Purple America...Fifty-State Strategy in North Carolina..first in a series.

[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.

[corbett]

1. At The Heart Of My Campaign

Thanks for posting that! I would have missed it otherwise.

I joined Governor Dean's Democracy Bonds program right after it was announced in the summer of 2005. I haven't regretted it for one minute. I found it so inspiring that I included it in my campaign treatise, Progressive Pathway. Learn more at

http://www.progressivepathway.com

PS I just learned that my global warming expert blog (linked from the URL above) is on track to have over 1,000 unique readers in July.

We, the good guys, are having an impact.

[madfloridian]

2. Very nice blog.

"Corbett Kroehler, lifetime Sierra Club member and former chairman of the Sierra Club of Central Florida, is running for Congress. He is announcing his candidacy by means of a campaign treatise which is Volume 1 of Progressive Pathway. Available in paperback plus compact disc narrated by the author, Volume 1 takes the reader from the profound despair Corbett felt upon Senator John Kerry’s concession to George W. Bush in November of 2004 to his decision to seek the Democratic nomination for the 8th congressional district of Florida."

Thanks for sharing. Best of luck to you.

:hi:

[corbett]

9. Thank You! I'm Adding One Supporter At A Time

[mnhtnbb]

3. If Edwards is top of ticket 2008, I guarantee Jerry Meek will deliver NC

I have been blue in the face swatting the naysayers on DU that NC could go
blue in 2008. Yeah, mix those metaphors and see what turns up!

[madfloridian]

5. Meek sounds like like a dynamic person.

:hi:

[madfloridian]

4. From Kamarck's report....a little more.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070813&s=moser

"Not a harsh word has been heard, at least publicly, from Dean's detractors since the Carville brouhaha. That's thanks not only to the intervention of saner voices but also to a study of the fifty-state strategy's impact on the 2006 midterm results by Elaine Kamarck. While the project had not been designed to win elections in the short run, Kamarck found that it had done just that, "increasing the Democratic vote share beyond the bounce of a national tide favoring Democrats." Comparing Democratic results in '06 with those of the '02 midterms, she found that the average Democratic vote went up by nearly 5 percent in 2006. But in the thirty-five Congressional districts where fifty-state staffers had worked on the campaigns, Democratic votes had soared by an average of nearly 10 percent.

"Nothing like a little straight analysis to cut through the bullshit, huh?" Kamarck says. "This came out in January and quickly got distributed. I kept running into the big-money guys and they had all read it. It was funny to see how quickly this went through the political fundraising community. They're desperate for something that is hard data as opposed to the nonstop sales pitches they get. And you never heard a peep after that from Carville."

But these are Washington Democrats we're talking about; the story couldn't possibly end as tidily as this. It's far from certain what fate the fifty-state effort will meet when Dean's tenure ends in early 2009."

Well, that's not quite true what she said about Carville...last I heard he is still critizing Dean to college groups for which he gets paid well as a speaker.

But no matter what, it has been interesting. I look forward to the rest of the series.

[MaineDem]

6. Kick for the morning crowd

Thanks for catching this and posting it.

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks for the kick.

It is being ignored because Dean has joined Conyers and Pelosi on the **it list for not speaking out on AAR for impeachment. That is the "good guy" criterium this week.

It is an excellent and fair write-up, presenting both sides of all of the situation. Looking forward to the others.

[madfloridian]

8. More reason this is not popular with big money inside DC folks...

It really is controversial, and he might be before his time again. I hope not, but too many stand to lose eventually.

From Chris Bowers:

"I admit I was unaware of the wide scope of the fifty-state strategy--183 paid organizers is quite a large amount. It is certainly a very expensive electoral and party-building strategy that shifts a huge amount of funds away from television advertising during the final few weeks of the campaign in selected, narrowly targeted districts. Assessing the effectiveness of this strategy with an objective eye thus becomes increasingly important, since tens of millions of campaign dollars are at stake, and both those within the Democratic party infrastructure who favor the fifty-state strategy, such as state party chairs, as well as those who oppose it, such as consultants for Democratic campaign committees, stand to either gain or lose a huge amount of money depending on the scale to which the strategy is implemented."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/921

Besides, the conservative Dems disapprove for a different set of reasons than the liberal Dems.

So an idea that would actually reform campaigns is rather ignored at Dem forums. I was excited to find this article, as it is so fair.