Thanks. And sorry about the tone. I have an 11 year old daughter who can't be bothered with doing basic chores. I didn't like them either as a kid but they ARE a necessary part of getting things done. Not everyone gets to do what they want all the time. That said, there is also the element of sharing or trading in the sense that we'll do something you like then we'll do something I like.

I suppose the paradigm I operate on is that society is family writ large. Everybody works and sometimes we do things we don't like in order to get to do the things we DO like. Business before pleasure as it were. So many of the values I grew up with just aren't in operation anymore (born 1958). I try to teach them to my daughter. But it's an uphill battle because those values are no longer part of the fabric of society. The whole thing has shifted from "we" to "me."

BTW, I'm a philosopher and have a master's in urban planning but our society and culture does not value my skill or talent except to shuffle papers. I am also associate chair of my county unit. None these people are interested in grunt work either. They'll do a potluck picnic and the fair booth but not much else.
So, if I come across disgusted you'll know some of the reason for it.

I agree, there should be no "getting out of" field work.

And no, this isn't about "paying dues" either.

It's like this. Nobody (that I know of) LIKES doing household chores like washing dishes, doing laundry, picking up, taking out the trash, etc. But if you live alone or with a roommate there is no "getting out of" doing your share of cleaning up and helping out.

What disgusts me the most are the types who leave their socks wherever they've taken them off or don't put things away once they're done with it. If you live alone and don't care, no big deal. But if you live with anyone, this kind of thing can create lots of tension. If they don't care either, then I hope you like living in a constant mess.

In society however, NO ONE lives in complete isolation from anyone else. This means EVERYONE needs to do their share of chores to ensure that good people are elected and if that means doing a phone bank, walking in a parade, doorknocking/lit dropping then so be it.

Good grief. No wonder the country is a fucking mess. No one can be bothered to do anything they don't like. Talk about spoiled brats who act like they'll die if you tell them to pick up their room.

So long as you cater to this mentality and continue to perpetuate the culture of narcissism rather than instill in people the need to do things like take out the trash, clean out the cat box, or changing a baby's diaper, this country is truly doomed because none of you have an iota's understanding of the grunt work it takes to maintain the backbone of family, society, country, or planet.

Grow up.    

I'm less interested in her smarts, charisma, or personality and more interested in her character and her moral foundation.

As actions speak louder than words, her turnabout on the bankruptcy bill going from "that awful bill" as first lady to supporting it when she became senator says she doesn't really care about We the People.

The best politicians are the ones who can lie without any "tells." But when it comes to my BS detecter she pins it off the scale.

I want Clark but a Gore/Clark ticket would suit me fine.

Master Jack, back in late 2003 I made contact with my local county unit so I could get involved with getting Wes Clark elected. It was non-functioning. I ended up in Ohio for the primary but alas, both Dean and Clark were off the ticket. The Dems really pissed me off that day for taking my vote and subverting democracy. I vowed to get my revenge on the party by becoming an officer in it.

Long story short, I returned to MN and got elected as associate chair for my county unit. That was in early in 2005. Been at it ever since and even helped get Tim Walz (MN-01) elected to the U.S. House. My next step is getting elected to the state legislature. I got three years of doing meet and greets but as a regular citizen doing public forums using Frontline's "Living Old" report to get people thinking about our elderly in these small towns where there are few young people and even fewer jobs.

Anyway, you hit upon the one strategy that DOES work. It sure worked for the nutjobs getting people on school boards and city councils and taking over their local parties so that now we have to fight tooth and nail for the soul of our country.

All you wusses that think ANY political party is THE ANSWER to anything are barking up the wrong tree. It's not about label, it's about values and which one's get priority. You can't change values or priorities if you don't commit and work hard for them. No pain, no gain and quitters never win.

That said, I won't be voting for Hillary or Obama IF they are on the ticket. But I am NOT bailing on cleaning up the party or the country.

from my own blog:

Barak Obama came to Minnesota and gave a nice speech.
Barak Obama hit the right buttons and said the right things.
Very nice stories and high flying words.
But when he was done, he'd said nothing of any real worth.

No, I wasn't in the audience for his speech.
Yes, I listened to the audio feed, though I kept tuning out.
No, I wasn't impressed, hence the tuning out.
Yes, NeoLotus expects a great deal more from those who run the country.

Gore is a bore.

The real issue is peak oil. He can't even keep up with the right environmental issues.

And we definitely need someone who can handle the Pentagon to get rid of the Team B cold warrior nutjobs proposing to nuke Iran not to mention someone who can put the military back together now that the Bushmen have broken it. See Larry Wilkerson.  

If this is leadership I'd hate to see what disorganized looks like.

To me, the compass we have lost as a nation is the Preamble of the Constitution. It is the real measure of what our elected and public instutions are supposed to do. It specifies the role and the duties they are to carry out. In short, it's People First.

See Bill Bradley's "A Party Inverted". (text below)

FIVE months after the presidential election Democrats are still pointing fingers at one another and trying to figure out why Republicans won. Was the problem the party's position on social issues or taxes or defense or what? Were there tactical errors made in the conduct of the campaign? Were the right advisers heard? Was the candidate flawed?

Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media.

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.

You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.

It is not quite the "right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly. The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying. True, there's lots of money involved, but the money makes a difference because it goes toward reinforcing a structure that is already stable.

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan.

Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe.

In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace "Republican lite" platforms - never realizing that in doing so they're allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate.

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

Bill Bradley, a former Democratic senator from New Jersey, is a managing director of Allen & Company.

Wesley Clark can speak Spanish and I've heard him do it. Along with 3 other languages tho his Russian is mighty rusty.