Unyielding Objects vs. Inexorable Forces...

If the party won’t change, maybe we can work around it.

It’s no secret that there are still some 600,000 grass roots people out there hungering for participation. And those were only the Dean supporters. If you add in General Clark’s people and Dennis Kucinich’s supporters, we have a lot of people out there who are unhappy with the status quo.

The trouble is that the party of the “status quo” has not invited them into the tent.

And the party continues in its inexorable way to defy change, mirror the past, and perpetuate the lies and clichés that have defeated democrats in the past.

Need proof? Last election, we lost not only the South, but College graduates, but also the “rust belt” states (imagine?), the poorest states, the Hispanic vote, and virtually the entire south!.... Plus, we failed to get the single women to join with us to support Women’s Rights.

There is something deadly wrong here now.

And nobody’s questioning it.

Nobody is asking the hard questions.

Why did we lose precisely those people and groups that were always democratic?

Were the republicans more compassionate, more embracing? Did they have a better or sounder vision for the future.

Right now, our party leaders are sitting smugly as the dominant party with razor thin advantage and think that they are going to win in 08.

We’ve got news for you: If we don’t change, if we don’t adopt, the Republican party will take it away from us again…

And the key is what happens at the State level.

Right now, we’re not seeing the big ideas. We’re not seeing the “inexorable force…”

We’re seeing more of the same.

Go to a Democratic meeting. The speakers are talking about subjects that aren’t even germaine to where we are today. The attendees, mostly all over fifty, look like they are going to fall asleep.

Hey, if the party, itself, doesn’t realize it needs new blood, then there’s no hope for the Democrats. We need to see blacks, Hispanics, single women, college graduates and all of the rest who we’ve missed.

And that will only come once we’ve reinvigorated the Party—gotten rid of the dead wood and opened it up to the Independents, the Greens and the fence stragglers…

The Democrats have to recognize that they need to do their own housecleaning if they hope to be viable in the 2008 election.

Anything less, places the entire party in jeopardy.

And we’ll be looking at the Independents next time as the new democrats.

Les Aaron