Dear Joe:
I have been a regular reader on your site for the past few months, and I must say there is far more insight into what is happening in our country on your site than in all the political language in our electoral system. And trust me, I know what I am talking about. I work as a political consultant.
There are very many reasons why your insights would not be welcome in the context of a traditional campaign setting.
1. The kind of grassroots organizing you advocate involves spending money that would need to be taken away from TV buys and mail. Which (depending on the ethics of the individual) means a loss of commission fees (15% in TV buys) and kick-backs from printers on the mail.
2. The role of consultants (even if it is not the intention of the individual consultant) is to make the candidate work within the context of the present political system by positioning the candidate on most important matters as marketable to the present established order as possible. We are the Praetorian guards of the system, regardless of our individual intentions or purposes. It is not a surprise that the rise of the consulting class is matched exactly with the collapse of general political participation on all levels. For the most part there are no regular political clubs or machines through which regular folks can enter politics. And I can tell you countless stories about the general contempt that most of the political class has for average people, especially the types of folks who would want to join something like a Democratic club.
3. On this point I have gleaned much insight from your writings: The average person involved in politics on the Democratic/liberal/progressive side (especially higher on the food chain) has much invested in the current order of things. Even if they swear up and down that they want serious change, in most cases it's bullshit.
None of them will ever send their kids to crappy public schools. None of them will use public transportation and 80% think they are better and deserve more from life than the average folks they claim to care about.
As with anything there are exceptions to this. I have met truly honorable people in this line of work. But at the end of day, to be crass about it, the man has got you by the balls.
Hope this gives you some insights into our dark world.
As a final note, it's interesting you bring up Jim Webb on occasion. I have used him as an example of where you want to be to win and bring about serious change to this country (not something I am optimistic about). In my calculation, some combination of Webb, Edwards and the non-wacky parts of Lou Dobbs would get you to a 60% majority in any national election.
But that is the exact reason why we will never see that.
Thanks for reading my rant.
Friend from the Dark Side
