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they are now. True, the party bosses made a lot of the key decisions in their "smoke-filled rooms," but who were the party bosses? They were often people with close, deep connections to their constituencies. They knew their people well; they knew their needs and their opinions; they were very involved in the nitty gritty of serving those communities, in peoples' day to day lives. And they were well aware of the impact on their communities of who the national leaders were. Compare that to the huge distance between the party leaders and the people that developed during the Reagan through Clinton period. We LOST that intimate connection. We LOST that door-to-door activism of party leaders and the many volunteers they inspired and roused. I remember what that was like. That grass roots organization will still going in California when I was a teenager. I was RECRUITED to do door-to-door, through the California Democratic Council, a grass roots organization that had "party bosses" in every precinct. The CDC was the left wing of the Democratic Party--a very powerful, on-the-ground organization, comparable to labor unions back east.
I think our citizens today--until the Obama campaign--have been very alienated from politics, and have found the corporate-TV conventions very BORING. Yeah, we have instant news, but of what? Yet more millionaires deciding our fate--and clouds of political bullshit from "talking heads" that has nothing to do with our lives. Back in the days when it took a week to get the news, when the news came, it REALLY WAS NEWS, and it sparked celebrations and active participation. There was also party discipline in the way that, no matter who got the nomination--whether it was someone you supported or not--the on-the-ground organization got to work on mobilizing the voters in support of party PRINCIPLES (labor rights, civil rights, regulation of big business, help for the "little guy" against the moneyed powers, etc.). We've also lost many of our common principles, as corporate-controlled party leaders more and more took over the party. NAFTA was perhaps the final breach between ordinary Democrats and the corporate-controlled leadership. The Democratic Party stopped being the "party of the people" when Clinton broke his campaign promise to include labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. Our party leaders no longer represented the working class. But that breach had a history--involving the disconnection of the party leadership from the people, over several decades.
Yeah, I'm saying there was more connection back in the day of "party bosses" and slow communication. They got us the leader we needed--FDR--and kept him in office for four terms! And what has the primary system produced for us? The primary system was supposed to democratize the process. Has it? I think we had better candidates when the "party bosses" chose them. The primaries allow the rightwing corporate media monopolies, and, as of 2002-2004, corporate-controlled "trade secret" voting machines, to determine who our candidates are, and then to determine who wins in the GEs. It's quite interesting what happened with the insurgent Obama campaign, early on. Where Obama first got his edge was in the caucuses--which are not counted by Diebold & brethren. His momentum then and since has come from the people--the grass roots, the citizens hungry to participate, and passionate to produce a change in the political system. The grass roots sans "party bosses." It's really quite interesting (not to mention heartening) that our corporate bosses were unable to dictate who our nominee will be.
I have not seen anything like the Obama supporters and activists in this country in more than forty years. And they've done it without "party bosses", and, indeed, against the wishes of the corporate bosses who took over (to our detriment) from the "party bosses." I don't know what will happen--at the convention or afterward. I tend to think that Obama will wipe the sidewalk with McCain, whether or not Clinton "takes it to the convention." If she does, one thing is certain--it won't be boring!
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