Craig Seeman's Reply

Craig Seeman

Important stuff there but it oversimplifies the role of "Party
Leadership" at various levels and the Party Committees the dole out
the bucks. It seems to make what I consider a wrong assumption that
one can "take over" or run as a Democrat and change the system since
"leadership" is so weak.

BTW my background: Before redefining myself as a Green Party member
which began for me in late 1993 and culminated by late 1994, I was a
member of a Democratic club, attempted to run as a Democratic
Presidential Delegate and attempted to run for Democratic State
Committeeman.

Party Leadership is VERY POWERFUL as are the committee that do the
funding. It is the ROOT of the party patronage (both reward and
punishment) system. Leadership though is on many levels and some of
those conflict. There's National Legislative Leaders (Reid, Peolosi)
as well as state and local leaders. Some times those leaders work in
concert and often times they have conflicting goals (paying donor/
client bases for example). The DNC is one of the major national party
fundraising committees (MONEY, not to be confused with policy or
platform which the MONEY actually control as far as implementation
goes legislatively).

I don't want this to be an overly long email so I'm not going to
refute all the points below but there's good reason why you can not
"take over" the Democratic Party nor can you be a "progressive" and
have any ability to implement those changes (even if one might
actually WIN such an election). In short, the Democratic Party system
is designed (by the MONEY that controls it at all levels) to prevent
those who challenge leadership for power or oppose that leadership on
principle from every having any voice.

Yes the Democratic party ain't democratic but the Leadership got there
because of the money and while there can be significant conflict
amongst Federal, State, Local Leaders they, in concert, will block
anything outside of that narrow spectrum.

You can not change the system through the Democratic Party. You can
not take over the party leadership. If there is divisiveness amongst
the leaders it's not due to "weakness" or disorganization but through
a clash of the corporate money titans that back the various leaders.

Craig Seeman