The best way to turn the Congress back toward Blue is to, for once, pay attention to redistricting.. [View all]

[WCGreen]

Last edited Thu Feb 9, 2012, 09:40 PM - Edit history (1)

Too often, the national party sucks energy, volunteers and money out of the state and local party's. The volunteers want to play in the big leagues and look at local and state elections as an afterthought.

You want to know why the GOP took the House in 1994?

Simple, the GOP captured more statehouses starting in 1990 and culminated in 1992 when they took control of drawing the districts in states such as Ohio.

The same thing happened in 2008.

By localizing the message, by bringing it down to the visceral level, Republicans have captured statehouse after statehouse and so they redrew districts.

Again!

It’s expensive and it takes time and effort from the national level to address the situation at the state and local level.

Take this Birth Control issue. Didn’t they think it would cause a problem?

And it really isn’t a problem at the national level. It is at the local level.

And it play right into the GOP's Heavy Handed narative about the democrats being out of touch.

I can guarantee you it is probably being discussed at those same kitchen tables that Ronald Reagan talked about back in 1980 that personalized the national budget and took it right to the people.

That took time and effort at the local level. And right there to exploit it were church groups, Rotary Clubs who were ready willing and able to fight the Democrats and paint them as out of touch and heavy handed at the national level.

The Democrats had someone who was willing to localize every election with Howard Dean and he was seen as a threat to the national political operatus and the special interests the surround and define the party in DC.

I’ve seen it firsthand as I served as the Treasurer for Cuyahoga County for eight years, from 1994 to 2002. The state was only concerned with the Governor because that was where the Jobs were.

They couldn’t raise the money that the GOP could and so they were relegated to being a one trick campaign that left every other democrat on their own.

And Howard Dean got it.

Then Howard Dean got it.