The Democrats’ grassroots revolution
Via MyDD, a Washington Post article on the Democrats’ grassroots revolution:
The movement is less ideological than it is strategic and structural. Activists from the local level to the national level believe the party has become hierarchical, too much like the GOP. Democrats, they argue, aren’t Republicans and respond better to a bottom-up campaign process.
There was a time when Democrats, despite their seemingly eternal financial disadvantage, beat Republicans by doing what they did best: winning the ground game. But Republicans caught up, largely by out-organizing Democrats. Last year, Karl Rove’s strategy of energizing evangelicals and social conservatives trumped the Democrats’ unprecedented money-raising apparatus.
Even as the Washington-based Democratic power structure caught up with the GOP in its ability to finance costly television ad campaigns and target voters through high technology, the grass-roots activists complained that they were being ignored in the trenches.
“I don’t think you’ve seen the end of it [with North Carolina and Arkansas],” said former Gore presidential campaign manager Donna Brazile, whose expertise is grass-roots organizing. “[Dean’s election] marks the end of the Terry [McAuliffe] era and in a way the end of the Clinton era. What you see is Deaniacs really asserting themselves across the board.
“I don’t see this is a bad thing, because when you infuse new blood in the party you bring it alive and bring new energy. My only caution, though, is whether this new group is going to really be willing to get down and do the hard, dirty work of rebuilding the party.”