TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

Our approach to Statewide GOTV is a Failure

Our GOTV strategies fail our statewide candidates and the party faithful time and time again because the DPG lacks the ability and capacity to command the resources necessary to claw our way back into contention. The problem facing Georgia Democrats has never been whether the voters existed to win statewide. It has been a question of how to get them to the polls. The problem is with our ability to execute the strategy.

The confederated approach which creates loose partnerships with county parties and our usual partners simply is not getting it done.

In the last 12 years, despite a huge increase in the size of the electorate; in spite a huge increase in Hispanic residents; despite our nominee for president being African American…twice. In spite of adding 520,000 net new voters in our 31 firewall counties, the net of all our efforts was closing the gap with the GOP by 662 votes. We are still 300,000 votes down. To the Democratic outsider, both the state and the local party are defined by their closed off structures. And those structures, whether by archaic design or benign neglect are not presently capable of changing outcomes.

Obviously there are other factors in play. The problem is that lacking any other institutional mechanism that could be leveraged, the DPG and by extension our candidates have no option but to rely on a largely autonomous County Party system. We need to fix the problem. Unfortunately, we have elections every two years and we never seem to get to it.

It’s Not about Money

Money will not solve the challenges that we face. To be clear, at the moment it is a huge challenge, and while it is easy and probably appropriate and maybe even therapeutic to point fingers, it is not the real issue. Money will not solve a single one of our operational issues unless we have the will to change what we have been doing since 2002.

It’s not about Atlanta vs. The rest of the State

The supposition that we are failing because the DPG is too Atlanta-centric also needs to be fact-checked. Those of us who live in Atlanta know better. While it is true that the State Committee is dominated by “Atlantans,” that shouldn’t be confused with an institutional bias.

The DPG exerts no more influence on either the political apparatus or the political landscape in Fulton than it does in Chatham, and the institutional County Parties in the metro area exert no influence on the DPG whatsoever.

The truth of it is that the DPG’s political footprint doesn’t really extend beyond the Downtown Connector: from the Atlanta Waterworks to the Gold Dome. The DPG has no more institutional presence in Gwinnett or DeKalb than it does in Dougherty or Muscogee. And that’s the problem. What State Committee members and politicos from outside the Perimeter don’t see is that in its present condition the DPG’s geo-political orientation; influence and bias are virtually non-existent to begin with. The DPG itself is no stronger in Clayton County than it is in Clarke or Lowndes.

Does anybody really think that relocating party headquarters to Macon is THE silver bullet that will restore power, prestige and presence to the DPG?

It’s not about who is Chair

We have just concluded the tenure of a chair that was, to put it mildly, ineffective on many fronts. The natural course of organizational dysfunction is to blame the person at the top. But the truth of it is, the office of DPG chair is a weak position in charge of a weak and small organization. While the Chair certainly can control the organization by charisma and political machination, they still lack the ability to truly transform the Party.

We are a big state; the DPG is a paper thin organization with little or no apparatus for the Chair to maintain or let alone strengthen and wield either for his own agenda or on behalf of our nominees or those who call themselves Democrats. The reality is the Chair’s authority over statewide politics or statewide GOTV efforts is truly meager.

“Back in the day” maybe that was ok, when there was not a need for apparatus and we held the governorship without any effort at all. But those days are likely gone forever. And largely due to benign neglect, the position of Chair has atrophied to little more than Chief Spokesman and Chief Fundraiser rather than head of a substantive and powerful organization.

The Chair has been dealt a bad hand for years and then gets the blame for bluffing or folding.

We need a reality check. We need to stop the incessant blame game that has dominated the DPG since 2002. Any sober assessment of vote totals, or money, or organizational bias ought to bring us back to one underlying issue: The DPG lacks the visibility, vitality and vigor to lead the electorate a different political reality.

The core problem we face as a party is really one of branding and physical presence where it counts come Election Day. We are an invisible party to virtually all of the electorate.

A Critical Moment

For the last 12 years Georgia Democrats have been told repeatedly that our fortunes are about to be restored; that Georgia voters will soon return to their senses; that with a few strategic tweaks to what we have done in the past, a solid ticket and a promised demographic shift that we will be back in the game. It has not worked out yet and there is nothing that the DPG is doing today to insure that it will work out in 2014 or 2016. 

It is time to admit that we are in the political wilderness and that unless we make some significant changes we will be there for another 10 years. I just happen to  think an opportunity exists to change our trajectory sooner rather than later.