Kansas City - Morning
(Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)
As I mentioned in my last post, we’re here in Kansas City / Overland Park, KS for the Fall meeting of the Association of State Democratic Chairs (ASDC). This meeting is really a one-day only meeting, going from early this morning until tonight.
So far, it has been spectacular. I always enjoy ASDC meetings more than the DNC meetings because the ASDC meetings seem to be a lot more focused on the nuts and bolts of winning elections and local party organization. Today has been no different.
My day began an hour earlier than Pat’s and Sherry’s, as the various state vice chairs all met in an informal session to talk about what each of us do and the challenges each of us face. What was evident was that the position of vice chair differs across the nation, and how each of us handle our roles as vice chairs is so incredibly diverse. Some focus on fundraising, others focus on organizing within constituency groups. I indicated that my focus was on finding needs and niches, such as helping jump-start the convention bid, or helping plan for the state assembly and training caucus-goers, and meeting those needs (in addition to the work I do communicating with activists through such venues as DemNotes).
The best line of the morning? From Idaho’s wonderful Vice Chair, Jeannie Buell: “We’re really loving politics right now in Idaho!”
The morning was all about the future of our Party. After some mundane business, including some relatively minor changes to the ASDC bylaws, we heard from David Boundy, who is the Political Director for the DNC. Essentially, his presentation boiled down to the mission statement for the 50-State Strategy: Organize Everywhere, Count Everything, and Question Assumptions.
He pointed out that when you consider all of our key races — Presidential battleground states, Senate races, House races, and close legislative chambers, we already have “targets” in 46 states — which makes the 50-state strategy so critical.
Some of what David discussed has to do with the future organizing plans for the DNC, so I don’t want to go into too much detail on a public forum like this, but I will say this: everything you know about winning elections from a national level is going to change in the next year. The DNC is going through a pretty amazing transformation, and you’ll see that transformation in the next 6-8 months. The way people get their information is changing dramatically, and the Party is going to change dramatically to meet the challenges of those changes.
The other major speaker of the morning was Simon Rosenberg, who is the President of the New Democrat Network (www.ndn.org). He gave a simply stunning presentation that pinpointed the changing political and media landscapes of this decade, and how we need to change to meet those changes. He spent a lot of time discussing how the “old media” were simply so much less relevant, and how we needed to find new avenues to reach our voters in 2008 and beyond.
He also talked about the changing electorate in America. Our population is not only becoming more southern and western; it is not only becoming more suburban and exurban — it is becoming more Hispanic. This is where one of our biggest opportunities exist. By focusing so much time and effort on the immigration issue, the GOP in 2006 completely unraveled any inroads they had made with Hispanic voters, who came back to the Democratic Party in droves. By running ads that made Hispanic immigrants out to be the equivalent of terrorists, the Republicans have handed us a huge favor. By completely refusing to participate in a Presidential debate on Univision (the Democratic version — in Spanish — was the highest-rated show in the United State for that week), the Republicans have ceded Hispanic voters to Democrats.
And by doing so, they may have also ceded Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and — yes — Colorado. If that’s the case, that’s enough electoral votes to win the Presidency (when added to our base electoral votes) alone. Tom Tancredo must simply be shaking right now.
Finally, we had lunch with another amazing speaker — Kansas Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson. Lt. Gov. Parkinson, until just recently, was a Republican. Not only was he a Republican, but he was actually the Chair of the Kansas Republican Party. But the extreme right wing of his Party high-jacked this moderate’s Republican Party in Kansas, and he became a Democrat. Not just any Democrat, but Lt. Gov. Parkinson is a PROUD Democrat today.
He represents a huge shift in Kansas politics. For the 2006 cycle, Kansas saw 10 high-level defections of moderate Republicans — Republicans who believe in things like education, fiscal responsibility, reproductive choice, and a fair workplace for workers — to the Democratic Party. Already, two more principled leaders in Kansas who have seen their party leave them have become Democrats for the 2008 cycle. With only a 28% Democratic registration, Kansans are electing Democrats across the state to lead them, and turning out the right-wingers who have embarrassed the state (remember the Kansas state senator who said that things started going downhill in this country when women got the vote, and then promptly ran for Secretary of State? And she was a woman herself?).
I’m headed down now for the afternoon sessions on the coordinated campaign and plans for the National Convention. I’ll try to write more later.