[statecom-discuss] Facing some hard truths about our party

[Ron Francis]

(Eli or Mike, if you read this please bring it to the Strategic Planning meeting as I will be hosting a potluck at my house during the SPWG meeting)

On problem facing GRP:

I agree with Mike that something is amiss with the GRP.  But I would say that it has less to do with process and more to do with approach.

There are some basic facts that we need to face:

Over the last 5 years or so:

1) We have spent an enormous amount of energy on candidate approaches at the statewide level and have little to show for it: we are not larger or stronger at the state or local level, we are not more vibrant, and there is nothing to suggest that any of our past statewide activities will springboard us into more relevance.

2) We have spent a lot of activity on the statewide abolish poverty theme, as a non-candidate approach, and  we have little to show for it:  we have zero or little growth in organization based around this idea and few people know about or identify the GRP with abolishing poverty.

Basically, our two dominant venues for expending involvement have not worked.  

The minor spin-off effects of either the enticing statewide candidate approach or the dramatic abolish poverty theme, are too negligible to be considered fertile ground for party growth.

If nothing else we need to seriously consider abandoning these two approaches; we now know for sure that these approaches do not mobilize people;.. to be blunt, they are a failure in terms of organizing people.  

The candidate campaigns have not led to any significant building of local entities around candidate approaches and they didn't 5 years ago either.

The abolish poverty theme approach has not led to new local entities focusing on poverty issues and it didn't 4 years ago, or 3 years ago, or 2 years ago.  

Bottom line is that we need a dramatic change in how we expend energy; statewide experiments are not working to build our party.

Fool me once shame on you, ... fool me twice shame on me,....  fool me three times and I'm in denial.

Instead of spending 80% of our energy on these approaches, let's be bold and change course.

Ron Francis