Report from the Democratic State Party Central Committee Meeting, Sunday March 8th

You are receiving this email as part of my private online community related to the El Paso Democratic Movement. I have decided to regularly publish what I see and experience within the Democratic Party’s “comings & goings” on as an independent member of four important committees and the Obama Movement in general. I came to this inspiration from a number of angles in that first, the Democratic Party is not a hierarchically based political movement and is best served when there are many paths leading up the mountain top.

The second comes from the inspiration of Dan Slater’s example where he has provided his personal experiences in his role as a welcomed information resource for party members. I think I too have a unique view sitting on four committees while also being part of a extensive local network. If you don’t like this simply tell me and I will remove you from my list. Also I intend to republish these email posts on my blog; www.obamaguy.blogspot.com.

• State Executive Committee
• State Central Committee
• County Executive Committee
• County Precinct Co-Chair
• Activist volunteer leader with Organizing for America

Before I get started with my State Central Committee Report here are some upcoming local party and activist events you may want to pen in your calendar: I think that is important.

·        Wednesday, March 11th at 6 PM, EPC Precinct Development Committee will meet at Poor Richard’s Bookstore located at 320 No. Tejon. The outgoing super-ubber Chairperson, Karen Davidson will hand over the gavel to Linda Martin. I am member of this committee and we will find out how the new EPC Executive Counsel will reform it going forward including new stuff about HD leadership and official handbook changes. krd555@comcast.net 

·        Thursday, March 12th at 7 PM, Nick Solter a fellow blogger and progressive Democratic friend is hosting a presentation and discussion on a Single-Payer Approach to Universal Health Coverage. It is a kickoff for a CO Springs chapter of Health Care for All Colorado. Location: High Plains Church Unitarian Universalist (1825 Dominion Way, 80918). Contact: Nick Solter (719 488-2083) nicholas.solter@gmail.com

·        Thursday March 12th Decision 2009: Colorado Springs Candidate and Issue Election Forum located at the Carnegie Reading Room, Penrose Library, 20 N Cascade Ave.  Free and open to the public, call Citizens Project at 520-9899.

·        Thursday March 12th Organization for America Conference Call, 6:30 PM

·        Friday, March 13th, at 6:00 pm, St. Patrick's Day Party and Fundraiser for the EPC Democratic Party.  The event will be held at the Garden of the Gods Club.  There will be a silent and live auction, Irish music and rumored Senator Michael Bennet speaking. (He told me personally he was coming to the event!)

·        Saturday, March 14th, at 12:00 pm St. Patrick's Day Parade in Downtown Colorado Springs, (Tejon St)  Join local fellow Democrats in the parade.  Line up will begin at 11:00 am. 

·        Sunday, March 15th, 3-5:00 pm The Candidate Development Committee for the EPC Democratic Party is hosting the Progressive Majority for the development of candidates and campaign workers.  Located at the Carnegie Room at Penrose Library, 20 No. Cascade Ave, John Morris 473-8713 or john@peakdems.com.

·        Monday, March 16th at 6 PM EPC’s Executive Committee will be meeting as a new group. On top of the agenda is the new HD leadership format along with new VAN responsibilities plus the standing item regarding the proposed Exec Director Location is at the EPC Dem HQ located at 25 No. Iowa St. alice@peakdems.org   

·        Monday, March 16th, 6:00-7:00 pm James Crowe on loan from Washington State’s  SEIU will be holding a presentation about the Employee Free Choice Act and Healthcare Reform located at 4303 Stonesthrow VW 80922, 232-4974 RSVP to Michelle

2009 State Central Committee Report

Sunday afternoon the Colorado State Democratic Central Committee met in Denver at its Denver Convention Center. El Paso County (EPC) had a good attendance making the trek north on the weekend. County officers; Jason DeGroot, Judi Ingelido, and Alice Hines lead our delegation where also at the meeting was Hal Bidlack, Judy Beasley, Jan King, Michael Maday, Linda Martin, Jeanette Nitzberg, Allen Nye, Jim Phillips, Barbara Thummalapally, Jennifer Trujillo-Sanchez, , James Tucker, Diane Whitley, and myself. I hope I didn’t miss anyone. Kudos’ go out to Jan King who reserved many seats up front where most of us congregated at the Central Committee Meeting. I also carried a proxy for Sheila Foley-Wallace and I noticed that at least Alice Hines brought a proxy for someone, for as a delegation we represented more than 50% of our 30-member delegation. The Central Committee is comprised of the County’s Executive Officers, the county’s elected state officials, (Dennis Apuan, Michael Merrifield, and John Morse) and twenty-two at-large members elected at our County Central Committee Reorg Meeting that took place on Saturday, January 30^th.

Other Central Committee Members include Annie Bowen, Judy Fender, David Justice, Mike Makish, Tom Niemen, Steve Smith, and Val St. Cloud. Again I am still being introduced to many people and if I didn’t recognize you there on Sunday please give me a call or email me.

I was able to ride up with Alice Hines and Jennifer Trujillo-Sanchez, where Jennifer was very kind to drive. This allowed me to get to know both these capable women better as they were also one of my Obama compatriots last year. I think we all enjoyed each other’s company. During the trip we all decided to start trying to figure out how to a better provide group transportation to Denver for meetings like this. We need to rethink the carbon footprint individual driving does, the respective individual costs and the missed opportunity to get people together and learn how to better work as a team. I will take this up at the upcoming County Executive Committee Meeting later this month. One idea is to model off what a few northern CO counties do with providing partnered bus options where we could team up with the Arkansas River Valley county parties.
Meeting Reports: Our car pool troupe didn’t make it to the CD-5 reorganization meeting that convened at 10:30 AM. I did talk with Dan Slater, who later that afternoon was re-elected by acclamation to his 3^rd term as the State Party’s 1st Vice Chair, where he informed me that his wife Brandy was elected to CD-5 Chair. Hal Bidlack then told me he too was elected to the post of CD-5’s 1^st Vice Chair. I am sure our capable county’s 2^nd Chair, Lois Fornander, will announce the rest of the executive officers who were elected to lead our Congressional District.

The main event, the State Party Central Committee convened at 1 PM whereupon w re-elected by acclamation Pat Waak to her historic 3^rd term as our State Party Chair. The Denver Post has a nice article on the event here: (http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_11867817)

She then took the gavel and allowed a parade of Colorado Democratic Party heavyweights to make speech at the podium starting with Senator Mark Udall. The senior senator made a personal point for all of us to keep calling him Mark instead of his new title, senator.

Colorado’s junior senator, Michael Bennet followed Mark with a stirring speech that he outlined the basic “W” hole that was left behind by the past President. Specifically increasing the deficit from $5T (where we had a revenue surplus) to the current $10T deficit and a revenue shortfall. That along with a deep recession and two wars and enough said. Mike Maday and I sat directly behind Senator Bennet as he waited to take the podium. Before the meeting got under way we joked with his staffers about making certain the senator visited often El Paso County where he turned around and said he was visiting the county Friday night. (Is that a scoop?) Of course Mike and I didn’t bend the ear of our new senator like our own Allen Nye who had an extensive conversation with him beforehand.

Congressman Perlmutter followed our US Senators with a strong message of about the party teamwork that has resulted in Colorado going from red to blue in just these six years. After Perlmutter they introduced the new Congressman from Boulder, Jared Polis who came to the podium to speak a few words that the choir liked. Governor Ritter was represented by one his cabinet members as I didn’t get his name. The Governor I was told was traveling in Europe.

Whereupon the many standing ovations the actual Reorg meeting resumed, where we got back to business re-electing the entire executive slate without opposition. Dan Slater made the biggest splash when he displayed a PowerPoint slide of how much the Democrats have grown since 2002. Back before 2002 there were only a few pocket of counties where Democratic officials were holding office, now only four counties, Park, Teller, Douglas and Elbert, do not have an elected Democratic Official. It was a stunning graphic of a regional realignment. My note was that if you take out El Paso and Douglas Counties from the statewide races in 2008, Colorado is voting 57-42% Democratic. Think about that.

We received reports from the Initiative Chairs that included Latino, Disability, Young Democrats, African-American, Progressive, and Stonewall Democrats and then we created a new initiative Labor. Then by acclamation we approved a motion to endorse the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Things seemed to be going smooth and then we came to the meeting to consider changing some rules.

Well the seemingly sleepy Democratic blood immediately began boil as questions arose regarding a few “curious” proposals. There were questions as to jurisdiction redefinitions regarding disputes in controversies, secret balloting when it came to elected delegates changes to alternate compositions (reducing alternates by 50%) multiple county state senate and house district jurisdictions. There was actually a meeting breaking out of celebration!

Jan King I had immediate objections beforehand in reducing the alternates from caucuses to the convention/assemblies. The Rules Chairman when asked why the need for change was not informative to my liking, nor many in the assemblage when she said either “there were too many or too few alternates”. The reasoning just didn’t cut it. After a few other questions that were beginning to resemble more of a discussion, Dan Slater moved the body to the discussion phase.

The problem I immediately saw was the inherent voting strategy laid out for the meeting where those seeking to make these rules changes wanted to group all the changes into one resolution. There was a motion to disengage each rule change into separate considerations, but that was voted down in a fairly close voice vote. So discussion began, I was the second person to speak at the microphone and object to the alternate reduction where I asked the body who here was an alternate through the 2008 process. With almost 300 in attendance a good 1/3^rd rose, I then told them that half of you would not have been able to participate in the process. I then said that this year represented a political alignment both in party affiliation and in citizen participation and any dampening of participation was bad policy. I got a good applause. After me a chorus of objectors to the provision lined up to the microphone, where upon a savvy politico offered a motion to cut to the chase. She sought to table the rule changes (for a future meeting) and get the problems out of the way so we could adjourn. The Central Committee voted in acclamation to table the rules changes.

My reading of the CDP By-Laws state that the Rules Committee shall be formed 10 days after Pat Waak’s election. New rule or amendments than must be submitted to the standing committee 30 days prior to the next Central Committee Meeting where upon the Committee Members are to receive a copy of the proposed changes 10-days beforehand in the “Call”.

In my opinion this was an unfortunate and presumptive action by those in the Rules Committee and Party Officers. I witnessed an almost similar pushback by our own County Central Committee in January regarding the change of rules regarding removing absent or unresponsive Precinct co-chairs as immediately the body of persons recoiled to examine whether there was a misguided effort to dampen or lesson the opportunity to participate in the democratic process. The party regulars who toil and volunteer long hours might not recognize but this attention and desire to keep even part time activists a foot in the game. I assessment is that people now know how important it is to be part of the process even though they might not be fully engaged as a full time volunteer.

As a minor party leader I am hearing this loud and clear. I want to thank Jan King to immediately objecting to this provision as we sat beforehand reading the agenda and proposed rule changes. To those party leaders proposing rule changes, to them well-meaning and even appropriate stuff like house-cleaning or what not be careful to understand the environment that has now changed in America and Colorado. Also be prepared that this part of the meeting might suddenly turn into a contentious even challenging affair so be wise to present the changes in a clear and appropriate manner.

After the motion to table the rules amendments the Central Committee Meeting adjourned for us since EPC had already elected its State Executive Committee delegation back on January 30th. Our executive committee includes; Hal Bidlack, Mike Maday, Jennifer Trujillo-Sanchez, Diane Whitley and myself who are part of the Central Committee and all in attendance last Sunday, plus Jay Fawcett, Jay Ferguson, Renee Hartslief, and Michelle Maksimowicz, a truly capable sample of our county’s growing leadership. From there we broke up, happy to see this standing room crowd that easily made quorum clearly still full of political energy ready to permeate back to our home counties. That is my report, if you have anything to add simply write me back or contribute to my blog.

Understanding the Soul of the Modern Conservative Movement

This morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Sam Tannehaus was a guest discussing his expansive essay in the New Republic Magazine, "Conservatism is Dead". Too bad there is not a link to the interview but may I suggest you read the article in full. Since my childhood I have always sought to understand the conservative mind, its soul and the primal motivating forces that have come to bring our society on a cliff we are at today. Tannehaus has provided it for me.

As many know I grew up in a traditional Republican family where I was simply a fish out of water and eventually a social outcast. Often my father would deeply describe me as a liberal with all forms of mocking and disrespect. Then a few years ago he read a biography about Franklin Roosevelt and had to admit that for 75 years he was wrong about FDR and that indeed he saved the United State, but still my father would characterize the Democrats in an emotional denegrating way. Then I have a friend, Tom, a college roommate whom I adopted who ebodies in mind and soul the modern conservative personality and worldview. He is unrepentent in holding this totally entrenched view regardless of its outcomes. But knowing these individuals intimately and many others in less closeness I have never come to understand what is really under their skins until today.

Tannehaus opens his essay by saying the obvious;

Today, the situation is much bleaker. After George W. Bush's two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology [emphasis added]: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal "elites."

In many ways he sums up the political discourse that has held our society hostage going back to my youth of Nixon. He continues by defining the political framework of 2008-'09:

That these precepts should have found their final, hapless defender in John McCain, who had resisted them for most of his long career, only confirms that movement doctrine retains an inflexible and suffocating grip on the GOP

More telling than Barack Obama's victory is the consensus, steadily building since Election Day, that the nation has sunk--or been plunged--into its darkest economic passage since the Great Depression. And, as Obama pushes boldly ahead, apparently with public support, the right is struggling to reclaim its authority as the voice of opposition.

But what if the conservative soul, what seems to be propelling its irresponsible oppposition to good governance be it managing the economy or faithfully leading our nation internationally. He notes that the soul has not found the admission that possibly it was their movement, their philosophy, their actions from that belief system that might be to blame what is ailing our society?

Yet, even as the right begins to regroup, it is not clear that its leaders have absorbed the full implications of their defeat. They readily concede that the Democrats are in charge and, in Obama, have a leader of rare political skills. Many on the right also admit that the specific failures of the outgoing administration were legion. But what of the verdict issued on movement conservatism itself?

Tannehaus then begins to prosecute and expose the conservative movement as being a fraud to itself and therefore allowing me to understand why I could never get a fix on its internals. The author then begins to go deeply poli-sci to prosecute his case of the death the modern conservative movement.

What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead. And yet they should, because the death of movement politics can only be a boon to the right, since it has been clear for some time the movement is profoundly and defiantly un-conservative--in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision. [again emphasis added]

What passes for conservatism today would have been incomprehensible to its originator, Edmund Burke, who, in the late eighteenth century, set forth the principles by which governments might nurture the "organic" unity that bound a people together even in times of revolutionary upheaval. Burke's conservatism was based not on a particular set of ideological principles [more emphasis] but rather on distrust of all ideologies. In his most celebrated writings, his denunciation of the French Revolution and its English champions, Burke did not seek to justify the ancien regime and its many inequities. Nor did he propose a counter-ideology. Instead he warned against the destabilizing perils of revolutionary politics, beginning with its totalizing nostrums. [emphasis added]

"Of course!" I exclaimed upon hearing and reading this, those who have stolen and co-opted the term conservatism are not anything conservative. This is why the facts continually get in the way like how the Reagan, GHW Bush and GW Bush's Administration grew the deficit and government bigger than any Democratic President and yet the conservatives would rail upon Democratic Big Government. It was smoke and mirrors but why how and why a conservative mind or voter go for this?

In some ways a few years ago I had a drag out argument with my friend Tom over the very definition of liberalism. Defined by Merriam-Webster:

2C: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil rights.

Tom maintained in all emotional and intellectual fervor that this was actually the definition of conservatism. Through the never-ending din of an argument I had to physically send him the dictionary definitions to his chagrin and where he still has not paid the bet---typical sore losing conservative I maintain! Merriam-Webster defines conservatism:

2B: a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change.

Now that is more like it, but as Tannehaus prosecutes the modern conservative movement is nothing like the definition. Instead he writes:

The story of postwar American conservatism is best understood as a continual replay of a single long-standing debate. On one side are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. [governing pragmaticism as defined by Burke,---governments were obligated to use their powers to meliorate intolerable conditions.] On the other are those committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, the restoration of America's pre-welfare state ancien regime. And, time and again, the counterrevolutionaries have won. The result is that modern American conservatism has dedicated itself not to fortifying and replenishing civil society but rather to weakening it through a politics of civil warfare.

This is more like what I have seen through my fifty plus years, the mindless and committed exercise to weakening society through civil warfare---AKA the CULTURAL WARS. This war has been waged throughout every vessel in our society; in homes, schools, workplace, entertainment, TV, churches, organizations and even sports. I personally witnessed how a righting neo-conservative, Michael Ledeen, who attempted to use the firing of my friend and Hall of Fame coach, Bob Knight at Indiana University as a stage to write an essay that Knight was fired for cultural political reasons and not because of internal IU politics. Both Bob and I found it shameful and a complete manipulation of the entire event. But Ledeen was serious, the same way Ledeen was personally serious to me in attempting to sell the Iraq War. Everything seemed to be framed by this cultural war and that was because of the modern conservative movement.

Tannehaus continues his prosecution:

One reason is that the most intellectually sophisticated founders of postwar conservatism were in many instances ex-Marxists, who moved from left to right but remained persuaded that they were living in revolutionary times and so retained their absolutist fervor. In place of the Marxist dialectic they formulated a Manichaean politics of good and evil, still with us today, and their strategy was to build a movement based on organizing cultural antagonisms. Many have observed that movement politics most clearly defines itself not by what it yearns to conserve but by what it longs to destroy--"statist" social programs; "socialized medicine"; "big labor"; "activist" Supreme Court justices, the "media elite"; "tenured radicals" on university faculties; "experts" in and out of government.

But, if it's clear what the right is against, what exactly has it been for? This question has haunted the movement from its inception in the 1950s, when its principal objective was to undo the New Deal and reinstate the laissez-faire Republicanism of the 1920s.

To any political scientist this an obvious backward thinking philisophy. Any genuine student of history understands that in all reality a trend towards government reliance in the economy and society was a function of basic political pragmaticism with the unstoppable rise of industrial capitalism and its extraordinary advances of the new technologies capitialism created. But it appears the conservative soul is stuck in pre-New Deal thought. Is that why GW Bush thought his reelection political capital gave him permission to pursue the privatization of Social Security, that even he admitted was a mistake?

But the modern state is complex where liberal or conservative, activist goverance is about guarding the interests and needs of the entire population, not just a political or socio-economic class. But how does this reconcile with reality when one leaves scholarly discussions of rhetoric when the political discourse faces actual issues of social policy. Modern conservatives tend quietly to forget the ideas of nurturing the "organic" unity and adopting the views of the American business community. as in denouncing things like federally sponsored school lunch programs as a "vehicle for totalitarianism" or Social Security as a form of "remorseless collectivism"----errr the cannon shots of the civil warfare.

Tannehaus then proposes that:

For years to come, this paradox would roil the right, which remained split between the Burkean politics of realistic adjustment and the revanchist politics of counterrevolution.

He then takes us through a long course of conservative politics from the 1950's to Nixon and finally to Reagan. First he holds that there was an intellectual revolution after Goldwater's huge defeat reaching its peak in 1975. He then holds to liberalism's failures:

As liberals unwittingly squeezed themselves into the stereotypes conservatives had invented, conservative intellectuals began to look like prophets for identifying a self-appointed "managerial elite" (Burnham's term from 1941) that was leading a "liberal revolution"....

...This liberal overreach combined with the right's new sophistication promised a new period in U.S. politics, one in which conservatives, fortified by Burkean principles, might emerge as the most articulate voices of "civil society," separating out the strands of true reform, which drew on inherited values, from "liberal-left" attempts to make those values extinct. Perhaps the Great Society could be retooled, tamed into a legitimate extension of the New Deal. But, to accomplish this, the right would have to deal honestly with capitalism and its many ambiguities.

He then broaches the subject that even invaded the current Presidential race, Vietnam, Watergate and Nixon.

In retrospect, two horrific events, Vietnam and Watergate, crowd out all other memories of the early 1970s. But the decade began with the promise of a mature conservatism. Richard Nixon, who took office as a credentialed anticommunist, had the authority to orchestrate a quick end to the Vietnam war, something voters clearly wanted

...Of course it didn't happen. Why not? A big reason was Nixon himself. Rather than reconciling the two strains of conservatism, he played them against each other, sometimes strategically, sometimes cynically, sometimes paranoically, always chaotically.

...The polarization climaxed with Watergate. That cluster of White House crimes, once uncovered and prosecuted, gave conservatives the ideal occasion to reassert their role as guardians of social order. It was, after all, conservatives--most notably Burnham in Congress and the American Tradition--who had been inveighing for years against the destabilizing dangers of overreaching "Caesarist" presidents. Burnham was incensed when Nixon invoked "executive privilege" to evade congressional inquiry into "[t]he shoddy little trail of this pipsqueak Watergate business."

But the new generation of movement intellectuals interpreted Watergate differently. Just as liberals suspicious of Bill Clinton rallied around him during his impeachment, so Nixon's critics on the right defended him during Watergate. The true culprit, they decided, wasn't Nixon. It was the dark liberal forces arrayed against him. A "long term change in the equation of political power," Jeffrey Hart theorized in National Review, had placed the president at the mercy of "the federal bureaucracy," which, "though nominally part of the 'executive branch,' actually operates with considerable autonomy." But this "long term" change appeared to have happened overnight, with the election of the first president who had ties to the right. Hart also identified a second culprit, the "liberal-left bias of the major media."

Ah Nixon and the real enemy, the dark liberal forces that we heard bantered about for thirty years. Not that Nixon was acting unconstitutionally or criminally but somehow the victims made him do it along with the liberal-left media! Remember this is revenge politics bent on weakening society not strengthening it.

The argument that political power emanated from an alliance of liberal government bureaucrats and a sympathetic press became the favored theme in the movement's next phase...

...The attack on the "new class," rooted in cultural hostility, dominated movement conservatism for the next 30 years, up through the administration of George W. Bush. On one side, as Rusher described it, were "businessmen, manufacturers, hard-hats, blue-collar workers, and farmers." On the other: "a liberal verbalist elite (the dominant media, the major foundations and research institutions, the educational establishment, the federal and state bureaucracies) and a semipermanent welfare constituency."

The battle lines of the cultural war beginning with Reagan's Revolution, Ronald Reagan, its denunciations of "big government" and "welfare queens" supported the devotion ( to supply-side economics, known in another era as the Horse and Sparrow Economics, meaning if the horse ate enough oats, the sparrow had enough manure to get some food.

With Reagan, the argument between realism and revanchism all but ended. The revanchists had won. They consolidated their power during the 1990s when Republicans spent the better part of Bill Clinton's two terms trying to delegitimize him, even as he collaborated with them "to end welfare as we know it."

...The right, which for so long had deplored the politics of "class warfare," had become the most adept practitioners of that same politics. They had not only abandoned Burke. They had become inverse Marxists, placing loyalty to the movement--the Reagan Revolution--above their civic responsibilities.

...Though, inevitably, most conservatives vote Republican, they are not party loyalists and the party has to woo them to win votes. This movement is issue oriented. It will happily meld with the Republican party if the party is 'right' on the issues; if not, it will walk away." By this calculus, all the obligations flow in only one direction. Parties are accountable to movement purists, while purists incur no reciprocal debt. They determine the "right" position, and the party's job is to advance it.

...By their lights, they are right to do so. Bush, so often labeled a traitor to conservative principles, was in fact more steadfastly devoted to them than any of his Republican predecessors--including Ronald Reagan....At his peak, following September 11, Bush commanded the loyalties of every major faction of the Republican Party. The big central domestic proposal of his first term, the $1.3 trillion tax cut, extended Reagan's massive "tax reform" from the 1980s. Shortly before the Iraq invasion, Martin Anderson, Reagan's top domestic policy adviser, told Bill Keller (writing in The New York Times Magazine) that Bush was unmistakably Reagan's heir. "On taxes, on education, it was the same. On Social Security, Bush's position was exactly what Reagan always wanted and talked about in the '70s," Anderson said. "I just can't think of any major policy issue on which Bush was different." The prime initiative of Bush's second term, the attempt to privatize Social Security, drew directly on movement scripture:

...And then there was Iraq, the event that shaped Bush's presidency and, by most accounts, brought both him and the movement to ruin. It was also the event most at odds with classic conservative thinking. It is customary even now to say that the architects of the Iraq occupation failed because they naively placed too much faith in democracy. In fact, the problem was just the opposite. So contemptuous of the actual requirements of civil society at home, Bush's war planners gave no serious thought to how difficult it might be to create such a society in a distant land with a vastly different history. Those within the administration who tried to make this case were marginalized or removed from power.

Thus Tannehaus concludes his prosecution that Conservatism is Dead because it never was conservative and about a political philosophy bent on revenge and attempting to build a past ideology eventually with no regards to governments were obligated to use their powers to meliorate intolerable conditions or nurture the "organic" unity. Thus the Republican Party is not really conservative--in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision, it is a defunct counterrevolutionary force that screwed up our society.

Organizing for America TWO-POINT-OH!

I have been remiss contributing to my own journal, this political blog. In part it is because my family's circumstance and the other is that I needed some kind of breather and the last was I didn't know where to go. In the meantime a couple of things:

1. Sue and I joined the National Day of Service on Martin Luther King's birthday and ironically the last day of GW Bush's last official day as President. We symbolically cleaned up a roadside/hillside on west Unitah Avenue as an off shoot of the big group that Marty Caldwell organized to clean up Monument Creek at Monument Park. We filled 14 or garbage bags, found car bumpers, needles, GW's silver spoon, a pair of shorts, McCain/Palin political signs among the debris tossed out of cars or windblown from neighborhoods. The six-person crew included John Atkinson led by his wife Nancy Bentley, and their neighbors Al and Carolyn Cyr along with my wife Sue. The CS Indy made a small mention of it in this weeks edition in the article Obamanos. All told our two groups appeared pick up over 36 bags of trash and that did not include another group picking up trash in the Rockrimmon area, while also painting a free medical clinic, cleaning a literacy center, organizing the new Care & Share facility, setting up a foreclosure volunteer service among other projects.
   
2. The final weekend of the month the El Paso County Democratic Party's Central Committee met to reorganize and elected an Obama campaign leadership fronted by Jason DeGroot as the County Chairperson. Alice Hines was elected Secretary, while Judi Ingiledo was elected 1st Vice Chair, Lois Fornander as 2nd Vice Chair and Tom Martin as Treasurer.
   
3. At that meeting I was honored to be selected to the Democratic Party's State Executive Committee, its Central Committee and El Paso County's Executive Committee. I intend to run for House District 21 leadership when we reconvene in March.
   

Now after the euphoria of the Inauguration it is time to go back to work on freeing this society from its own self-inflicted pains and collective ignorance. This weekend I participated in two Organizing for America house parties regarding the Recovery and Reinvestment Package also known as the 'Stimulus Bill' and there was great consensus, which I was not surprised. In short the consensus was why so much in tax rebates and so much less in investment spending. I have told everyone to call our Senators and express your opinions. You can access their contact information on my sidebar links.

Okay some points on economics: Are you aware that we are standing over the abyss of a 21st Century Economic Depression right now? It is possible that we have already fallen in, possibly on September 15th when the financial markets crashed not unlike when we had fallen into a recession in December 2007 during the sickly holiday shopping season. Some simple points to make you aware how precarious the economy is.

• Debt to GDP at historic high and the same as in 1929
• Real Estate bubble has burst with paper values 100% over actual values
• Flat wages are now descending due to climbing unemployment and underemployment rates. Real unemployment rates estimated to be between 14-15% and climbing.
  
• El Paso County is losing 1000 jobs a month since August with a full percentage point increase in the unemployed insured rate climbing from 6% to 6.9%.
  
• Estimated continued job loss will be unabated until the 3rd quarter national and locally where an estimated 4 million jobs will be lost nationally and 6000-8000 or more locally. This will move local insured unemployment near 9% and underemployment/permanently long-term unemployed near 18% and nationally approach 10% insured unemployed.

The causes if you are interested.

• Debt has increased substantially since the Reagan Administration where the successive Bush Administration increased it to this historic levels. Clinton reduced it temporarily, this is known as the neo-conservative's era. Lowering taxes on upper incomes and increasing spending is the primary culprit.
• Supply side economics is never valid but it is historic, prior to this era, it was in the 1920's, early 1890's both resulting in deep recessions and the depression. In the 19th century supply-side economics was called the "Horse and Sparrow Theory". If the horse eats enough oats the sparrow gets its share after the fact.
  
• Flat wages occured through three forces, loss of manufacturing sector, loss of jobs to off shore, lack of genuine economic expansion outside of speculating financial markets.
• The Real Estate bubble was purpotrated by two forces, cheap cash or debt fostered by the removal of regulations in the banking industry allowing commercial banks to merge with investment banks and creating the real estate bundles (AKA Trusts) and infusion of cash at the top of the social ladder.
  
• El Paso County job loss is due to the loss of the high tech job/industry sector where manufacturing and high end service positions were shuttered.
  

What can you do? Organize and get involved making noise and making things happen locally. Help out Rob Andrews and Jim Gardner.

Day of Change

Today many things come to front. Obama and his hope and change agenda is not simply looking to change things incrementally, as if fine-tuning an old television or synchronizing a watch, it is hurtling the U.S. and the world into a 21st Century conscience. The 20th Century for all its technological promise offered great human carnage and suffering. The era of two world wars, a global cold war and global economy. The social order and traditions of the 19th Century were stripped by a multitude of violence and destruction as the world found itself being pushed around by failed promises of many ideologies including the latest coined, neo-conservatism. The past six months we have witnessed the high priests of American Capitalism come desperately to the government that they previously chastised almost universally as being the root of all America's problems as the only safe harbor to save their economic empires. The failures of sweeping pronouncements that unilateral military might can solve geo-global perennial problems all legacies of the 20th Century.

Obama, possibly the most unlikely of potentials presidents when he entered into his kindergarten class in 1966, born two years after Hawaii had become a state to a young a Kenyan national collegiate student and a 18 year-old American collegiate student where they were married three months pregnant. Two-and-half years later she was granted divorce. In Obama's first grade his mother married an Indonesian national where they then moved to Indonesia where soon thereafter he had a sister. Home schooled in English he was eventually sent back to Hawaii to be raised by his grandmother where he was sent to an excellent high school as his mother returned again from what resulted in another failed marriage in 1980. The promise that has now become America's hope came from these humble and varied childhood experiences where among anything Obama is fully versed in multi-cultural, multi-racial traditions and backgrounds where he wrote in 1995 in his first book;

" In his 1995 memoir, he described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multi-racial heritage."

From here the promise unfolded but not like most other American Presidents. Yes Obama had earned scholarships, first to Occidental College in California where he met my friends Barbara and Vinai. Then onto to prestigious Columbia University where graduated stayed for a year and worked for a few firms until he took what has now become the famed community organizer stint in Chicago's poverty stricken south side. I know the south side and I tell you venturing into those neighborhoods can be scary even for a kid who grew up in hard-smitten Waukegan with its own African-American and Hispanic ghettos.

There Obama goes onto a more traditional path attending Law School at the umbra-prestigious Harvard University succeeding as the first African-American Harvard Law Review editor. It was at this point the world should have taken notice. Unlike many of his classmates Obama did not cash in during the "ME" generation returning to Chicago to lead a project vote registering 150,000 of an estimated 400,000 unregistered African-American voters in Illinois. Again there was notice as Crains' Chicago Business identified him as and under 40 year power in the city. Teaching constitutional law at the prestigious Chicago University Law School Obama also joined a law firm specializing in civil rights and neighborhood development matters. Politically he was elected to a State Senator south side seat from highly partisan and paternal Chicago he concentrated on ethics and health care reform in bi-partisan efforts. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare while also co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures. He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations along with during his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.

But was he Presidential material? In July 2004, Obama wrote himself and then delivered the keynote address at the 2004 DNC Convention, considered now his national and international coming out where he stirred a calling. In it he described his maternal grandfather's experiences as a WWII veteran in legendary Patton's Army where he benefited from FDR's New Deal and GI Bill, where then he spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He explored many examples from the U.S.'s history, criticizing the heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, stating:

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."

Later it was considered the highlight of the convention and confirmed his status as the Democratic Party's brightest new star. Now he went on to win the most contentious Democratic Party nomination in modern times beating the party's first family and then winning a stunning landslide victory in the general election.

For me the quote that sums up his movement is, "We are the ones we've been waiting for". Yes it is time for change, as how history seems to always find the most humble and seemingly least likely among us to rise up and lead those that have been waiting for.

What should we expect going forward? Economically things will continue to get worse. The structure of capitalism and marketplace economics is wholly out of balance in the international and domestic institutions. Debt and money are upside down. There is an over capacity, lack of need and too much productivity, projecting little prosperity. The rich and the corporate plutocracy have raped and pillaged the system for their own ME agenda's without responsibility or ethics. Politically our nation and world is without a genuine moral compass lacking the vestige to truly address social and personal injustice against the world's unprivileged. Environmentally the world is challenged with rapidly unstable climate and the prospects of serious climate change offering challenges to substantive's and survival. Militarily the means of mass killing is now being distributed to more groups with more absence of deterrence and responsibility. Poverty, injustice, famine and military threats are what propelled the 20th Century into adjunct violence on a systematic scale.

Can Obama lead this nation and the world to a place of hope and peace? Only if we allow him to pragmatically dissemble the vestiges of society's failures and move our society to a place of genuine cooperatism. It is with that on the day before his celebratory inauguration when he officially is handed the reigns of power that literally thousands possibly millions individually acted to serve others selflessly. Called the National Day of Service across America and in a previously unknown and unheralded teen shelter at our nation's capital people came together and did something that was not about me. It was a cooperative economics, not captured by any GDP ratio but its value might be bigger than the monthly retail sales report.

It was about change, and I felt it. I felt it as we collected trash on a roadside and city creek side, esthetically just making their community better. I felt it hearing about how 50 strangers showed up at a food bank center to organize there soon to be distributed food stuffs to those 14 Million recently unemployed or under employed persons in our nation. When I saw pictures of persons painting a free medical clinic or washing the windows of a literacy center. This and the countless other projects showed in part the new way.

Change can be seen by the multi-millions cramming into DC to be a small part of this moment of transition from failures of the past and the prospects of a new future. "We are the ones we have been waiting for." It is not a result but merely part of a journey, a process and painful thrust forward. I am glad to be a very small part of it.

Do you recall following the 2004 general elections when the "dark executive" Dick Cheney said: "Elections have consequences." Retrospectively he was warning us that this was part of his sweeping justification that he and his team could do whatever the want. Cheney was promoting something altogether new called the "Unitary President" while also saying he was neither part of the executive or legislative branch where he interpreted the Constitution that he was of some "invisible hand" branch of government. Well the 2006 and 2008 elections have also been quite consequential to the level that the Republican National Committee (RNC) is fully admitting that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy, and is bereft of ideas.

This is what happens after elections, political parties, movements and even single issue constituencies access and review what worked and what did not. The RNC Chairman went further than merely admitting that his partisans were too addicted to their message ideology (or better described as their marketing brand) that placed political stance above governing policies that were hollow in ways of addressing its citizenry's real problems, he admitted they were plain out of ideas. Their problem is so deep that they are commencing with a new Think Tank called the "Center for Republican Renewal". Now this is a profound development for it emotionally and intellectually denies that the reality that the former self-described party of ideas actually never possessed a new idea, merely an idealogy that any form of government or regulation that did not enrich their true base was bad and should be defiled and discredited. This reaction by the RNC Chairman, a slick platform to get himself re-elected is no different than what the Detroit Automakers did in remarketing and repackaging the same autos and trucks they made since the 1950's.

The reality few political commentators or activists are willing to admit is that actually America has been ruled by an ever concentrating plutocracy---defined as the rule by the wealthy of course. In these post WW II the modern plutocracy is best described as a corporatocracy where in an objective analysis that the Republican ideology never had anything to do with smaller government or marketplace economics for the record simply doesn't indicate these basic tenants in any way. Their real goals were more about increasing the wealth and power of a very small subset of society which they were quite successful over the last 28 years since the Reagan Revolution was exclaimed to begin.

PJ O'Rourke, one of the true believers in the Republican Ideology or better described as a the GOP Mythology stated recently:

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble.

So in review of the corporatocracy where they battled over the financial class things like estate tax, the changes in capital gains and dividend income taxation, investment and trade regulations et cetera it was these many "think tanks" whose jobs it was to provide intellectual and message "cover" for nothing other than class warfare. The "theoretical" marketing or political rhetoric justifications like "trickle down economics", "Laffer curves" or "wealthy entrepreneurship" all were introduced into the marketplace of ideas as something real when it was nothing but another snake oil salesman call to an wanting and ignorant audience. But mythology created Greek-like heros like Alan Greenspan who also was caught completely off guard with the recent stock market crash or in the 21st century venacular, "market meldown".

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

What Greenspan failed to comprehend was that the addiction to unbridled wealth without actual production had warped the entire class of the corporatocracy that there was no accountability or awareness of actual value that the economy served the rest of us like jobs and real income.

So now as the Republican Party, the standard for the corporatocracy is now exposed for what it really is, the mechanism for the wealthy, social bigots, the old Confederacy that was the home of slavetocracy they called the anti-bellum society. Its political voting base are the investor class, the country club set, the corporate and financial executives, those who are its wanna be's, those who vote against their economic class for emotional or social prejudicial reasons---meaning white, often evangelical christian, uneducated, rural, upper class or military and anti democratic. None of the corporatocracy's nostrums was ever been backed up by actual data, just divisive and propaganda. Now it faces a real political dilemma. Its supposed ideology now clearly shown as failing where actual nationalization of the capital markets, the largest industrial market, and realization that deregulation has created a wild west environment to steal other people's money at automated levels. Even the most blind follower of their ideology has come to realize that something is wrong.

Andrew Sullivan the conservative Brit who openly backed Obama made comprehensive conclusion:

The [Republican] crisis is at two levels - the dreadful incompetence and incoherence of the Bush-Cheney administration, which has poisoned the Republican brand for more than one generation, and the emergence of inherent flaws in several strains of conservative thought.

The banking crisis is so close to us and so unresolved it's hard to see it in context, but I fear that Greenspan is right: it's a huge flaw that cannot be explained away by government. The limits of hard power are, in fact, perfectly in line with conservatism's deeper insights into human affairs, with Bush and Cheney acting more as over-reaching utopians than conservative statesmen. And the social conservatism problem has been a function of Christianism: an inability to shape society as it is because their theological doctrine demands adherence to eternal dogma not development of pragmatic policy.

This leaves the Republicans and the corporatocracy with some real problems where they are in a box or rigid high walls. On one side they have hardened their political social base into the mythology of absolute anti-abortion advocacy and institutional homosexual phobia in the name of "old time evangelical religion" fostering a reconstructionist America society and the incompetent economic nationalistic policies propelling the U.S. into a disasterous third-world, two class economy. Both these pathways are political dead ends which is why Colin Powell made this recent observation:

Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh? Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather that our better instincts?

So now the Republican powers are left with two choices:

1. Admit that their philosophical basis was simply unadulterated bull shit

OR

2. Blame individuals as an attempt to preserve the "philosophy".

This is why you may have heard the political cries that the Republicans lost because they, meaning McCain, Bush Administration, the Republican Congress and many others forgot their Republican self. It can't be the mythology of the Republican Philosophy but the persons who are now its high priests. One of those high priests, David Brooks wrote:

Now it's just a circular firing squad with everybody attacking each other and no coherent belief system, no leaders. You got half the party waiting for Sarah Palin to come rescue them. The other half waiting for Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, to come rescue them. But no set of beliefs, really a decayed conservative infrastructure. It's just a world of pain.

Obviously the discredited pundits are trying for option 2~~~ what else do they have left, except to admit their worldview is criminal. Finally Rob Dreher from the Weekly Standard came to admit the following:

There is a conservative Establishment -- a political establishment, yes, but also a think-tank establishment and an opinion-leader establishment -- that has become ossified in its thinking and, over time, more interested in policing its heretics than in thinking creatively about conservatism and its application to the challenges facing our nation and our culture at this particular time. That establishment is dying.

So the political philosophy that masked the corporatocracy's actual establishment is dying because the results on the ground are dyer even to them. How will they respond to the continued socio-economic trends; middle class wage stagnation even falling back, generational social immobility, the inevitable rising of health care and education costs which will assault Reagan-Rovolution model of low-tax government supported capitalism? How will they try to sell their old mythological socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle class that is challenged by the above stratification that rightfully perceives social and economic conservatism as both intolerant and economically ineffective? And finally how do you transform and ever concentrating white party where it benefited from racially-charged issues into a party that can win in an increasingly demographically multiracial America where within the next generation white Americas will be less than 50% of the entire population?

Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. Conservative commentator Russ Douthat in response to the above dynamic changes in the electorate said:

Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them.

It will be fascinating as the Obama Team deals with the collapsing corporatocracy where it stoled trillions, placed America in a perpetual war over oil and repressed societies and the untended social responsibilies of a middle and lower class in long term stagnation. And through this period a new world order will have to emerge that also addresses the mortal challenges of Global Warming. In this wake we will see the corporatocracy fail and along with it the name of a political party---Republicans though the class will not die but hopefully be made inconsequential the same way the royal class of Europe was made moot following the disasters of World War I.

General Election 2008 El Paso County Analysis

Now it is a time to access what happened and how to go forward. Locally the progressive/liberal El Paso County Movement made some serious advances in the base center of the Red Zone. There was a record participation in the caucus in February, with (and I am generally speaking throughout), 9000 raw votes; so unprecedented was 10 times greater than ever before. The Convention had a turnout of over 1600 delegates and that 90% or greater attendance went to the State Convention even with the total breakdown in trying to manage the registration process.

The General Election we saw that 109,000 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate with percentage approaching 40% at the top of the ticket for the second consecutive GE election cycle. Locally the CD candidate got 37% down 2 clicks from Fawcett’s 39%. The Democrats flipped another legislature seat with HD-17’s with a surprising 52% win, (but in reality that district was gerrymandered to be in play). The thing is in the other two hotly contested State Legislature districts in HD-21 and SD-12 Anna Lord only moved marginally from 41% to 42% in consecutive races and Lee got a more competitive but still disappointing 44% polarity.

Okay I have proven the point that the Democratic base is awoken, we unleashed a grass roots effort that canvassed or phone most of El Paso County even is the heart of the GOP base areas. So what why didn’t we win anymore surprising victories?

Let me say it was not the personalities or the campaign activities that brought about these local disappointments; Bidlack, Lee and Lord did more than admirable job. It is our underlying and unifying message that lacked real relevant traction to move a voter base, namely the Unaffiliated (Independent’s, DINO’s and RINO’s) enough to a Democrat instead of staying to the status quo.

That issue is taxes. It is not the issues of personality, corruption, lobbyists, education, healthcare, social justice, jobs, energy, war….et cetera), it is always taxes and the perspective or worldview people acquaint to taxes. I am in the midst of reading David Sirota’s book, “Uprising” which I suggest for all of you to read now in context of this election and how we can turn upside down El Paso County politics and engineer a stronger progressive/liberal base in CO politics. Taxes is the unifying issue that actually binds the Republican coalition of evangelicals, country club, and war mongers together for they hate paying taxes and they loathe money going to those outside their “favored person status”. It is that simple and it is the corporate (big business interests; International, ex-Mtn Region, ex-CO, ex-El Paso County) have taken full advantage of this manipulating the tax base and basically engineering the middle class small business and not them pay while they pay nothing.

David Sirota’s Montana story of this illustrates the point clearly and so does our experience with TABOR (which he referenced) as what is really the issue that cuts through the electorate and the wooden stake to kill the Right-wing Republican anti-tax movement (actually tax redistribution program to their real constituency) in the heart—like the Dracula metaphor. This issue of fair taxes, tax cuts to the middle class, small business is the stake----nationally and locally. It is connected to all the issues you all ran on personally, be it: corruption, lobbying, education, healthcare, social justice, jobs, energy, war…et cetera for until we bring about a fair tax system and cut across the bogus arguments of “class warfare” or “corporate trickle down benefits” nothing will change here or in CO. It is simple subjugation psychology politics. But it has to be clearly defined and conjoined to the individual best interests of the electorate---namely a coalition of Democrats and the Unaffiliated.

My thoughts are that it is waste of time, resources to think any candidate is going to directly assault the Republican base here by the force of personality, rational thought, and secondary issues without directly assaulting them on taxes. The thing is that the numbers tell the story. Right now El Paso County is 44%(165,000) to 32%(120,000) to 23%(85,000).

Now if Obama got 109,000 and McCain got 160,000 let us break this down in the simplest view. First El Paso had a 73% turnout (they are saying 91% of the active voter rolls which is bogus figure for those who were previously inactive who then voted then this GE became active by post election definition), the simplest notion is that there were 374,000 registered voters on Oct 22^nd and 274,000 votes were cast in the GE (73%).

Now let us break this down:

• If 72% Republicans voted that equates to 120,000
• If 85% of Democrats voted that equates to 72,000
• Leaving 81,000 Unaffiliated at a turnout of 67%

I am certain that with (+/-) deviation when we drill into VAN we will find that the Dem’s over 80% and close to 85% and that the GOP will be close to the mean….or slightly above pushing down the Independent vote in relation.

Now if McCain got 160,000 votes and got 90% from his GOP, than 108,000 from Republicans, he then received 48,000 from Unaffiliated and Dem’s. Our internals had it that he was going to get 8% of the Dem vote in our area.---let us move it 10% or 7000 votes, 45,000 votes from somewhere else or the Unaffiliated. This equates to 55% or 45% of Obama’s vote came from the Unaffiliated here in El Paso County.

You are not going to get the local Independent’s without addressing the tax issue on personal basis. Countywide what does this mean? What if the Dem’s got 63% of the local Independent’s (Unaffiliated) or in essence moving 27,000 votes from the Republican column to the Democrat column? 136,000 to 133,000 or (49.81%)

It appears that from the Ritter and Obama campaign the Dem’s have captured about 45% (+/-) the Unaffiliated vote here in El Paso but they have build a bigger coalition that incorporates another 18-20% of Independents to begin winning any countywide contests. West El Paso County it appears that this might have to be somewhat smaller but not precipitously where Lord has received a tick more than Ritter/Obama and Lee a couple more ticks.

Locally I see two issues intertwined in a way to make this change; taxes and election fraud, but taxes trumps it all. Obama (and Montana) has shown the way with his message of middle class tax fairness (relief). This is the modern wedge issue, pitting the electorate (those who actually cast a vote) and the corporate class, which do not but have the resources to lobby the tax laws.

Anna Lord discovered Gardner’s weakness being a lobbyist and an elected official but did not use it. I am certain State Senator Keith King with is past leadership is up to his eyeballs with the same position. They will pit the trickle down theory that corporate tax relief will create jobs but that is bull$#!t and everyone knows that. Jobs are created with a live economy for business hire because they need a workforce to make money, not because they not paying taxes. Not paying taxes means greater dividends for the investor class and bonuses for the corporate execs---which is also part of the investor class with the stock options compensation. This is not about small business either it is about big business.

So this is how simple things are. Grass roots politics will change the numbers only so far. But moving the numbers where progressives/liberals can actually win in El Paso County outside some gerrymandered concentrations like HD17, 18 and SD-11 areas. This is about capturing 63% of Unaffiliated voters. Don’t fool yourself that there is a cache of RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) out there, it might be 10% but is only 16,000 votes and basically those individuals are really Independent-minded voters registered to participate in the primaries. Even if there were 16,000 RINO’s that adds up to just 100,000 registered voters with the current Democratic base and still below the Unaffiliated (120,000) or Republicans (150,000) even if you take away the RINO’s.

Therefore going forward we need to find City Council or future legislature and County candidates who will take this tax fairness issue and get behind it with all our grass roots capabilities and change the landscape from this direction. Remember corporate citizens cannot vote yet.

1st Post Election Obama Volunteer Group Meeting a BIG SUCCESS!

Last night at the Pikes Peak Main Library, Penrose in downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado in the Carnegie Reading Room about 76 persons attended what appears to be the first official local post election Obama Organization Meeting in the U.S. I was told this about an hour before its start by Martha Moore, political correspondent for the USA Today Newspaper when she interviewed me on background for an upcoming article. Whether that is so or not we do know that in Colorado El Paso County Obama political activists are the first to organize no different than last year on August 6th precisely the same number of people showed up from a call by Mike Maday to form the orginal local campaign political organization. It was the first organization that Gabe Cohen, the then just appointed Colorado Field Director met with and from there we participated in nominating and now electing Barack Obama to the Presidency.

Here is an accounting of the meeting. First in attendance we had about a dozen of the Staging Location Directors from the GOTV efforts in the Obama Campaign. We also had as many Obama Team Coordinators, seven of the original Caucus/Convention Obama Volunteers leaders, (Mike Maday, Gary Gabrielson, Don Nelson, Jason DeGroot, Andy Nelson, Carol Duster, Renee Hartslief and myself), three former local candidates, (Jay Fawcett, Hal Bidlack and Pete Lee), the publisher of the Colorado Independent, John Weiss, (reporting on the event was Ralph Routon the editor of the Independent), local political consultants, Sally Davis, Jane Ard-Smith and (Renee), El Paso County Democratic Party Vice-Chair, Jay Ferguson, recognized super Obama canvasser Jon Wuerth, two former local Obama staffers, Robert Andrews and Dave Frum just to name a few I recognized. I will also say that I received at least twenty other emails of persons who had personal schedule conflicts and wanted to attend but were unable.

The primary outcome of the meeting was that we voted unanimously to formerly organize a group that would be a separate grass roots organization to be a political resource for the Obama Presidency in El Paso County and seek to partner or link with both the local Democratic Party and other issue groups or constinuencies that align with the Obama Platforms and Movement. The other outcome was that we appointed eight individuals to an Ad hoc Organizational Development Committee to meet and formulate an organizational plan and framework and report back to the group. Those individuals are: Robert Andrews, Pat Hansen, Rick Ketcham, Pete Lee, Katherine Mack, Mike Maday, Don Nelson, Chris Orsborne, and myself.

I opened the meeting and wanted to highlight the political accomplishments the Obama Campaign and its grass roots volunteers to date:

• Record Caucus turnout and Obama vote 69%
• General Election Results: McCain 155,000 <6,000> Obama 104,000 +27,000 over 2004
  
• Voter Registration #'s 16,000 new Democrats, 12,400 Unaffiliated's, 12,000 Republicans
• FiveThirtyEight.com's analysis: 51% CO poll voters contacted by an Obama volunteer while 34% were contacted by a McCain volunteer, 17% gap resulted 3.4-5.1% increase in Obama vote.

Then I introduced Don Nelson who read a passionate speech about the connection between Clinton's failed progressive movement in Health Care Reform and the lack of a grass roots organization to counter the lobbyists in Congress and why a separate grass roots group was essential for the Obama Presidency.

Mike Maday got up and discussed his brief communication with Jon Carson the recent National Field Director of the Obama campaign and the mentioning that a new person would be in contact with him regarding their thoughts. He then introduced Kathy Spicer wh is now with an Ad Hoc Committee investigating polling place and MIB irrregularities in El Paso County. This ilicited many comments from the group about apparent voter problems.

Jay Ferguson then got up and presented the case that moving much of the IObama activism and spirit of change and growth into the El Paso County Democratic Party is critical. He passed out about 25 invitations to next Saturday's Meeting at Hillside Community Center to be led by John Morris, the Party Chair.

I then moved the meeting to an open discussion as to what were their ideas of what to do an what the organization should be, whom or what it serves. We had many ideas expressed, all formitable. There was some concensus that confirmed our theme and objective. That we should form as a separate but aligned group. Our purpose was to serve the President's Platform Agenda of Change and develop or maintain the capability of grass roots communication and organization. That maintaining the team and house district framework was desirable. One extraordinary idea was to make certain whatever local issue we focus on it should be a winner so that we develop credibility and genuine power to change things. Also we agreed to merge the contact networks we have from the HD teams into a large communication network. That we want to spread this grass roots movement to other counties in Colorado and send representatives to them and coordinate efforts.

We then nominated a good sample of leaders who will meet and try to put in order the ideas and spirit for the next meeting. In the meantime everyone at the meeting was to reach out to their network and inform and invite them to the next meeting. If I missed something please write me and I will publish it.

My final take: After the meeting a few of us met at the Phantom Canyon Brewry to discuss some things. Both Jay Ferguson and I have been involved in a spirited and capable grass roots organization that once the contest was over attempted to maintain itself to varying success and degree. In Jay's case it was Mike Miles Senatorial Nomination run where a group in Douglas and Jefferson Counties a strong grass roots group formed outside the local Democratic Party as a 501C educational group. Ultimately they developed such powerful leadership that many found their way into the local county parties, took over and now have been electing local candidates in once Republican only areas.

In my case I was part of coalition of almost 80 groups fighting the building of a coal-fired electric power plant by a private utility in Wisconsin. Our coalition had big corporate players and small environmental and health activists. When the corrupted approval process ended our grass roots effort turned to trying to create a publicly owned utility district in our city, (like Colorado Springs Utilities). Without some early successes the post organization died a slow death.

Organizing something like this is not easy. But the benefits could be enormous. On one hand it offers a vehicle for a voice by those who feel they don't have a voice or their voice will not be heard is important. Many of the Obama network were Independents, either registered or in spirit and not inclined to enbroil themselves in party politics. Others are members of issues or groups outside the party framework but aligned with the Obama Platform. And as Don elequently pointed out that having an outside but affliated group (not unlike the DFA or Move On, offers the ability to communicate to elected officials in mass but outside the party, something both Clinton and Carter presidencies lacked. On the other hand it allows those who become activists the ability to join in the party enmasse with other Obama minded activists to reform and grow our local party. It is a place where party recruitment and development can take place on the outside. This is not a threat to the local party except to say that new blood and knowledge of how to actually organize will cause change to the old guard.

But it will take work and commitment. The other item of most importance is what a wise person brought forward, an early win and credibility. In my opinion the most obvious item to explore is the vote fraud, suppression and manipulation that is apparent in El Paso County. The witness by Jay Ferguson on the local Elections Board illustrates greatly what most of the public does not know, Balink is wholly untrustworthy. That previous to his administration El Paso had the state's lowest amount of election incidents and six years in his administration now the highest amount of incidents. This by itself is an outcome that springs a red flag of suspicion. Is it incompetence, lack of resources or outright corruption?

The thing is that there are 120,000 Independents registered in El Paso County who would be more inclined to align and partner with the Democrats if it is shown and worked that their vote is as much in jeopardy for manipulation as the 86,00o registered Democrats. This makes the inherent numbers of 206,000 to 165,000 (registered Republicans), to provide fair and clean elections. This even could cut into the Republican base as a win-win-win and something of a winning issue that could also bring about a coalition with other issue groups. Ultimately it leads to the 2010 County Clerk's election where Balink is term limited and it being an open seat.

All told the meeting was a great success and I will be announcing both the ad hoc committee meeting and next meeting shortly.

What the impact of Obama's Volunteer Ground Game quantified!

Many of you became politico's for the first time. The role of volunteer to a political campaign comes in many flavors, helping out in the field offices, donating food or hosting house parties, but the most important is making direct contact with voters who are strangers. Unlike TV or radio commercials or speaking events, contact with strangers offers persuasion impact on far more levels emotionally and intellectually than a virtual impact of a media message that can be countered buy the opposition's media message. When one campaign overwhelms the ground with volunteers the opposition cannot counter in kind and the imprint can be extraordinary.

FiveThirtyEight.com has done some enlightening post election analysis attempting quantifying the effect of Obama's volunteer ground game where in exit polls in battleground states they asked the question: "whether the voter had been contacted by the Obama and McCain campaigns personally about getting out to vote?"

The Obama campaign had a superior contact rate in 11 of the 12 battlegrounds; the only exception was West Virginia. Wisconsin was also relatively close, perhaps because Obama redirected its legion number of Illinois-based volunteers from Wisconsin to Indiana a couple of weeks in advance of the election.

The largest gaps, however, were in Indiana and out west in Colorado and Nevada, all places where Obama outperformed his polls on election day.

% of Voters Reporting Direct Contact from Campaigns

State  Obama   McCain   Gap

CO     51%     34%      17%
NV     50%     29%      21%
IN     37%     22%      15%
VA     50%     38%      12%
PA     50%     39%      11%
IA     41%     30%      11%
FL     29%     20%       9%
NC     34%     26%       8%
MO     44%     37%       7%
OH     43%     36%       7%
WI     42%     39%       3%
WV     29%     31%      -2%

They continued the analysis by saying:
Roughly speaking, each marginal 10-point advantage in contact
rate translated into a marginal 3-point gain in the popular vote
in that state. So the rule of thumb that a "good" ground game may be worth
additional 2-3 points above and beyond what is reflected in the
polls appears to hold; a great ground game may be worth somewhat
more than that.
The implications are profound going forward especially with the
coalition of voters who in the past were less inclined to vote
where a strong volunteer base ground game will be essential to
prevail inupcoming elections. Outside of this those of you who
took part in this historical election take heart you were the
difference when it came to votes. Obama won in Colorado 53.5% to
45% and going into the final weekend the polls indicated in Real
Clear Politics average that the spread was 5.0% but the final
results were 8.5%. Take a look at the final polls the weekend
prior to the election:

• Fox/Rasmussen had it Obama +4% (51%-47%)
• Denver Post/Mason Dixon had it Obama +5% (49%-44%)
• Marist had it Obama +6% (51%-45%)
  
• ARG had it closer with Obama +7% (52%-45%)

The week previous

• PPP was a little strong at Obama +10% (54%-44%)
• Politico/Adv was dead on a week previous +8% (53%-45%)
• CNN/TIME also was dead on +8% (53%-45%)
  

Even more striking is that two of the four final polling had McCain's vote percentage dead on, ARG was a point below while the hopeful Fox/Rasmussen gave McCain two points while sliding Obama by 2.5% points. None of them had Obama performing above 53% except when you go back a week prior to the election.

Back to the ratio FiveThirtyEight ratio states that for every 10% advantage equates to 2-3% increase in vote over the polling or in case of Colorado, seventeen percent contact gap translated in a 3.4 to 5.1% increase in the vote over the polling. Taking the RCP average of 5.0% and adding 3.4% equates to 8.4%. Local knowledge of Colorado being a traditional Republican/convervative leaning electorate where Colorado College professors have held an inherent 2% advantage for any Republican candidate this all falls in the deviation of 3.4 to 5.1%.

Where to go from here

It has been six days since Election Day and we have all had some time to think and reflect on its implications. Senator Barack Obama's amazing Presidential victory is potentially one of the four transformative elections in our nation's history, naturally only time and historians will determine that. My discusions with Political Scientists almost all conclude that Obama could be as important as Jefferson's, Lincoln's and Franklin Roosevelt's Administration in fundamentally changing America.

Many of you participated quite actively in some manner in this election cycle far outside of the comfort zone of being a casual spectatorand possibly voting. Of all the post election news pieces may I suggest you watch CBS's 60 Minutes episode produced just a few hours after Obama's victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago in the wee-early morning hours of November 5th. There Steve Kroft interviewed the four senior campaign leaders in a disarming revealing manner. CBS reported:

...They did it by recruiting and vesting millions of volunteers in the outcome, by raising more money than any campaign in history, and by largely ignoring that their candidate happed to be a black man....

The only person missing from the brain trust was the candidate himself. How big a role did he play in this campaign?

"Well, no one had a bigger role, you know. The great thing about our campaign was we didn't have a lotta discussion about what our message was or what he wanted to do," Plouffe said. "From the beginning, he knew exactly what he wanted to say. And it's one of the reasons we were successful. A lotta campaigns will spend hours every day wondering about how to change their message. And he was pretty clear about what he wanted to say, where he wanted to take the country, and either people would accept it or they wouldn't."

Axelrod recalled, "When we started the campaign, we met around a table like this. And there was just a handful of us. You know, we started with nothing. And Barack said to us, 'I want this to be a grassroots campaign. I wanna reinvigorate our democracy. First of all I think that’s the only way we can win and secondly I want to rekindle some idealism that together we can get things done in this country,"

Now where do we( in El Paso County) go from here? Well the mission seems obvious, to carry with the reinvigorating our democracy, right here in Colorado Springs!

Unlike any campaign beforehand Obama's left a grass roots organization ready to go its structure and framework to work off of. There were 26 Staging Location Directors who personally managed the county's GOTV Volunteer Field Offices. It was those organizations that recruited, trained and even deployed those thousands of volunteers on the ground. Within those organizations there are experienced canvass team captains, phone bank directors and volunteer coordinators not to mention comfort teams who directed many hundreds of volunteers in grass roots campaign activities. This cannot simply peculate down into the soil and simply disapear. So those of you who remain motivated and committed we can make changes in Colorado Springs for we have a network. But for this to work you must get involved.

First, I have called a general organizational meeting for November 18th at 7:00 PM at the Main Library, (Penrose) in downtown Colorado Springs, (25 N. Cascade) in the Carnegie Reading Room to discuss and attempt to begin formulating a consensus about how to proceed from this point. I have developed a draft agenda which I will include below. (If you think it needs amending please email me.)

Now this is not meant as a competing agenda with John Morris's (the El Paso Democratic County Chair), and his open forum scheduled for the following Saturday, November 22nd at the Hillside Center (10 AM), that said I am not being presumptive.

The local Obama network which emerged here was primarily accomplished from persons outside the El Paso County Democratic Party framework, where many volunteers and supporters were Independents and Republicans, even though the majority of its activists are Democratic. Going back even to the Caucus days, most of the Obama Precinct Captains and supporters were not regular party Democratic members, although a number of us like, Mike Maday, Kathy McQuinllan or myself were.

So there are two big questions we need to address next Tuesday evening.

1. Do we remain an identifiable and separate group outside the local Democratic Party?
2. If yes, under what kind of structure and purpose?
   

From that point I think things will emerge as we forge a vision. If we become a separate group or constituency, than individuals can and should be encouraged to join into the El Paso Democratic Party leadership and basically follow Obama's call to reinvigorate our local democracy with their idealism and willingness to work together in getting new things done. Other members who aren't compeled to join the Party should be encouraged to join other progressive grass roots groups where they too can reinvigorate those organizations. Creating a local Obama constituency can bring about real change even here in Colorado Springs.

Nate Hundt, the Obama Field Director wrote to me after the election:

Bob:

My advice would be to keep the teams in place....

Privately I have been told that the Obama network I received a link from the head of the Group Administrators, Chris Hughes regarding the future of MyBO:

Over the past 21 months, millions of individuals have used My.BarackObama to organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama. The scale and size of this community and its work is unprecedented. Individuals in all 50 states have created more than 35,000 local organizing groups, hosted over 200,000 events, and made millions upon millions of calls to neighbors about this campaign. There can be no question that these local, grassroots organizations played a critical role in Tuesday's victory.

What has made My.BarackObama unique hasn't been the technology itself, but the people who used the online tools to coordinate offline action. My.BarackObama has always been focused on using online tools to make real-world connections between people who are hungry to change our politics in this country.

And the site isn't going anywhere. The online tools in My.BarackObama will live on. Barack Obama supporters will continue to use the tools to collaborate and interact. Our victory on Tuesday night has opened the door to change, but it's up to all of us to seize this opportunity to bring it about.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be a great deal more information about where this community will head. For the moment, let's celebrate this victory and know that the community we've built together is just the beginning.

Privately, I have been told by persons in the campaign that they are looking for the Obama Network to be a political asset for major policy initiatives going forward. They have over 10 million email addresses but more importantly they a person-to-person network that if maintained even as a skeleton of its once final campaign self would allow Obama to go around the media and press and reach directly to his political base when needed.

Draft agenda for Tuesday November 18th for a post election Obama Organizational Meeting.

A) Do we continue to stay organized?

1) Under a separate framework and/or identifiable group(s)?

a) Do we keep the current HD/Team framework as suggested by Nate
b) Do we form a different framework or structure?
c) do we disband?

2) If we stay together do we fold into the El Paso County Dem Party?

a) as a separate constituency(s) or group(s)?
b) or integrated individually not as a group?

B) What would be its purpose and vision?

1) As a group or constituency what purpose will we serve?

a) Locally?
b) Statewide
c) Obama Presidency?

2) As a group or constituency what is our vision

a) Change means what locally?
b) Change means what politically
c) Change means what in the Democratic Party?

C) What are the political opportunities and timing?

1) El Paso County Democratic Party

a) Precinct Co-chair vacancies and inactive posts
b) Party leadership; executive council
c) Committee structure

2) Statewide Democratic Party

a) Committee's
b) Party Executive Council
c) Candidate organizations:

• Salazar reelection 2010
• Ritter reelection 2010
• Kennedy reelection 2010
• Attorney General 2010
  

3) Local Candidates

a) City Council races, 4 spots open in April 2009
b) County Commissioner County and City Volunteer Boards
c) County Clerk, Treasurer, Coroner, Sheriff (2010)
d) HD 18, 2018 plus HD 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, Senate 9 (2010)
e) Congressional Candidate 2010

4) Activism and/or NGO's