How the Dems Bring On Defeat: Or Why the Dems Deserve to Lose

This morning Mad Dog found his way to Manchester, but that was the easy part. 
He was headed to a caucus, which is the first step toward selecting delegates to this summer's national Democratic convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the meeting was held in a small theater/pub called Chunky's Cinema, not to be confused with Chucky Cheese, where Mad Dog found himself wandering around, asking if anyone knew about the Democratic party meeting, only to be met with blank stares.

Eventually, by stopping and asking enough locals, "Oh, you mean Chunky's!" Mad Dog staggered into the theater.

He was there to vote for Erica DeVries, a Hampton Democrat, who has been talking up Amy Klobuchar for months, and who would be an Amy delegate to the convention, God willing, and if the creeks don't rise.

Ms. DeVries is disciplined, understated, tolerant of the grumpy old men who frequent the Hampton Dems meetings and she is persistent. She says just enough and with enough intellectual sparkle to motivate Mad Dog to drive 40 miles to find Chunky Cinema aka Chunky Cheese.

The meeting began with the clerk reading off the official Democrat Party statement of rules and procedures for the voting. About sixteen candidates were vying for eight spots, but then came the crunch, caucus voters were allowed to vote for only four males and then for four females. Any caucus voter with the temerity to vote for five men or for five women and three of the other gender would see his or her ballot disqualified, destroyed, burned and fed to the iguana lizard Chunky keeps in the lobby next to the popcorn.

Now caucus rhymes with "raucous" but the folks in this room were anything but; in fact, they sat there silently nodding ascent to the rules as laid out.

Mad Dog, of course, felt his blood boil and at the moment when the clerk asked if there were any questions, he leaped to his feet, waving his arms madly. 
This is the question Mad Dog wanted to ask, that question you formulate in the car, driving home, the thing you should have said instead of the incoherent rant which explodes from your mouth like a horrid belch:

Madame secretary, clerk, I rise to ask this question as a Democrat who has been proud to be part of this party because of what it has stood for since at least the 1960's. Martin Luther King said he yearned for the day his three little daughters would be judged by the content of their characters rather than by the color of their skin. Today, I imagine he would hear what we've just heard in this room and ask, "Why is a vote disqualified because we have judged someone by his or her gender, rather than by the content of their character?

That is not what issued forth from Mad Dog's mouth, which was closer to:
By whose authority are we told that we should hold against a candidate a characteristic which he or she cannot change? Why is gender a qualification or a disqualification?

Silence ensued, as the clerk shuffled through her papers at length and finally said she could not find an answer to Mad Dog's questions in the papers she had given which set for the official Democratic Party gospel.  This provoked Mad Dog even more and he roared, "Well, maybe someone else in this room can explain this outrage!"

"Well, we want our delegates to look like our people," the clerk hazarded.

Mad Dog, with a mighty exertion of uncharacteristic self control did not shout, but mumbled to Pat Bushwick, a New Hampshire House of Representatives delegate seated next to him, "Well, if we wanted that we'd restrict our delegates to old white men, and may a few old women."

This idea of an individual being nothing more than a representative of some group is the Achilles heel of Democrats.  As speeches by the candidates for delegate proceeded, Mad Dog scratched off his list anyone who said, "Oh, I'm a [insert race, country of origin, profession, son of] so, for me, this is personal."

God almighty! Must Democrats always describe themselves as a member of some (preferably disadvantaged or formerly reviled) group?  

Why not simply say: Look, it doesn't matter who my parents were, or what trials I've been through, or how much chemotherapy I've received or whether I'm tall or short or male or female or blue eyed or brown eyed. What matters is my ideas. And my big idea is that Trump is that demon in the soul of America. He calls out the rage, the hate and the fear in ourselves. Amy Klobuchar calls out our better angels. She's not calling for a revolution and that's good because most people aren't looking for a revolution; they'll be simply satisfied with pushing the reset button and getting rid of Trump.

Which, is pretty much what Erica said, at least the last two sentences.

And that's all Democrats need to do. We don't need to "look" like America. What does America look like anyway? Who has the presumption to try to arrange on stage "representative" Americans. 

Marketing is fine for election ads, but when we talk to each other, we need to hear ideas and whether these come from the mouths of some old white male gomer or from some young Black female, it should not and does not matter.

We are not Hollywood producers, picking out types from the photo arrays in the casting department's books. We are looking for something you cannot see on TV or on Twitter. We are looking for actual ideas.

This is why Adam Schiff is so effective. He is an ordinary looking fellow.  He is not a female person of color and he does not tell you to agree with him because he's from a background like yours.  He simply proposes ideas and he has faith that you are smart enough to respond to the idea, not the advertising. 

Mr. Schiff and Ms. DeVries have not spoken of some ideas which have troubled Mad Dog lately, but they are the sorts who would be receptive to talking about them.
For example: What is a country, anyway?  Is it the lands, the borders, the laws, the people? 
Another question: When the founding fathers built the experimental vehicle for the government of this country did they have democracy in mind? That is, did they want "the people" to control the government and the economy or did they want only the right sort of people to rule?

To Mad Dog at least, it appears the founding fathers were very fearful of the people, the rabble, mob rule by passions rather than aristocrats with large plantations or farms.

Obadiah Youngblood, study for "North Hampton Salt Marshes"

To this end, they built the Electoral College. And they made sure each parcel of land would count as much as how many people might live there. So empty Wyoming has two Senators, the same number as populous New York or California.

By 2040 70% of Americans will live in the biggest 15 states. The other 30% will be spread out over the other 35 states. That means that 70% of the PEOPLE will be represented by 30 Senators, while the 30% left in those empty states will have 70 Senators voting for their interests in the US Senate.
Tumble weed and prairie get more votes than human beings in Philadelphia.
And, of course, since the Senate controls the Supreme Court, the Court is controlled by those empty spacers.

Obadiah Youngblood, Water Street Bridge, Exeter

This means that going forward the election of minority Presidents, who lose the popular vote will not be the exception, but the rule.

Plaice Cove, Hampton

Those are ideas to think about. And it shouldn't matter whether the representative you choose to represent you is male or female, Black or White, tall or short, blue eyed or brown eyed, gay or straight, first generation or the descendant of Mayflower pilgrims.

So when the Democratic Party mandates an affirmative action rule for selection of the delegates to its national convention it abrogates its basic principles. In the case of college admissions, one might argue we are righting a system which manifestly resulted in the exclusion of colored folk from college, but Mad Dog's memory of Democratic national conventions is there were plenty of women and colored folk on screen.  

Ezra Klein's blog about identity politics begins to shimmer in Mad Dog's mind's eye: We may be up against a Trump base which is all about white, native, Christian identity, but the way to defeat this is not to embrace an identity test of our own, but to open our arms to people whom we judge by the content of their characters, period.

It's the ideas which count, not the optics.