It wasn't just Alaska, it was nationwide...the Democrats were so damn focused on winning Presidential elections that they let the state parties shrivel up. For years, there were many areas around this country were there was no functional Democratic party and this led us into a lot of the problems we face now.
In 2004 my son was working in Chicago for a PR firm. He called the number for the local Democratic Party several times and left messages about who he was and what his skills were, saying that he would like to volunteer those skills to help the Dems in the 2004 races.
He never heard back from them. Then, just as an experiment, he made
one call to the Republican headquarters. They called him back almost immediately and set up a lunch meeting with him. The guy he had lunch with gave him a business card and said that with his skills, the party would undoubtedly be able to find him a
paid position if he wanted one.
The Republican Party had the money and the organization, and it was looking to recruit very smart, talented people with the skills needed to win elections. The Democratic Party had a phone number and voice mail, with no manpower to follow up on calls, so that they couldn't even bring in someone who wanted to offer his considerable marketing skills
for free.
Howard Dean's 50-state strategy is quite simply the best thing that has happened to the party in years.
Another of your points is particularly important, because it operates at the individual level as well as the party level:
. . . the Democrats were so damn focused on winning Presidential elections
The drive to win the presidency is to a large degree an ego trip. If people like Clinton, Edwards, and Obama would take more seriously their work
as senators rather than just seeing it as a stepping stone to the real prize, then they could go far toward reestablishing the Congress as a co-equal branch of government. But nowadays any powerful politician in congress, especially those in the Senate, is always thinking about jumping into the presidential race rather than taking care of his or her real job. When Ted Kennedy finally accepted the fact that he was never going to be president, he turned his attention to his senatorial work and became one of
the most powerful and influential political figures of his generation.
Hillary is a smart and powerful political figure with a constituency that backs her up. She could do so much in the Senate—if she were not so concerned about not offending those she needs to back her or at least not to undermine her in her run for the White House.
John Edwards, who will be my choice if Gore and Clark really don’t get into the race this fall, spent
just one term in the Senate before running for president and then accepting the vice-presidential slot on Kerry’s ticket. Imagine his populist appeal and political skill operating in the Senate. He could do a lot of good there.
I really would love to see us “take back Congress,” not just in the sense of winning really strong majorities in both houses, but in the sense of having really fine candidates choosing careers in the House or Senate in order to make those bodies function as they are supposed to, as co-equal with the presidency and the judiciary.