Don't Primary Obama; Build Around Him

We all know that republican politicians fear their base while Democratic ones despise theirs. Why?

Because the republican base put those politicians in office, and can take them out of office. The Democratic base is disorganized and has no power. It has not built the foundational structure that nurtures and supports candidates who pay the base back with loyalty.

If Barack Obama as president accomplishes nothing more over the next two years than drive the racists even more insane and the republican party even further off the cliff just by being that ni**er in the White House, that will be enough for me to re-elect him.

I'm all for primarying every Blue Dog DINO left in Congress and statehouses, but the presidency is different. If you don't understand that, go back and read the coverage of the 2000 election until you do.

It's destructive, it's divisive and it's not necessary.

Smirky/Darth's appointment was the culmination of 36 years of slow, patient, painstaking work on the part of grass-roots republicans to build from scratch a political party after Goldwater's 1964 defeat destroyed the old one. They started at the beginning, digging a foundation among local republicans: one voter, one neighborhood, one precinct at a time.

The result was a perfect pyramid, with the gold ring of the presidency sitting solidly on a broad, strong, immovable foundation of activists and elected officials at the county, state and congressional levels.

Smirky/Darth got away with literal murder because they were supported by that stable foundation.

Barack Obama got elected in a landslide that floated far above the landscape, a president with no visible means of support. The huge and diverse majority that overwhelmed polling stations to vote for him in 2008 had no connection to the Democratic Party, no involvement in their state, county or precinct party organizations.

So when President Obama ran into the obstructionist rethuglicans of the Senate, he had no base on which to stand. Six million email addresses get you nowhere if those addressees have no local connection to the party, no organized structure to work within.

That's what we have to build. And we have to build it from below ground level, with a broad, deep foundation that will hold the tallest and heaviest of structures: the presidency.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....