What is your opinion of your state's Democratic Leadership?

This "leadership" should include the Chairman of the state Democratic Party and their top lieutenants. You may also include top state elected leaders in this evaluation. This question refers specifically to their performance in the recent election cycle. Please take into consideration the following criteria:

*local/national election results
*fair, inclusive and progressive candidate endorsments
*financial and electoral support for Democratic candidates
*coordination of volunteers and grassroot organizations
*ability to effectively and publicly communicate the negative
impact of Bush/Cheney administration policies on your state
*coordination of voter registration drives and GOTV efforts.

the county leadership here worse. Our only hope is party elections in march. I wrote IDP a scathing email and told them they better get their act together SOON!!!I told them I didn't want some plastic response. I want a real letter. That was November 3rd. Still waiting. Chicken shits

He won and Kerry didn't. Go figure.

is leaving to run for County Executive. He's a great guy. I hope the new leadership is good. There is an ideological war going on to find his replacement.

We just won back the entire general assembly for the first time since 1962!

is a great party chair. Probably the best in the country.

That was the only bright spot in the national election.

Speaker Madigan and Governor Blagojevich have done a good job and getting and maintaining power in the state but they don't do a thing with it.

Democrats control the Governor's office and the Legislature for the first time in over 2 decades but we haven't seen anything resembling a progressive agenda become law. No major health care reform, no campaign finance reform, nothing big for unions or the environment, and they can't even pass a bill to secure basic civil rights for gays and lesbians. Pretty pathetic.

The plus side is that we have two of the best US Senators ever elected. It's the state level Dems that are lousy.

That's 90% of the battle right there. No deregulating polluters, no creationism in the schools, no machine guns on the streets, etc. Most voters don't want radical change from their politicians; they want good government. We deliver on the ends, even though the means aren't always clean.

Sucks in Arizona!

I'm devoting my energies to individual candidates and DfA in the future.

Can't blame Diebold - we still have lever machine. Just them. Completely AWOL at election time.

But in the state senate and house we are very good. We made gains in both chambers earlier this month. Not to mention I believed we gained an extra US Representative.

There was a large progressive movement - ABB - credit them.
In NYC, I wouldn't have known it was election day - no flyers, no nothing. At my polling place, a young black guy was shilling for a GOP state senator (carefully avoiding to mention his party).
Past elections, I saw the Working families party giving leaflets, getting people to vote. NEVER THE DEMS. NEVER.

PRG = Perpetual Republican Governors ...

the state democrat party does not seem to even exist ... there is virtually no contact between the party and registered democrats ... voter loyalty is taken for granted ... it's a really sorry state of affairs ...

democrats in Massachusetts could be far more effective ...

It's sickening, and our state chairman is gearing up for a Senate run.

:puke:

Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are great, but Diane Feinstein needs to retire and go back to California.

They were pretty good with GOTV, but failed miserably at the rest.

Unless things change, I'm working for DfA and locals on my own in the future.

Edit: I'm a proud yellow dog, too, and intend to stay that way, but I'm disgusted with party leadership on the state and national level.

But she's still better than GOP. :hi:

:grr:

There are no Democrats who can win in a statewide election. Dems can still win on the local level in the lower part of the state and in some areas in the central part. Upstate SC is all repug country and that's where most of the population is located.

Will reserve judgement until I see how they handle their recent change in fortune. However, they definitely played it smart in the campaign and lead-up to it. So, with only that to go on, I would currently say they have their eye on the ball.

Montana dems stayed rather focussed and kicked the pants off the republicans this cycle.

I only wish that they had spent more time and money trying to help Tracy Velasquez, but hey, the governor, the state senate, almost all state offices, and a 1 seat minority in the house aint bad...

Not to mention that Conrad Burns (IF he runs again) will probably be sent packing in 06...

If they prevent a "Florida" from happening here, it will raise my opinion a few notches, but they bungled the caucuses miserably last February.

Funky- You know how bad our state is. There is ZERO democratic leadership here. Everything we have been able to accomplish has been through work at the grassroots level. For a long time I thought it was because I was out of the "loop"....then I figured out THERE IS NO loop.

Example 1: The Iberia Parish Democrats

The party chairman is the money guy in our parish. He has a ton of it. It gets him into the national convention, it gets him in to see Kathleen, it makes him friends with the Reggies (so he can rub elbows with Ted Kennedy)...but what has he done for the party in Iberia parish? Zero...Zip....Nada. The Vice-Chairman has been in jail for the past 5 years, and the Sec-Treasurer seat has been vacant for 6 years. There are supposed to be 14 people that make up the committee, one from each district in the parish. Know how many seats are filled? Zero. Know when their last meeting was? 6 years ago. This is our leadership.

How do you elect GOP-ers in a DEM city/state?

We have some stars in the senate and congress, like Corzine, Lautenberg, Holt, Pallone and others who get it done. The state party leadership itself, on the other hand, is useless.

MoveOn.org and JohnKerry.com did way more to organize this state than the state party leadership did. Anything good that happened here, the volunteers did ourselves.

For two years I offered to volunteer to assist a congressional candidate in my district. They didn't even name one (and a weak one at that) until May and then gave her no support. The only good new face they came up with for congress was Steve Brozak up in the 7th (who lost but hopefully will be back).

This state should have been a Kerry landslide and they let the Reps make it interesting. Bush and Cheney were in and out of the state all election season, getting extra news coverage to Pennsylvania (Central & South Jersey are close to Philly) and claiming credit for 9/11. State Dems had no response to any of it. The Republican state organizations are about the overall party, while the Dems are just about cronyism, corruption and staying in office.

... at the Repubs who COULD have been in the top state offices ...

Worked hard to elect a dem governor a few years ago but then let many republicans in congress run unopposed in 2002 but they had many people in 2004, but no successes unfortunely, now I hope they run someone against Allen in 2006 in the senate.

F

Art Torres could use a long vacation with his prison guard friends.

Will someone challenge him for the leadership in April? How about Steve Rhode or Mike Farrel or someone from the ACLU?

They've manged to capture AND hold all 3 branches of state government, and done a good job, even in a BAD fiscal crisis.

he is kicking our Repub governors butt all over the city! Too bad we chose so many repubs to represent us at a national level!

I'm sorry to have to say that, but it is the undeniable truth. Though we've had great individual Democrats -- Brendan Byrne, Bill Bradley, Frank Lautenberg, Jon Corzine -- the party leadership might as well rename itself "The Sopranos". They are responsible for giving us Torricelli and McGreevey, not to mention a whole host of other shady characters, molded from good old-fashioned machine politics.