Question: Is anyone having a bad experience with local Dem parties?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

I am, although I am not ready to go into any details about it. What I am wondering is: any others having a bad experience with local and county parties?

Share if you are comfortable with doing so.

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Magic - from both Coasts

The Democratic "Clubs" - which are usually the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party -- are a good counter force to a stagnant, moribund party. This is especially the case above a threshold size of the "Club."

Seen it in Pennsylvania and California. (In Pennsylvania our Progressive club elected an Assemblyman)

[MercutioATC]

2. The Ohio Democratic Party endorsed a sleazy idiot for Mayor in my city...

...last November (yes, I realize that opinions of O'Malley differ, it's my opinion that he's a sleazy idiot).

Yes, he was the only Dem running against an incumbent Republican Mayor, but that's the single action that's convinced me to send ALL of my campaign contributions directly to candidates.

[NVMojo]

3. yes and I am not going back. They held a fraudulent election

to keep a greedy pig in there that's been there in control for about 20 years while the Repuke party grew exponentially. She didn't care as long as she bought favors from Reid's office for her non-profit business of which she pays herself as a Sub S corp. As crooked as the repukes at the expense of Dems. There's gotta be more of this out there. Corrupt Dems, repukes in disguise.

When Jack Carter came to our town to explore running for the senate, she bragged to him about being a Dem with money, just like repukes. Of course it's mostly tax payers money she lives off of.

Blah, I feel like I just puked.

[skids]

4. Here in MA...

...a lot of the elected aren't too horribly responsive to their constituents. There are those who are great, but then there are things like the recent seatbelt law where almost all of them voted for the law despite the fact that voters had canned the idea in state-wide popular referendums. When politicians ignore ballot referendums, that's a problem. The correct response on their part, if they are so utterly convinced they are right and the voters are wrong, is to work to educate the voters, but uphold the voters' mandate in the meantime.

So we have work to do inside the party here. But moreso we have work to do taking back the Governer's mansion, and that has to take precedence -- now isn't the time to stage a move to overturn the snobby elites, unless a very good viable alternative is readily at hand. The time will come, eventually, though, when the nation as a whole isn't walking the edge. At least we can hope it will.

[Mend]

5. very poorly organized meetings, in places too small and uncomfort-

ably crowded, speakers announced that don't show up, and poor use of volunteers....we won't go again, just send money to our candidates and sites such as this one.

[AZBlue]

14. Same here in Arizona!

I've tried - and will continue to try - to change things, but it's truly like hitting my head against a brick wall. And, I have a bad headache.

[Dr.Phool]

6. We had a lot of funny stuff going on in our DEC

The Chair, and Treasurer resigned, and we just had new elections on Sat.

A close vote between the 2 contenders for chair, my candidate lost, but we'll be better off either way. Hopefully we can salvage the party.

[whalerider55]

7. yes and yes... i did

after nearly 20 years working in and around the MA democratic party, i've given up and am now a genetic democrat who wears green.

on ev erty level in this stae, the party is in-bred, bereft of ideas, dominated by appratchniks who essentially inherit their fiefdoms from their fathers (never their mothers). They tend to push real progressives to the fringe of the party, altho they depend on them in the election.

what they did to Robert Reich, who could easily have won election as the governor is a case in point; reilly, the heir apparent to the throne of easily forgettable and uninspired hacks the dems have proffered as governor candidates, has self-destrucdted, giving deval patrick a real and welcome chance at the title.

on the local level, i've been active in the committees of a medium and small city, and have found them to be an exercise in futility. they aren't interested in progressives, they rarely take a risk; once you move to the most local level, where i currently am an elected official, party affiliation is irrelevent. in the day to day of governing, I have formed progressive coalitions with very conservative democrats and with republicans to work on specific progressive issues (transparency in government, open process, public engagement). the local party won't take a stand on any of this stuff.

sheesh. dean is a doing a hgreat job on empowering the state dem organizations, and i give him a lot of credit for figuring out what to do. now if we could just figure out how to leverage change from the bottom up, rather than waiting for it to trickle down from above, we could get somewhere.

whalerider

[applegrove]

8. Meaning do people see things a little different than you? Really -

if you look at what worries AMERICANs, and divide that by half (those who would vote democrat) Diebold is not on the list.

Get used to it.

Nefarious leaders like the present WH use fear to divide their oppositon. Different fears for you and you and you and you.

Expect different views.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

11. Hardly that.

No, it is far more toxic then that.

[politicat]

9. I attribute it to the community in general....

I admit that I live in Flake Central. This community is very liberal, but not very cynical and not very skeptical. So we have meetings on BS topics (like neurolinguistic programming as management skill), and the more radical sections of the party write the platform to the point where opposing viewpoints are discouraged from being active.

I send money. I write letters. But too much pseudoscience makes me uncomfortable, and when those who loooove the pseudoscience are in charge, I just can't be too involved.

[MuseRider]

10. It is not easy

being a lefty lefty in Kansas, even among the Democrats (or maybe especially among the Democrats). Answer, yes and these are my friends.

[Lorien]

12. Yes, but I keep volunteering anyway. The worst organizers were in 2000

the guy running our local group didn't want anyone to bother promoting Gore and he rarely ordered lawn signs or bumper stickers-and when we did get them in, he wanted a $5-7 donation from each person who asked for one. He said that Gore didn't stand a chance so we shouldn't waste our time with him (I told him he was way out of line and that I was working for Gore regardless of what he thought).

BTW-this was in Florida.

[snowbear]

13. Here in the frozen north, the local Democratic Party ROCKS !!

The group at the Anchorage Headquarters are AWESOME!

And.. I'm happy to say, they are the first group to take on Diebold and WIN!! (It sure pays to have paper ballots available when you threaten to sue! )

.."This marks the fist time Diebold itself has agreed to treat the main database files for all their election products as public records."

http://www.alaskademocrats.org/e-news/article.asp?ArticleID=361

~~Congratulations Alaska Democratics!!~~

[NVMojo]

15. very cool, Larissa!

I was raised in Anchorage. thanks for posting the photo. Made me remember ...

[snowbear]

17. Wow.. kewl !!

I was going to tell you to send some warm weather.. but I checked Google and it's not that much warmer where you are than here! http://eliteleague.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/lol!.gif

And yeah.. our local Democratic Party is incredible.. :hug:

You can see by the bogus Diebold results we had that no one in Alaska knows who won the U.S. Senate race. D-Tony Knowles was in the lead in every poll... yet the R won.

Now we find out she "mistakenly" was given over 77,000 votes by Diebold..

If you do the math, there's some serious problems here!

- Diebold gave Murkowski 77,000 more votes than she actually received
- She beats Knowles by 6,000 votes

What the...

The state may have to have a new election here. They don't even know if Bush really won here.. but they won't focus on that since a Kerry win wouldn't have changed anything.

There's also a lot of local races that were skewed.. Should be interesting to see what eventually happens here..

[radio4progressives]

16. Orange County California have problems, that's not my district though

i've received reports about seriously rotten fish smelling stuff going on down there. i'm not comfortable going into details at this time.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

18. Most of them in my area are bunch of little snobs who are only interested

in talking to their friends. I won't go back.

[bobbieinok]

19. before 2004 election, several DUers who were unhappy with local

democratic party organization worked with like-minded people to take it over from people who had been running it for years