miniblag

1.

From time to time I feel it necessary to stretch my grey matter the way I did on my retired blog, and these are one of those times. They will be few and far in between, but I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I do typing. It’s always good to keep moderate form.

The Michigan Democratic Party is acting like a bunch of chucklefuck dickslaps who are running around like handicapped people staffing a hospital emergency room. At this point, I’m rather confident in saying that we might not have Jenny From The Block as our governor and Captain Amway J. Homophobe as our state governor. It’s March and we’re already seeing the first wave of advertisements for the man; prime time commercial slots, print advertisements, bumper stickers and web banner ads on both Freep and News web sites are out in full and present force. As a result, we’re seeing DeVos (that’s the Republican fundamentalist pro life guy most of the state will be voting for, including alot of Detroit because Democrats have been woefully taking Detroit forgranted) gaining ground in all sorts of polls across the state. So much ground that if the elections were held today, we’d have a close shave race on our hands.

But let’s get back to my rather abrasive yet poignantly accurate statement for a second. Is it unfair to generalize and say ALL Michigan Democrats suffer from panic-inactive disease? Of course not. It’s NEVER fun nor accurate to paint all people with the same brush. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s just look at the forest from the trees and look at the Michigan Democratic Party.

For this rant/protest, I’m going to focus largely on the communications aspect of the party, whatever of it is there. On the whole, they’ve done a reasonable job framing the arguments and issues in the mass media, especially in the Freep, the traditional liberal standby. However, their platform is about as clear as the Rouge River. Who knows what the party stands for anymore? They are suffering from the same paralysis of confidence and focus that the DNC is suffering on the national level. But here’s the major difference: Michigan Democrats don’t have the luxury of time or comfort any more. We are the state with the worst economic growth and unemployment rate in the nation. Every piece of legislation designed to rectify this has been blocked in state legislation by bureaucracy at its best, especially thanks to the speaker of the house. I’m not going to say the man’s evil, but at times he reminds me of a certain government official in history that had a fondness for khakis and thought it was pretty cool when everyone raised their hand in unison.

It’s a horrible thing to say, especially for a bedwetting Democrat for myself, but times are not good. At all. I worry for the state of the party. Which is why I decided to get involved.

2.

I went to the Democratic party website to offer my services. I have extensive experience in database work, can use HTML, PHP, CSS and XML with relative ease. I have years of editorial work under my belt and have written a few stump speeches for a certain Detroit mayoral candidate that somehow blew his chance at turning the city around. I am young, swarthy, quick thinking on my feet and I’d like to think I work best under pressure. I toiled over a letter of volunteer for a few hours and when finally satisfied, went to the site to find an email address for a point person.

Ever been to the MI Democrats site? I have, and I almost coughed up my skull. It’s as if their webmaster is stuck in 1999 using PageMill 2.0. It’s rather embarassing, especially in contrast to the GOP site based in .ASP (which is even funnier, but hey...at least the design doesn’t look like it was done for a middle school science project). After stumbling around the contact page trying to figure out exactly WHO I needed to send my email and CV to, I did so and went back to surfing. There were more dead pages on that site than any other political based site I have ever been to. Ever.

This was sent in December. I’m still waiting for a response.

Undeterred by the lack of response from the parent party, I decided to see if I could get a seat at the kids table. I googl’d “Michigan Young Democrats”. The first link that came up led me to a page for travel, leisure, business, computers....everything but what I was looking for. Moving right along to the next site, I came across this: http://www.mi-youngdems.yda.org/

I didn’t think it could get any more embarrassing or exasperating. I was wrong. If you clicked the link above, I’m sure you would find a bit of sadistic joy and mild disbelief at what I found. President Isaac Robinson should be ashamed of himself for having such a crap excuse for a website. I present to you, in contrast, the Michigan Young Fa...Republican site: www.mfyr.com

Unreal.

I took a deep breath and yet again, for the second time since late 2004, attempted to join the Michigan Young Democrats. I haven’t heard from Robinson, or any membership chair since.

I have volunteered for Freman’s campaign. I have offered my services to the Granholm campaign helping with the site, email blasts and everything else. I have tried to get involved with the state DNC and DNC Jr. organizations. This is just one of many angles of what is exactly wrong with the party, and I’m sure I’ll tackle more of them in the near future. But right now I am going to wait patiently until I hear from someone. I’m not holding my breath though.