Housekeeping

Trying to clear up some end-of-the-year mental clutter, and I find I have an unwritten post dating back to the autumn of 2004 that needs to be swept out. So here goes.

The further away from the 2004 election I get, the more furious I am at the Democratic Party. I could never, ever be a Republican. I hate everything that party stands for, and a lot of the people in it. I hate its "daddy" structure. But the one thing I envy, and that Republicans do very well, is put aside everything else for the good of a common goal. Granted, their goal is political power and the amassing of personal wealth - not so admirable - but they pull together to get there.

Now imagine just for an instant that the democrats could unite in that republican manner behind, say, a candidate. What would that unity look like? Would you have prominent democrats booked on every talking head show on every channel every night to fight fiercely and cogently back against every single Rovian lie and smear that made its way onto the air? Would you see those prominent democrats writing letters to the editor to correct misperceptions in print? Would prominent democrats recruit local democrats to help rally the people in their own states behind the democratic candidate?

Would a central person issue daily reminders to help focus everyone's attention on the subject of the day/week/month, so the country got the sense that the democratic party had its own agenda and that they were working together to achieve the goals they were all speaking of?

Imagine a world in which those things might happen. And then remember what did - and did not - happen in 2004. Remember how many nights republican spin went uncontested - or was weakly batted at. Remember (and I assure you, I have not forgotten a single instance of this behavior) how many times a jovial democrat would go on the air and exchange witticisms about his/her own candidate's errors, real or fabricated.

It's oh, so easy to sit back and nitpick every single thing that didn't go perfectly in a campaign. No one is perfect. And no campaign is, either. But imagine how much closer to perfect the 2004 campaign would have been with an organized democratic party pulling together in the same direction. A candidate is only one person and can only appear in one place at a time. The other places are supposedly why we have a party structure at all.