Revenge of the Obama Coalition

[elleng]

Last edited Fri Nov 10, 2017, 02:56 PM - Edit history (1)

'In his book “Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics,” former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed described 1989, the year the group was founded, as a dark one for religious conservatives. The once-powerful televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were discredited by lurid scandals. In Virginia and New Jersey, anti-abortion Republican candidates lost gubernatorial races to pro-choice Democrats. “The number of conservative votes in Congress dwindled to barely enough to sustain President Bush’s abortion vetoes,” Reed wrote. The movement that had been so formidable at the start of the decade “seemed dead, and cultural elites danced on its grave.”

Seeking resurrection, the religious right turned to local politics, investing in the bench of the Republican Party. “We are training people to be effective — to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures and to key positions in political parties,” Pat Robertson wrote in a 1991 Christian Coalition fund-raising letter. The next year, Sarah Palin would get her start by winning a seat on the Wasilla City Council, part of a wave of evangelicals pouring into local politics.

If there is one threadlike silver lining to Donald Trump’s election last year, it’s that it has forced the left to emulate the Christian right’s extremely successful strategy for building political power. For decades, Democrats have paid far less attention to local politics than Republicans. . .

Ultimately, the main lessons from Tuesday are probably more strategic than ideological.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/opinion/democrats-election-obama-coalition.html?

[calimary]

1. Ralph Reed was talking about school board elections 30 years ago.

I guess that's how long it takes some of us Dems to catch on - and then work to catch up.

Evidently it's a priority of DNC Chair Tom Perez to switch focus from All-White-House-ALL-The-Time to a more bottom up approach. Plant the seeds and grow the infrastructure - build from the ground up. Today's school board member or alderman or community leader could be tomorrow's governor - or senator - or even president. But we can't get there without sound and solid bench strength. Gotta build the infrastructure from below before you can reach the top.

I wanted to meet Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom last weekend when he spoke in Santa Monica because I think he's going to be the next California governor. And from there, I think he's likely to run for president (and likely to win). He started at the bottom. He isn't perfect either, but I think he could go all the way. He's a case study in how our new Dems need to grow from below, if we're serious about taking back power, holding onto it, and thereby being positioned to make the changes and improvements that are even more desperately needed now than ever.

Newsom's first political experience came when he volunteered for Willie Brown's successful campaign for mayor in 1995. Newsom hosted a private fundraiser at his PlumpJack Café.[11] In 1996, Brown appointed Newsom to a vacant seat on the Parking and Traffic Commission, and he was later elected president of the commission. In 1997, Brown appointed him to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors seat vacated by Kevin Shelley. At the time, he became the youngest member of San Francisco's board of supervisors and also, like Shelley before him, the board's only heterosexual Caucasian male.[19][20][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Newsom

Grow from below! He started as a volunteer in somebody else's campaign. I bet there are intriguing examples of this everywhere. I bet everybody here knows of some local political success story who's got a rising profile after starting at the entry level. We need to get behind 'em and help them climb!

[hibbing]

2. School Boards

Have a rwnj on the school board here whose children don't even go to public school, and I'm sure this is replicated all over the country.


Peace

[SharonAnn]

3. Like Betsy DeVos and her family. Very interested in public schools but don't attend them.

[ehrnst]

4. Reports of our death, or "needing to be fixed" are greatly exaggerated.

Attention, those who think that they can coordinate to kill and then scavenge gold from the fillings of the corpse of the Democratic Party...