Not bully on Berlon
Now for some inside-baseball talk.
Thanks to another fairly nonsensical column from Bill Shipp, we're looking at the race for chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party. He dubs Mike Berlon 'the favorite' ... despite the fact that, well, things like this don't really have a favorite.
Regardless, as someone who is greatly interested in seeing the Democratic Party find its feet again in this state, I've got plenty of reservations about putting someone like Berlon in the top leadership position of our party.
- What the party needs more than anything is strong efforts in candidate recruitment and development. Putting good people out there means better chances for victory. Berlon is currently the chair of the Gwinnett County Democratic Party. How are his efforts going there? There are five members of the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners ... all are Republican. There are five members of the Gwinnett County Board of Education ... all are Republican. There are two U.S. Congressmen representing the area ... one is Republican John Linder, while a sliver of the county is picked up by Democrat Hank Johnson. There are 15 state representatives ... 11 are Republican. There are six state senators ... four are Republican.
Sure, Gwinnett County is a pretty red county. But Georgia is one of the reddest states in the nation, and nothing coming out of the electoral situation there gives me much confidence that Berlon has the ability to change that scenario.
- We also need to raise more money, and Berlon hasn't done that terribly well. He's run for two offices - Public Service Commission and U.S. Congress - and in both cases he underperformed. In the former, he had lots of cash on hand ... but it was his own. And, even then when he had some extra capital, he was trounced by 43 points.
- I, for one, think the party needs to reconnect with rural and small-town voters across the state. Those folks have been flocking in droves to the Republican Party, partly because we're not talking to them and partly because the other guys have put together a message friendly to them. We should work to get them back, and that means getting outside of the bubble of Atlanta. Bringing in someone who heads up the party operations for one of the city's most populated counties doesn't fit the bill ... particularly when only 27 of his 80-plus committed supporters reside beyond the Atlanta metro area.
- I don't necessarily like the rationale behind transforming the party into nothing more than a 'rah-rah' organization, which is ultimately what I think it would become based on what I can tell from Berlon's plans. We don't need a booster club, but rather an effective party structure that will raise money, recruit candidates and work closely with them to get them elected.
Thanks to another fairly nonsensical column from Bill Shipp, we're looking at the race for chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party. He dubs Mike Berlon 'the favorite' ... despite the fact that, well, things like this don't really have a favorite.
Regardless, as someone who is greatly interested in seeing the Democratic Party find its feet again in this state, I've got plenty of reservations about putting someone like Berlon in the top leadership position of our party.
- What the party needs more than anything is strong efforts in candidate recruitment and development. Putting good people out there means better chances for victory. Berlon is currently the chair of the Gwinnett County Democratic Party. How are his efforts going there? There are five members of the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners ... all are Republican. There are five members of the Gwinnett County Board of Education ... all are Republican. There are two U.S. Congressmen representing the area ... one is Republican John Linder, while a sliver of the county is picked up by Democrat Hank Johnson. There are 15 state representatives ... 11 are Republican. There are six state senators ... four are Republican.
Sure, Gwinnett County is a pretty red county. But Georgia is one of the reddest states in the nation, and nothing coming out of the electoral situation there gives me much confidence that Berlon has the ability to change that scenario.
- We also need to raise more money, and Berlon hasn't done that terribly well. He's run for two offices - Public Service Commission and U.S. Congress - and in both cases he underperformed. In the former, he had lots of cash on hand ... but it was his own. And, even then when he had some extra capital, he was trounced by 43 points.
- I, for one, think the party needs to reconnect with rural and small-town voters across the state. Those folks have been flocking in droves to the Republican Party, partly because we're not talking to them and partly because the other guys have put together a message friendly to them. We should work to get them back, and that means getting outside of the bubble of Atlanta. Bringing in someone who heads up the party operations for one of the city's most populated counties doesn't fit the bill ... particularly when only 27 of his 80-plus committed supporters reside beyond the Atlanta metro area.
- I don't necessarily like the rationale behind transforming the party into nothing more than a 'rah-rah' organization, which is ultimately what I think it would become based on what I can tell from Berlon's plans. We don't need a booster club, but rather an effective party structure that will raise money, recruit candidates and work closely with them to get them elected.
posted by Jmac at 5:12 PM
1 Comments:
I pretty much agree with what you've said - especially about reaching out into the rural areas.
There's no good reason Dems shouldn't be competitive there. The bad reasons we haven't are pretty well documented by folks smarter than I am but, are the Dems listening? If they're listening, are they doing anything other than just wringing their hands and feeling sorry for themselves?
The Red Team has done a very good job of painting Dems as G-dless, anti-American, unpatriotic, anti-business, tree-hugging wimps. None of that is even remotely based in fact but the R's can sell it and we haven't done a good job of countering it.
The strategy of the Dems has been to just wait for the R's to blow up. Luckily for the Dems, the R's do tend to blow up rather quickly once they get control. What scares me is that Eric Johnson has been making noises like he understands this and has a plan to avoid self-destruction through over-reaching. Is he strong enough to convince his teammates to follow his lead? If so, the R's will keep winning for a long time. If not, the next loud bang you hear will be the Republican implosion. ;-) Richardson is set for implosion - his fuse is lit. Cagle can't decide how greedy he wants to be - well, he can't decide how hard he must work to keep his greed in check, I mean.
Sonny is a non-entity in all of this. He's a liability to the Reds on every level. They just need to keep him on a very short leash so that he doesn't do anything else as stupid as his most recent tricks. No helicopter flying and no major land deals, for instance.
But, here's the hard part - the message of the Dems is too complicated, requires too much explaination, exceeds the attention span of the majority of Georgia voters, and doesn't include enough hatred of any well-defined groups to appeal to the "us vs. them" message that has been winning in Georgia for much longer than the Republican take-over. We (the Dems) were only able to hang on as long as the last vestige of "Dixiecratism" held key leadership positions. The Dems were successful at purging our party of the folks who really weren't on board with our core values. Look how that worked out for us!
So, coming full circle, we need a "true" message that appeals to the rural voters without alienating our urban base (which is showing signs of abandoning us, anyway) too much. What can a party leader do? Well, how about some good old fashion campaign strategy with some targeted messaging that rises above mere pandering and groveling? The state party hasn't tried that tactic much, if at all.
Gotta stop but not before repeating what I've said before - get the damn DPG OUT of Atlanta! Keep a small office there but move the leadership somewhere outside of I-285 and don't hire anybody who has ever lived inside I-285.
That may not work but we can't really lose any worse than we already have, can we?
Go Jane! But, if it's not Jane, then please let it be Jackson and not Berlon!
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