doing it, etc.

All of the political parties and their people do this all the time, some are better than others, we laugh at the inept performances, or get mad if that's what we like to do, but we keep going to the stuff for entertainment, or the clowns they put on tv to "explain" their selections for us.  Those of us of a certain age.  Dig: my older son turned me on to the Daily Show but he doesn't watch it.  Stewart/Colbert: too old.  Prince: too old.  Nora Jones: too old.  He's like: who was Easley?  He's 26 years old.

I don't see a clear path to victory for O but I'm in it anyway, active & money until November.  It is going to be interesting campaigning solely on the "consider the alternative" line, which is what I'm going to do.  I think I can make the case to some people.  I made it to myself.  No protest votes this year.  Stakes too high.  Supreme Court.  My bottom line.

KIDS
The kids think he's old.  The kids think he lies all the time.  They figure they might as well try a new liar, what difference does it make?  They see too little too late.  So they figure the frying pan is not better than the fire.  They're wrong but you can't tell them anything, they think they know.  They want things to make them feel better, but politics is always the art of the less worse.  Politics like butt wiping: you can think what you like about it but not doing it is worse.

HOPE
But I'm in it anyway.  I do not need to feel good about doing political work.  It needs to be done.  Trash needs to be picked up.  Feeling good is beside the point.

some words on the occasion of the poll-greeting at Douglas Elementary during the 2012 primary

Must write this while it is fresh.  I think I'll just tell some of the story of my logistical engagement with the electoral process, some opinionizing and contextualizing of course.

Started on Friday before the election during which some communication with HQ regarding how the signage was to be handled this year and the candidate cards, for the poll greeting you know.  Turned out I was not on a precinct officer mailing list or maybe I was but the pertinent email did not get to me a few days before.  I got down to HQ Monday to pick up signs & cards.  The signage was real thin this time, almost all for judges.  No anti-amendment or governor signs.  The management of the distribution was done on a sheet of paper, I signed that paper.  Given the small size of the operation it seemed silly to ask if there would be a central recycling point for used signs.  Am I wrong about that?  Is there a sign recycling plan?
I was thanked for all I was doing.
The cards told people to vote for whomever they wanted, against the amendment, then presented the Dem judge candidates.  It actually turned out to be a well designed card, numerous comments from the oncoming citizens that they otherwise knew nothing about the judges and now they knew, you know, something.  Still in was confusing: 2 different batches of judges to choose between.  Couple times I had to explain to someone two different ways.  You know, it would be easier to figure out if one was for judge and the other was for fudge or something.  Anyway.
E-day started out I put up signs at 3 polling places.  At every one, this time, Rips got there first, had plenty of signs.  Did everyone see the RIPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS WANTED signs at every(?) polling place?  Good idea.  We must steal it and deploy it widely and quickly.  Signage, in my opinion, is becoming less important all the time.
We ended up with 100% poll greet coverage at 01-15 & 01-37.  I was on duty at Douglas for several hours in the PM, before that I was running around.  Someone came over early & dropped off anti-amendment flyers but they didn't stay to hand them out & they sat under the tree all day, someone else dropped off Karlsson flyers & I handed out a few while I was on in the morning, afternoon a Karlsson guy handed out Karlsson fliers for about 6 hours.  One of our precinct people brought Dalton flyers, handed some out,  There were Rips at Douglas from about 9:30 to about 2:00, we all know each other so we shmoozed full time in contented comity.  The average age of the poll greeters is, um, old, probably older than me, I start getting senior discounts pretty soon now.

I should go back to the mailer.  I didn't see anyone carrying it in like last time.  I talked with several people who got it including a Rip, somehow included although I specifically didn't send to Rips.  Mystery.  Post office returned about 50 of them.  Most recently updated list from Board of Elections.  Moved, deceased, etc.  And one duplicate entry.  Interesting.

People I talked with about the flyer mostly hadn't read it, especially like no one I talked with had used the website references for the candidates.  They didn't care, were prepared to go in and vote knowing nothing.  Some of them had downloaded sample ballots from BOE and filled them out beforehand, good strategy.  Probably we sent it too early & put too much info on it.  Have to chew on the implications as we consider what we might want to do in the fall.

An OFA person showed up for a few minutes, was prepared to ignore me but I approached as for a voter, "I'm from OFA, I'm just here for the numbers," like why?  It's the middle of the day, who cares?  Little podunk precinct.  So I said: "If you guys were coordinated with the local parties you could have called me & I could have told you, save time, gas."  And was responded: "We're not allowed to coordinate," with pretty smile of course.  So me: "I know, you have to just do what you're told." (I said it!)  Smiles all around.  Nothing untrue about any of it.

The numbers all came in it turned out a larger % showed up in 01-37 where we did nothing than in 01-15 where we spent money and did stuff.  Does that mean that we shouldn't have bothered?  How would we decide?

I had a conversation of several minutes with a guy at the polls, late in the day.  Shorts, shaved head, glasses.  He's independent, going to vote Romney, Obama's a socialist.  Well, said I, from where I am standing Obama is center-right & in the pocket of the money people period, he's been center-right since the very start of his career.  The guy is like "Really?"  Like he thought us "Liberals" thought this or that because the shows he watches speak of what idealized platonic (that is straw man) "Liberals" think & do, because their people are all the time putting out "instructive" thoughtforms so the listeners can have a template of what to think about something.  Whereas I am always: what is actually going on here?  Because you never know everything, mostly we don't know anything.

We went on.  I brought up the Supreme Court.  That is currently why I do what I do.  They get another Alito or Thomas what they going to do: revisit Plessey v. Fergusson?  Dred Scott?  Us "normal" people have to get the next Supreme, if we don't I'm not responsible for what happens.  He was "Who do you trust more: Roberts or Kennedy?"  I was: "I really don't want another Alito."  Alito: Mr. "That's not true."  Its true.  Secret money everywhere.  Not true - that's the type of clear thinking we're getting from the Supreme Court these days.

I talked about corporations aren't people & he responded with the free association stuff in the Consitution, which is interesting.  The core issue is that the human race seems to prefer to let some of its monads hoard resources without limit and to let other monads die from lack of stuff that the rich monads have plenty of.  So politics is for rich people, so they can protect their stuff.  How come we don't have rich people demonstrating their civic virtue by massively endowing food-clothing-shelter-health care-education?  Romney: famous for his endowment of 300 clinics in ghettos across the country.  How come that's not the reality we see?  Wife of presidential candidate has 2 cars.  Nest featherer culture.  Not to deny that the Obamas in their modest way like the so-called "good things in life" too.  Nice clothes, etc.  Love of stuff.  Hoarding personality disorder.

Throughout that conversation he was several times like: "Really?  I though y'all (Liberals) thought ...(whatever)."  Because the lefter one's perspective the more some of it starts to converge, not with the opinions of the right, but rather the perspective.  The angles are sometimes the same though the axes of orientation are different, know what I mean?  I was perhaps able to demonstrate a few structural characteristics of the ideological landscape we all inhabit.  Because he had never met a real lefty before, only heard about what they are like from his pundits.

And a mention of the power of the unions, I think I heard him say "$400 billion" of union money, well, "m" is "B" on its side without the spine.  But i did not remark that at the time.  Or maybe I'm just making up that memory.  And the Greens in Europe are acting like fascists.  I didn't bother to engage that.  Fascists beat up minorities in the street.  That's what fascists do.  Greens - uh, no.  But I let that one pass.

To be continued.  I want to get more precincts organized in the formal sense.  Few more days I'll write more about why I think that's a good idea.  Precincts: where the voters are.  A political unit that perhaps it might be theoretically possible for everyone to know each other.  It has become my opinion that the local party units should come together to set policy and procedure for the central party administration, not the other way around.  All power to the precincts, if you will.  I have become a precinctist, as it were.  More on that next time.  Few days.

Why Bother? part 2

9. Cooperation - in several campaigns I tried to get a joint Dem-Rep transport-voters-to-polls operation going, you know: nonpartisan civic activity.  They always turned me down.  The Rip central commandment is to never cooperate in politics & government if it is possible not to.  Party advantage is God to them.  And most of them refuse to talk with me about, you know, anything.  I have one neighbor, since he realized I'm a Dem won't acknowledge me in the street.  Very rare to find any that are willing to interact with people not of their tribe.  I have found two who will interact, I am so thankful.  And I've come across one with whom there appears to be a spiritual understanding.  What do I mean?  The spiritual pictures he paints in his head are completely different from mine but there is apparently another level of somethingness that we both inhabit and recognize that in each other.

Where was I?  So, any time I am sitting with an amiable rightwinger & a policy matter comes up I like to warn that we will immediately get bogged down in definitions of words & phrases and we do because I ask what some word means & that interrupts the flow of the propagands & we end up going back to process issues (such as the degree of incompetence and criminality in both of our parties), stuff that every human has to deal with.  Either we are the jerk or everybody else is a jerk, right?

I've come to the conclusion for now that there is a split in the English language going on here, multiple splits I guess.  There are attempts, mostly on the Rip side, to change the way words are used.  There is a lot of sloganeering on that side.  They continuously launch little propaganda acts with buzzwords & buzzphrases.  Press office of the Rips so much more, you know, "fun" than the Dems, who unfortunately are constrained by the need to attempt to govern in a world filled with, you know, facts.

I am really interested in talking face to face with people who think of themselves as conservative to discuss THAT issue: to attempt to figure out what the words we use actually mean.

I offered one of my conservative fbfs (i tried to friend one of his friends who commented in one of our threads but that one declined to respond) that we could start perhaps trying to talk policy by taking any phrase of the Constitution & see if we could agree what it meant, go on from there, that way we could build a mutual vocabulary with which to discuss eventually other things, perhaps the public accommodation laws, hmm?  He has agreed to do it but we haven't started yet.  Its been almost a week.

9. Real power
Here in Wake County NC 50% of the precincts are organized by the Dems.  The precinct chairs have votes in many matters that come before the WakeDems honchos & minions in their executive meetings.  I don't take part in those meetings, haven't been to one in years, boring, most of the time spent on nothing, occasional policy or procedure coups, chair shuffling, etc.

What, I dreamed, if the precinct chairs that exist were to get together in a caucus and agree on something, a platform perhaps?  What if they took that platform & put it on an exec committee meeting agenda, showed up in numbers sufficient to pass it?  10 precinct chairs bring a motion & vote on it its going to pass.

But that's not the first dream I had.  I was thinking about my grownup kids and their friends.  A lot of them are in the kind of temporary this-is-not-what-I'm-going-to-do-with-my-life phase that is pretty normal in the 20s today, they spend what seems to me, the older worker, a lot of time chilling, well, at least they're staying out of trouble.  Anyway, dreamed I, 5 of them could go ahead and organize a precinct.  Kids could organize all 50% of the unorganized precincts.  If they organized even 10 and voted as a bloc they could transform WakeDems into a pro-kid organization that could work toward Wake Co becoming more kid-friendly from a kid point of view.

I found a couple of kids understood what I was telling them, more that didn't.  I got no takers.  I ran the idea past a couple of YDA people at the county convention 2 years ago.  One of them said: "Yeah, but what's in it for us?"  I gotta say, the Dems just suck at youth outreach.  The only thing is the Rips are worse.  2 years later the local YDA is, far as I can tell, no smarter than 2 years ago, still doing essentially nothing.  Why aren't they doing poll greeting at all of the unorganized precincts?  Why haven't they organized the unorganized precincts?  If they did they could own the Wake party.  What's in it for them?  Bah.  Entire youth wing of the Dem party filled with wannabe yes-people who aspire to be told what to do.

Those unorganized precincts are power lying there unused.  Somebody better get them organized before the Rips send in some shill Dems to take them over from the right.  Then where would we be if all of a sudden a bunch of conservatives reregistered as Dems, organized the unorganized precincts, took over the WakeDems apparatus?  What's to stop it from happening?  Nothing I can see.  Better get cracking.

10. Special Requests
Dealing with people who don't want to compromise is one thing.  I'm actually more interested in my compatriots who agree with my positions to go and do something about it.  In NC there are 700,000 more Dems than Rips.  If we vote we win, simple as that.  So its to get all of those registered Dems to actually go out and vote for Dems.

So who are the registered Dems who don't vote or who vote non-Dem?
Old people: I was walking the precinct, met a 93 year old Dem: "I don't vote any more, they're all crooks."  Well, pretty much sometimes.  It can get to be the less worse crook (we hope).  Even that's better than sometimes the choice is our crook or their crook.  My position of course is: yes, its all a matter of degree, it doesn't help to not participate.  But no, he wasn't going to vote.

Young people: I badger my young adult children & they vote but lots of their friends don't.  18-25 year olds tend to not vote in droves.  Vote parties?  Dem precinct organizations treat the HS Dem club to pizza when the HS club organizes a caravan of Dem students to vote?  I watch as one by one their friends awaken to some kind of political awareness.  The organizing of those people a work in progress.  Youth: I'm talking to you: the structures are all hollow but the machines still work.  You don't have to wait to be invited in.  You can take them over.  Check it out.  Figure out and take over.  Don't wait until you're old.  Don't leave government to right wing wierdos who will hand on the reigns of power to their children, your frat boy/girl country club peers who will get your humorless square peers to run your government at you.  That stuff has got to be done.  Start easy: get educated and vote.  Then take over.

Hedonists: they'd rather go fishing, or shop or watch TV, or imbibe something, various kinds of not "why bother" but rather can't be bothered.  Sports fanatics: doers and watchers.  Consumers of more exotic entertainment.  Used to be a lot of religious people stayed out of politics, couldn't be bothered, thought they had better things to do.  Maybe hard to believe these days, but used to be.  The consumers of entertainment do not lobby, it is the businesses that service them that lobby.  There has never been a beer drinkers lobby but there sure is a beer making and selling lobby.  Well, hedonists, if you leave government to people who aren't like you they will do things their way.  You have to fight for your right to party, whatever kind of party you like to have.  If you don't have your people in the governing mix they won't pay any attention to you, then if they decide they don't like your style of fun they'll step on you.  Go ahead and organize around your preferred activities then lobby and vote.

The only entertainment advocacy groups that have successfully joined the business side with the consumer side are the NRA and the churches.

Leftists: Occupy, for the moment.  It is obvious that Mayday will be kind of low key for the most part.  Could have been an impressive millions around the world thing, announce an international conference in the fall, etc.  Instead there is nothing.  Look, Dem party is there for the taking, at least here in Wake County, I think actually the Dem party is hollow all the way to the top.  Think about it: Occupy Raleigh could be running someone for county commissioner, you know?  Its got to be done.  Left developments will not happen in USA by other than legislative means.  If there's going to be trouble its going to come from the right.  Go take over the state legislatures, can be done.  Start with voting for the less worse.

I mean: THEY did it in 2010.  Certainly the Tea Party phenomenon was funded but it is not their fault that they got organized and have done something.  A lot of those TP legislators are going to wash out in the next election but some of them are going to stick around for decades frustrating left goals wherever they can.  Leftists have to have an electoral strategy and a grass roots presence, and unfortunately for their sense of political cleanliness the only store in town, like a poorly stocked convenience store in the stix or the ghetto, is the Dems.  Romantically demonstrating in the streets is from a certain point of view a hedonistic passtime.  I'm a big fan of hedonic liberty, you want a hot dog roast you go right ahead.  I'm a bigger fan of basic maintenance and administration.  Keep demonstrating, that's fine.  Vote too.  And take over local Dem parties, which can be done.  5 people working together, 3 years, a county party can be taken over.  And run for office, if you can stand being a public figure.  You see the bozos who run and win, it is obvious that anyone can do it.  Right?

Start by voting.  For someone who can win.  The jerk, the fool, the liar.  The one that's less worse than the other one.

Supreme Court.  Why do I need to say more?

(Someone ask me about the accident of history that put those guys on the right side of the room and the leftists on the left side of the room at the start of the French revolution.  Or was it an accident?  "Right" linguistically identical with "correctness," "left" associated with "outness," which is what the left is concerned with: those who are "left out," while the "right" is associated with having "rights" and the rightness of the rights possessors to those rights.  But what about us ask the left outs?  Not our problem says the right, besides, we're right.  Difficulty of the inclusionary project increased by inadequate and oddly shaped linguistics.)

Why Bother?

1. This is why I choose to do something rather than nothing: because if I don't there are plenty of other people who want to do something, they will do it, if they do things not the way I would have done them and I wasn't there to try to oppose them then they'll keep on doing things I don't want them to do.

2. This is why I do electoral politics:
I'm almost 60 and I seem to have been politically aware to some degree for about 45 years.  This acorn didn't fall far from the tree: my parents were and remain leftish, I am too.  I became electorally active during the Kerry campaign because I realized that here in the USA we do elections instead of attempting to use force on each other.  Our system seems to allow elections to be to some degree bought but to me that is ever so much better than buying and using private armies.

I have become really fond of the electoral process and I want to keep it going as the way we pick some of our important people who do important things for us.  Without that periodic input from the people who don't participate in administration of the public part of their lives government would become the private operation of the people who do the jobs.  We know this is so because of the shapes of the corruption we see happen in every administration.  They are always the same: people take advantage of the system for personal gain.  That is the normal situation in all human cultures: people try to take advantage, they continue to try, there are always more of them coming along.  It is so great the elections have the possibility of meaning something in this country, I am so lucky to be living here.  Elections don't have to mean something, but they can.

In my precinct we have a precinct organization consisting of me and a few people my age.  All of the motivation for anything to happen comes from me.  If I drop the precinct chair job most likely none of them will pick up the tasks.  This hobby of mine is obviously a very rare behavior pattern.  Everyone is some kind of crank about something, most of us refuse to do anything about it.  For example: the Rips in the precinct don't seem to have an analog of me: an active precinct chair.

3. Why I work with the Dems:
My unpaid precinct chair job is to get people to vote for my party and its positions.  A party is supposed to be a coalition of like-minded people doing political work together.  Dems are not like that.  The Dems are a coalition of various smaller interest groups.  When elected they tend toward promoting tolerance of diversity within the rule of law.  Typically when Dems govern these past few decades there are no really happy interest groups because the tendency is to attempt to diffuse and share gains and losses throughout the population.  No group gets everything it wants, everyone grumbles.

The Rips, on the other hand, like to spend money on wars, make laws that allow people to cheat and steal things, neglect and destroy infrastructure and services, make vain & clumsy & wrongheaded attempts to make people behave in various ways.

I do a lot of history in my work (the things I do to make money).  What's happening now reminds me of 17th-18th century Poland.  The moneybags of the time (landowners) captured the government, ran the country for their own benefit, neglected the common weal, the country ended up disappearing for 120 years.  I see the Rips as the party of big money.  I'm sorry, Rips.  I do.  The Dems are into the money too, but you Rip guys think this is the way it should be, that money should rule.  I don't agree.  I'm a least-of-these guy.  That's what I'm into.

4. What about third party
It is an odd feeling working for the election of a lesser of evils.  Most elections have been like that for me.  My guy is some kind of fool or jerk, the Rip is always more so.  In my experience.  The Dem will ignore my political desires, where else can I go?  Every Rip will be worse for all of my positions.  It doesn't even matter if a long shot Rip presidential candidate shares a single policy position with me, I could never consider that one because the whole rest of the positions are no good for various reasons.  I have to vote for the less worse guy.

If there was a third party that could make a difference for my points of view that would be great.  But there isn't.  It would be the Greens or the Libertarians, the only third parties with any possibility of oomph.  The way things actually are I could only vote non-Dem if it truly didn't matter, these days it always does.  Rip policies are all versions of slash & burn, survival of the fittest, kick em when they're down.  I cannot afford to take an idealistic stand that would allow any of them to win.  I have to go Dem.  Let the Libs draw some votes from the Rips from the right.  Greens should elect local officers where they can.  I think it is not good to pull Dem votes away from the left at this historical moment (the last three decades).  That's why I don't put energy into the Greens.

I don't know what I'd do if I lived in Walter Jones' district.  But then again the Rips there are trying to get rid of him.

I know that my candidates will proceed to ignore me more or less after they get elected.  They really are the only game in town.  Politicians - can't live with em, can't live without em.

And I don't want to be one either.  Terrible job.  Spending lots of time hunting money, dealing with lowlifes of various economic positions, boring meetings, bad food, terrible hours, no private life.  Yuck.  Let someone else do it.  My weakness.

5. The county party
I do my work as part of the Wake County Democratic Party.  There are a few paid positions but they don't pay enough to live on so essentially all of the work of the county party is done by volunteers or might as well be.  People bring various degrees of commitment and competency to the jobs they do for WakeDems, about on the level you'd expect to get if there was no money.  Skilled people with no time, unskilled people with more time.  Everyone has too much to do and it doesn't all get done.  Mistakes always getting made.  When made, the makers of the mistake respond with the usual range of human responses from taking the blame for everything to blaming someone else.  And a lot of turnover from burnout leading to continuous attrition of institutional memory.

To the extent that one might be tempted to say we often get our people elected only because the other side is essentially just as disorganized and incompetent most of the time.

When I do my precinct organizing the county party will sometimes help me do what I want to do.  My experience has been that if I try to follow their script I don't get results.  This year I am not getting my queries handled in a timely manner.  Each election cycle I've worked in has seemed to be less organized than the last one on the county level.  It is a real why bother situation.  But what I am not bothering with is trying to closely coordinate with an organization that doesn't much care about the precinct work and choosing instead to actually do that work.  Because this is where the voters are.  Because I want to.  County party gets to be useful we'll work more closely together.  Meanwhile I have work to do getting people to vote Dem.  Because the alternative is worse.

They really practice the Peter Principle at WakeDems.  People with aptitude are promoted until they get to a level they can't handle then they stay there.

6. The state party
I essentially have nothing to do with the state party.  To me it mostly looks like a moneyed remnant of the plantation Democrats of yore living the kind of rich person life they always have in coalition with the rest of the Dem interest groups and that's why we keep coming up with Dinos like Easley.  Country club Dems.  Land baron Dems.  And there is a remnant of NC Dems who are Dems because of Lincoln, they'll never vote Rip because of Lincoln, otherwise they'd be Rips.  A real coalition party.  FDR depended on them for his majorities.  We do too.

The state party pays essentially no attention to the county parties.  There is never any coordination.  State level officers like senators & governors are essentially unreachable by ordinary people most of the time.

A lot of the people who work in both the county and state parties are hoping to move up, that's what they think it is.  There may eventually be a job of some kind, or maybe they can run for something.  The state party reveals itself frequently as an organization staffed by incompetents too.  I ignore them, they ignore me.  The state party thinks of the county parties as the minors, the national party thinks the states are the same.  They try to poach the talent of the local parties whenever a competent one shows up.  Its amazing anything gets done.

7. Scandal - these things happen everywhere in all regimes.  Scandals are the visible result of a certain kind of incompetence.  Most incompetencies are private and minor.  Major public scandals are a good indication that someone has been promoted to a position beyond their competence.  In every organization there will be more people ("us") who trudge on through the task list regardless of the circus act that middle management has suddenly put on.  Sometimes an organization will become staffed by multiple levels of incompetents and the situation can get really out of hand.

I find that I like to imagine that Dem scandals are a bit more, um, interpersonal, while Rip scandals tend toward the financial, but a moment's reflection destroys that idea.  Rips are exactly as lewd as Dems.  People do stupid stuff because they want to get caught, right?  Eh, doesn't have anything to do with me.  I have work to do in the precinct.  Scandal or not I'm working to elect Dems.  Which bring me to:

8. compromise - in my political work every step of the way is a compromise.  I vote for people who do not have my positions because they are still better than the other one.  I know they're taking advantage of me but I do it anyway.  My time here has shown me that not to do it is worse.  Humphrey was better than Nixon, the revolutionary me of 1968 professed not to see the difference.  The Naderist position of 2000 that there was no difference between the Ds and the Rs was either a contributing cause or the cause of the outcome that year.  Never mind that in some ways it was and is true, like both of them are corruptly influenced by financial interests.

I must have a Dem president and a Dem senate for the next 4-8 years because I must have a 5th non-conservative supreme court justice.  Otherwise it will be what I consider mean and nasty.  This is no time for idealism.  Only the Dems can possibly hold back the Rips.  I'm totally fine with pushing for whatever policy point anyone wants.  Then they can go out and vote Dem.  Go ahead and elect a Green to local office.  We're not going to have a Green president, not even a Green congressperson.  A Dem is the best we're going to get.  Compromise.  Yuk.  Compromise.

That's what being grownup is about, right?  Most of the time.  Most of the time its cleanup and clerical.  Hero stuff hardly ever happens.  Right?  The real heroism is grinding through.  Right?

The difference is that the Dems, some of them, when they're doing well, try to open doors for people to be able to go through while Rips are all the time looking for hidden doors so they can nail them shut.  Go Dems.

Dem. candidate contacts & other matters

1. Dem. Candidate contact list

US House of Representatives
Bernard A. Holliday no web presence?
Charles Malone       https://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-Malone-for-NC-Senate-15/112030615505491, charles.malone92@gmail.com

NC Governor
Walter H. Dalton http://www.daltonfornc.com/
Gary M. Dunn http://garydunnforgovernorofnorthcarolina.com/
Bob Etheridge http://www.bobetheridgeforgovernor.com/ (how did Walter Dalton get to the top of a Bob search?)
Bill Faison http://www.billfaison.com/ (same here, also McCrory)
Gardenra M. Henley http://www.gardeniamhenley.com/about-gardenia.html
Bruce Blackmon no contact info

NC Lieutenant Governor
Eric L. Mansfield http://www.ericmansfieldnc.com/
Linda D. Coleman http://www.lindacoleman.org/

NC Commissioner of Agriculture
Walter Smith just a home address, phone #
Scott Bryant same

NC Commissioner of Labor
Marlowe Foster http://marlowefoster.com/marlowe/
Ty Richardson https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ty-Richardson-NC-Commissioner-of-Labor-2012/221182801280663 (no campaign website could I find)
John C Brooks no web presence

NC Treasureer
Ron Elmer http://elmerfor.www70.a2hosting.com/
Janet Cowell (incumbent) http://www.cowellfortreasurer.com/

NC District Ct 10 Judge
Erin Mulligan Graber extensive links from google search but no campaign site yet
Steve Mansbury same
Damion McCullers same
 Ronnie Ansley same
Dan Nagle http://www.dannagleforjudge.com/index.aspx

NC District Ct 10 Judge
Charles Phillips Gilliam http://charlespgilliam.com/
Anna Elena Worley (incumbent) http://www.judgeworley.com/
Daniel T. Barker no web presence?

Perhaps someone can do further research on the no-contact candidates, find out where on the web they are lurking, or an email.  Otherwise I find myself tempted to assume they are not serious candidates.  If you do let me know.

2. I'll be continuing to put together the mailer & will show it to y'all for comment & correction.  Would the people who said they would take care of the printing-mailing please organize your operation for a mailing ~14 days from now?  That will mean you have to get in touch with each other in next 2 days, set a task list & schedule, start executing.  I should get messages from 2 of you I think, by about Wed. 3/21?  Message sent today: "I'm on it" would be comforting, know what I mean?

3. Wakedems.org candidate list has not been updated.  Dumbness.

precinct letter of the day

Hi.

1. Lots of faces in the primary for the Dems. In due course I'll send yall a contact list for all of the candidates for all of the positions. Meanwhile, some of you like to have parties, how about arranging a minor candidate meet & greet for the precinct/s? State Rep. etc. I'm reasonably certain Karlsson and Ross would show up. Someone think about it, get back with me? I could work with you to develop it. Must be arranged in March for an early April date.

2. Any of you working in an organized way on the constitutional amendment if you let me know we could consider coordinative activities precinct/your people. Let me therefore know please.

3. It is now appropriate for any who have opinions on any of the primary candidates to post your thoughts on the facebook page, or to me for publication in these emails, or comment on the blog

4. The Obama campaign is doing voter registration all over the state. Go talk with them to get involved in that. Search "Obama campaign."

5. Meeting, Tuesday Mar 6 6:30 PM Panera Northills. Must have quorum. Plan to attend.

6. Must have more email contacts. Give me more email contacts.

Regards, Bob Reis

01-15 Dem chair