The Trouble with Democrats

Here's a case study which may offer some insights to how the Republican party--a party which exists to protect a small elite-- can win elections against a Democratic party which fights for the interests of the 99%.

Here's a case which may illuminate how the small, dedicated group can out maneuver the larger, more unwieldy and less focused group.

Every day I eat lunch with a half dozen  thirty something women at work--women with seven year old children, women who do not watch the evening news, who do not read a newspaper, who listen to music, not news on their car radios, women who refuse to listen to National Public Radio, because it is boring and it carries too many stories about places like Somalia and Syria and Afghanistan which are places these women will never go and do not care about. They care about day care and sales at Kohl's.

But every day at lunch, as they are eating their microwaved meals, and chatting about which teachers they hope their kids will get at various elementary schools in Dover or Newmarket, they also flip open their i phones or i pads and they go on youtube  for the hoot of the day, some posting to which someone sent them a link, because it was funny.

So how to reach these voters? (And they do vote.)

It turns out political scientists are well aware of this group and they have names for these people: The unengaged, the apathetic, the uninterested masses, who get their opinions from talk radio or political ads, which they don't even realize are ads, which they think of as news.
It's fine to do library clean ups and back yard barbecues for the hoi polloi in Hampton, but you won't reach this crowd.
So how do you reach them?
I proposed creating a puppet show, like Sesame Street, with puppets giving voice to the looney things Rush Limbaugh, Frank Guinta and the whole whacko Tea Party crowd say and then have some puppets react in horror to "Abortion causes Breast Cancer," and "Birth control pills cause Prostate Cancer," and "I hope my children never even learn what Social Security ever was, that it ever existed."
But, having written the scripts for these shows, I needed help filming them, putting them on line. I can write scripts, which really write themselves, or actually, are written by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck et al.
But how to get them filmed and put on line?
I started with the local Democrats in Hampton, who were polite, but uncomprehending. They knew about barbecues, but youtube was beyond them. 
They sent me to the Portsmouth Democrats, who referred me to a few seacoast Democrats. One of them played guitar and sang songs at political rallies  but he was "too busy with all I have to do," and he was not of a mind to collaborate. 
Eventually, I got sent to a media group of local talent, actors, film makers, video technicians.  But the actors/film makers  were, mostly,  politically indifferent.  

It was a case, as Dylan would say, of "It was dying and hardly yet been born."

The point is, there was no follow up. There was nobody in the local Democratic Party machine to connect "creative talent" to dedicated, politically motivated citizens and so voice was never given to this project.
Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe it would not have had much effect. But we will never know.

Can you imagine, if I had been a Republican with an idea like this...how quickly I would have been connected to people who would have put this thing into action? 

I have to believe we would have been on youtube months ago, and the project may have been escalated into an ad campaign funded by the Koch brothers.
 I would have heard from the National Party people, once the pilot episodes were on line.
But in the case of the Democratic party, there were people who just murmured, "Oh, that sounds cool," or "That sounds like fun," and they went back to their guitars, their hikes on Mount Major, their local theater productions. 
There was no real passion, no real drive, no follow up and none of the things Mitt Romney talks about as characteristic of the qualities which launch ideas into businesses.
Maybe that's why the Republicans beat the Democrats so consistently: They really are more capable--they have drive where Democrats have dreams; they have organization and connectedness, where Democrats have book clubs and walks on the beach with friends; Republicans know how to take an idea and give it form and punch. Democrats are all talk, no action.