Purple America...Fifty-State Strategy in North Carolina..first in a series. [View All]

[madfloridian]

Purple America...Fifty-State Strategy in North Carolina

Fify State plan

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD describes this article:

As a "first in a series of reports" that by Nation contributing writer Bob Moser, running through the 2008 elections, that "explore the evolving grassroots realities of so-called "red"-state politics in this time of political transition" to a national Democratic party, its a welcome exposure of the 50-state plan.

...'This Nation story is about North Carolina, and if you've read 'Crashing The Gate' then you are familiar with the story of Jerry Meek, and his leadership in the 'silent revolution' takeover of the NC Party by progressive outsiders over insiders, its a story of what happened next. The article also focuses on Howard Dean, and his huge role of leadership in this effort at the DNC, and the battles that lay ahead for Dean and the 50 state strategy, particularly if one of the insider campaigns gets the Democratic nomination.

Here are a few paragraphs from The Nation article called Purple America.

Purple America

Hard to choose just a few paragraphs. Very long article.

Moser points out that the single oddest thing about the fifty-state strategy is surely the adjective often attached to it: "controversial." He is right. There should be no controversy about it.

It is, in short, one of the brightest ideas the DNC has had in its undistinguished history. And the timing could not have been better: The organizing is providing a channel for the disgust inspired by the mounting catastrophes of the Bush years. In deep-red states like Utah, it's ticked up the number of Democrats voting and candidates running (30 percent more in 2006). In "purple" states like North Carolina, where Democrats dominate most local and statewide elections, it's helping to turn red counties purple and purple counties blue, uncorking a new strain of progressive populism--the kind that won Senate races in Virginia for Jim Webb, Montana for Jon Tester and Ohio for Sherrod Brown.

And it might not outlive the next presidential election.

Moser quotes Elaine Kamarck, a supporter of Dean in 2003, who did a study at Harvard about the 50 state plan.

In his own 2004 run, Dean had "found himself in the odd position of a candidate in charge of a movement that grew up almost accidentally around him," says Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard public-policy lecturer and highly unlikely "Deaniac" best known for encouraging the party's break with New Deal liberalism as a Democratic Leadership Council strategist. "That gave him the insights that led to the fifty-state strategy."

And he quotes a little more from Kamarck about why the strategy would be controversial.

"If you make your living buying and making TV ads, then you're not really very wild about a change in technology that says, Let's hire organizers," says Kamarck. "The whole political- consultant industry has been built on ads. But with cable TV and the diffusion of media, what the hell good is an ad? The fifty-state strategy takes a generation of consultants and kind of says, Let's put you out to pasture."

Here is more about Kamarck's study. 50 State Plan analysis from Harvard's Elaine Kamarck.

A couple of things about how it worked in NC with that great Jerry Meek on the scene.

Dean set out to make good on his promises, dispatching assessment teams to meet with leaders of every state party. First was North Carolina, where 34-year-old progressive Jerry Meek, the newly elected chair, was pleasantly flabbergasted by the DNC team's attitude. "They came down here and said, basically, What do you need? What is it that we can do to help build the state party in North Carolina?"

These were jaw-dropping questions. As Dean says, "Washington's idea of accountability is that you ask people in the states to jump and they'll ask, How high?"

There is a lot of speculation in the article about what happens to the strategy after 08. Moser presents two sides to the views he presents.

Jay Parmley of Oklahoma presents a practical view:

But Jay Parmley, a former Oklahoma state chair and roving DNC organizer in the South, is guardedly optimistic. "A lot of people are fretting, Oh, my gosh, when Howard leaves what's gonna happen?" he says. "I'm not worried about it going away after what we saw in 2006. Whoever wins the White House is going to have to say, Well, this fifty-state strategy helped get me there, and so we're not going to monkey with it too much.

But then he decides they might.

Donna Brazille sort of sums it up.

"He's earned a seat at the table," says Donna Brazile. "Can't nobody pull his tablecloth and take his knife and fork at this point."

But you just never know.