Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Disappearing Democrats!

By Jeff Simpson

Nancy Northshore from Blogging Blue had an interesting post the other day lamenting the woes of the Wisconsin Democratic Party:

As you all know, in the last 6 months, we’ve changed leadership in both the Democratic Party of WI and the Democratic Party of Milwaukee. In June, Martha Laning was elected the new DPW Chair. A quick check of the DPW website shows an easily navigated fund raising page with very little about specific races, candidates (except Feingold) or substantive issues….there’s one page called “Stop Unlimited Corporate Campaign Contributions in Wisconsin” that looks like a petition/fund-raising tool and links to a few articles, press releases and the bills themselves, but it’s from OCTOBER. Most of the Twitter (the most immediate form of communication for most grown ups) feed is two weeks old. Seriously? It was hard to find any detailed information on anything. It was slick and I don’t mean that in a good way. A quick Google check of Martha Laning yields nothing newsworthy since November (when she did a Q&A on her goals for the Party), except for the letter from the Trump campaign asking for help in getting on the ballot. The bulk of the search cites articles about her election….in June! This is exactly the reason I let my membership lapse…the State party is clearly out of touch with the situation. I had hoped that new leadership would turn it around, but I guess they have decided to stick with the “trite and true” style that allowed the complete takeover of our State by the WIGOP.
A quick check of the Wisdems website, and we see that depsite the Constructive Criticism from Nancy Northshore and others, the website is exactly as described.  A big picture of Russ(which has been there for months) and nothing else new.   It's nice to know that in 2016 the only Democrat running for office appears to be Senator Feingold.  

The WisDems twitter feed seems to consist of a bunch of join us tweets and a couple retweets.

The Wisdems facebook page is much more up to date with more current stories.  

There are however some things noticeably missing from all of these sites.

Recently Senator Dave Hansen retweeted a tweet that he should not have, the Republicans circled their wagon and went after him with guns blazing.   It was such an onslaught that Senator Hansen ended up apologizing and deleting his twitter account.   On the same day, Representative Jagler, one of the leaders of faux outrage, tweeted out much worse than anything Senator Hansen retweeted.

Not a word from anyone in the Dem party standing up for Senator Hansen or pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of our friends on the right!

Another example is West Bend Rep. Gannon, recently called for armed vigilante uprising(well by some of us):

Today,Representative Bob Gannon released a statement saying, “Wisconsin does not have a death penalty law, but with significant practice and careful aim, law abiding citizens can help clean our society of these scum bags.
Gannon said a “gang banger in the mall with a gun is going to think twice if there could be a law abiding (concealed carry weapon) holder standing behind them fully prepared to shoot center mass, as this is how you’re trained to eliminate the threat these creeps pose to you, your family, and all law-abiding citizens unwillingly dragged into their public crime spree.”
When Gannon uses full on dogwhistles of such words as Scum bags, Gang bangers, creeps, etc...who exactly does anyone think he is referring to?  It is such a blatantly racist and disgusting line that I was sure the top Dems in the state would combine to make sure that he walked this statement back or at least made the powers in the R party distance themselves from Mr. Gannon.

Nope straight up crickets from the Democratic party leadership(with the exception of Chris Taylor).

That can be the 2016 rallying cry.  In the new era of Trump, the Republicans are letting us in on their racist thoughts and beliefs, but don't worry we wont call them on it.

The Democratic Party would love to have all of the minorities in the state show up and vote D, but there will be no quid pro quo from us.  You will have to look for leadership elsewhere.

Those are just two prime recent examples where the state Democratic Party has dropped the ball, but there are 50 other examples I could also state.

It is almost like Mike Tate left his playbook in the office and everyone is following it step by losing step.  We are in the home stretch for the incredibly important 2016 elections and we can not afford for the Dem Party and their leadership to disappear.  

Our children are counting on it!




4 comments:

  1. The Democrats have never ever been well staffed in any state. Here in New York - which is heavily Democratic - the GOP has a beautiful brown stone in Albany with drapes as thick as my hand for their HQ, the Dems? A room over a union hq. The GOP has enough paid staff so that when I called them with a question I was transferred three times. The Dems (I am a Dem supporter and a modest bundler)? The last time I knew they had one woman in that room over the union HQ. The situation in NYC is SOMEWHAT better, but not as much as you might think. The machine is run by volunteers and the paid staff at the rented hq is small to the point of being close to nonexistent.

    That is reality. The answer is to be involved, belong to the party structure if you can, and make the difference by bringing in others and volunteering with them. It's the same as in union organizing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Democrats have never ever been well staffed in any state. Here in New York - which is heavily Democratic - the GOP has a beautiful brown stone in Albany with drapes as thick as my hand for their HQ, the Dems? A room over a union hq. The GOP has enough paid staff so that when I called them with a question I was transferred three times. The Dems (I am a Dem supporter and a modest bundler)? The last time I knew they had one woman in that room over the union HQ. The situation in NYC is SOMEWHAT better, but not as much as you might think. The machine is run by volunteers and the paid staff at the rented hq is small to the point of being close to nonexistent.

    That is reality. The answer is to be involved, belong to the party structure if you can, and make the difference by bringing in others and volunteering with them. It's the same as in union organizing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Martha Laning was obviously a very inferior candidate. It's like some of the top Democrats are moles helping the Republicans.

    Joe Wineke had a strategy to field candidates against the Republicans in every race, as opposed to conceding much or most of Wisconsin to the GOP. This is similar to what Howard Dean did with the 50-state strategy that won it for Obama in 2008. Sure, you won't win in GOP areas at first. The idea is to plant seeds for the future. Voters in GOP areas are almost never exposed to alternative viewpoints. You have to repeat the same thing over and over before it sinks into the average person's skull. The GOP knows this. The Democrats either don't know it or don't care.

    ReplyDelete