Truth to Power: Corruption in Democratic Party

I certainly am.

But as a progressive, I am also pissed. Democrats in North Carolina are suffering from self-inflicted wounds, the result of inattention to the fundamentals. Our good-old-boy governor got the job she wanted and failed to keep her word. She promised a "new day" of leadership and transparency, but immediately settled for compromised choices at almost every level of government. She had the chance to be first of a new generation of open, engaged leaders, but instead chose business as usual.

Over the past few weeks, I've received calls and solicitations for contributions from candidates and organizations at every level of the political infrastructure. Except for a very few demonstrably progressive candidates, my checkbook is closed. In the previous cycle, I gave till it hurt, and then some, hoping and expecting for progressive change both in Raleigh and in Washington. That didn't happen. And I'm not going to be suckered in again.

The patronage is not in the ranks of the loyal party apparatchicks. It's in the ranks of people who are making money out of the political system.

The people who are trying to turn our party from being merely a sophisticated money-laundering operation are not the local party grassroots volunteers. You don't see the big-money people at the precinct meetings, the county conventions, and the district conventions. You may only see them at the state conventions because it's easier for them to go to one place and see the people they need to see, then send their agents out to either gather the money up, or to distribute it out.

The candidates know that - which is why they have the high-roller cocktail parties at the NCDP meetings and other events.

There already was an influx of inexperienced upstarts - some of us then weren't so young but we were "young at heart" - and they called us "Deaniacs". Following the call of Governor Howard Dean, who said "if you want to take back your country, you first have to take back your party", we believed that the strength of the party comes from the grassroots, We got involved in the party. We organized precincts and served as precinct chairs. We ran for and won other offices - like county party chair and other board seats. We ran for seats and won on the State Executive Committee.

And just like our DNC Chair Howard Dean almost came to blows with Rahmbo over the 50-state strategy (Dean wanted to put money into building up the party in all 50 states, Rahmbo just wanted to concentrate that money on campaigns he felt they could win), many of those same Deaniacs are metaphorically in a fight with those "campaign" people who only care about winning elections. That, after all, is the most important thing to do - right?

What happens when we win the elections? The candidates come to us and ask us to knock on doors in the hot summer sun to register folks to vote and ask them to vote for our candidates. We stand outside on a cold rainy day in November and ask the same voters to vote for our slate, and see if there are any problems at the polling places and do what it takes to fix those problems.

Then what happens when they win election? When we ask them to do what they promised, we are told there isn't the political will to call for single payer or a strong public option. We are told that there isn't the will to call for collective bargaining for public employees, or to fix the state employee's health care plan, etc. And what do we do when they don't deliver on their promises? We attend the pep rallies and go back to doing the same thing all over again - which is to support people who make promises to get us to support then and vote for them, then not live up to their end of the bargain.

OK - should we really expect them to live up to promises made to us? I feel we should. After all, we are the Democratic Party. Our party platform is created through the democratic "platform and resolution" process. We vote on it. Then we try and find candidates to win elections and turn the platform into public policy. If they won't at least try to implement our platform, or they sabotage the platform to the point where the laws they pass don't really get the job done - what good are they?

Well I can tell you that an organized massive grassroots party that expects candidates to live up to their promises scares the hell out of the money launderers. Why? Because the larger we get - the more leverage we have and the less important money is to the process. And there are a lot of people who make money out of the campaigns. OFA has or had 7 paid staffers - and they don't owe their jobs to the Democratic Party. They work for the Obama Campaign. Now they may be part of the so-called "Coordinated Campaign", but they are paid by OFA. Some of the other folks in the CC are paid by the congressional campaigns, and others still are paid by the NCDP. They all have goals - to get the candidates elected - and I don't see anything that is being done that will also build up the party and help it sustain itself.

Case in point - the OFA volunteer list from 2008. The Wake Dems were promised that list in 2008 in exchange for giving OFA a list of our grassroots party officers and volunteers so that they could be seconded to the coordinated campaign. We wanted to use the OFA volunteer list to build up the party AFTER the 2008 election. At a time when we were riding so high, those volunteers should have been encouraged to get active in the party. Some of them did come over on their own, but largely OFA volunteers sat around waiting to be told what to do. And since we didn't know who they were, we couldn't target them for recruitment. But the volunteer info we gave OFA was used to poach party activists who were told that they were wasting their time in the party - come work for OFA! It happened to me - an OFA turf crew leader from 2008 (who was an UNA voter in Apex) contacted me and told me I was wasting my time with the party - come volunteer for OFA. It's like she was a moonie at the airport trying to get me to join her cult! And if you doubt me - contact former Wake County chair Doris Weaver, who was told by a former OFA staffer that she was wasting her time working for the party!

So why were the young OFA volunteers not only not encouraged to join the party but actively told that the party was a waste of their time? It's because when you join and become active in the party, you realize just how much strength you have. You aren't told that your job is to follow orders from paid staffers to promote the President's agenda (whatever that is) - you start at the first meetings of the year and introduce resolutions at the precincts and watch them move up through a succession of meetings to become part of the party platform. Then we need to get out and lobby our leaders to turn the platform into public policy.

That scares the hell out of the money-launderers (who after all, want something for their money) and the politicians (who feel they need that money) and the paid staffers who wouldn't have paid jobs in the campaigns that lead to jobs on the legislative staffs that lead to jobs as lobbyists. Follow the money.

So it is in the best interests of the money-launderers and the campaigns and the other camp-followers to destroy the party and turn us all into appendages of the political campaigns. That's why it's a mistake to let OFA run the coordinated campaign when there is no effort to ensure that these efforts will provide something that the Democratic Party can use to sustain itself AFTER the election. We don't just need new warm bodies to replace the older ones - but we need to grow bigger so that we can use our collective clout to turn platform into public policy. That is why I object to people from an organization that didn't live up to their promises to help the Wake County Democratic Party (and other county parties across the state) run our coordinated campaign this year.

If someone asked you to do a job for them and then promised you would be paid for that job AFTER you did the job, and then didn't pay you - what would you do? Would you work for them again?

Then two years later, after all your efforts to make them pay you for 2008 didn't work - they come to you and ask you to work for them again with payment after the job is done - would you do it again?

Sure, you can say that you can't expect to get paid if you don't work, but people who constantly do work they don't get paid for eventually go out of business. And sometimes that's part of the plan.

I regularly talk to grassroots Dems (many of them Deaniacs from around the country) who see the same thing happening to their county and state party that is happening here in NC). Party officers who are being starved of resources they need to sustain and run their parties year-round just give up on trying to make a go of it and merely become an appendage of a campaign. But what makes it even worse than those leaders who sit back and don't object to it are the leaders who sell out and aggressively make it happen. Those party leaders often come from the candidate class themselves, and only use their party offices as a holding area to build up visibility in between races for public elected office.

That's what I believe Martha is talking about. I'd love to see the OFA folks become members of the Democratic party and become delegates, precinct officers, turf crew leaders, HD coordinators, county part board members, SEC members, etc - you get the idea.

But then those people wouldn't just expect to be active for a candidates campaign. And that's what scares the campaign folks - a bunch of people who merely did what they were told by the kiddies who are paid to run the campaigns - and who take part in the political process and vote on a platform they expect the candidates and elected leaders to support. Usually the platform conflicts with the desires of the special interests who indirectly pay the campaign people. That's why Obama For America was morphed into Organizing For America - the people who ran the 2008 campaign couldn't afford to let all those volunteers go into the party where they would realize they didn't have to do what they were told - they could get into a position where they had more power - and realized it.

Per reply to my original post:

"Case in point - the OFA volunteer list from 2008. The Wake Dems were promised that list in 2008 in exchange for giving OFA a list of our grassroots party officers and volunteers so that they could be seconded to the coordinated campaign. We wanted to use the OFA volunteer list to build up the party AFTER the 2008 election."

"At a time when we were riding so high, those volunteers should have been encouraged to get active in the party. Some of them did come over on their own, but largely OFA volunteers sat around waiting to be told what to do. And since we didn't know who they were, we couldn't target them for recruitment. But the volunteer info we gave OFA was used to poach party activists who were told that they were wasting their time in the party - come work for OFA! It happened to me - an OFA turf crew leader from 2008 (who was an UNA voter in Apex) contacted me and told me I was wasting my time with the party - come volunteer for OFA. It's like she was a moonie at the airport trying to get me to join her cult!"

"And if you doubt me - contact former Wake County chair Doris Weaver, who was told by a former [actually current] OFA staffer that she was wasting her time working for the party!

"So why were the young OFA volunteers not only not encouraged to join the party but actively told that the party was a waste of their time? It's because when you join and become active in the party, you realize just how much strength you have. You aren't told that your job is to follow orders from paid staffers to promote the President's agenda (whatever that is) - you start at the first meetings of the year and introduce resolutions at the precincts and watch them move up through a succession of meetings to become part of the party platform. Then we need to get out and lobby our leaders to turn the platform into public policy."

"That scares the hell out of the money-launderers (who after all, want something for their money) and the politicians (who feel they need that money) and the paid staffers who wouldn't have paid jobs in the campaigns that lead to jobs on the legislative staffs that lead to jobs as lobbyists. Follow the money."

Note from Martha B.: Doris Weaver, then the Chair of the Wake Democratic Party was called by a current paid OFA staffer,in 2008, after she had asked that all party officers including precinct officers not be contacted by Obama for America. When they called her, she complained to the staffer in Cary --that was when he told her that she was wasting her time working as a party official and she should volunteer for OFA!

Read more: http://bluenc.com/truth-power-corruption-democratic-party#ixzz0xiZSmmo2