Proposition: the leadership of the Democratic Party is happy the way things are

[staggerleem]

10. As far as the party leadership goes, I can't argue.

I recall about 6 months ago, when Harry Reed was talking a whole bunch of trash about the Koch Brothers ... until someone asked him if he could differentiate between their influence and Sheldon Adelson's. "Now wait a minute - Shelly is a fine upstanding citizen, not at ALL like those guys!" What went unmentioned (of course!) was Adelson's donations to Reed's campaign. But after that, Harry handed off the Koch-bashing duties to the Gentleman from Vermont.

I will point out, however, that among the rank and file, the Progressive Caucus is the largest subset of the Democratic Caucus. We still have people like Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in Washington - we just need to put MORE of them in there.

You want to gain some control over the party? Remember this - ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL! Get involved with your county's Democratic Party, see if you can become a precinct captain, and get yourself some input as to whose names appear on your local ballots.

Does your state have a Working Families Party? We do here in NY, but, for the most part, the same names appear in both the Democratic and Working Families rows. So, yes, I voted for Democratic candidates last week, but NOT on the Democratic ticket. There was one local position where WFP had no candidate listed, so I voted for the Democrat on the Green Party ticket in that race. Remember that whatever public funding is available to the parties is divvied up by that party's percentage of the popular vote in the last election. So that's how you can help "third" parties to grow (short of donations, that is).