Thursday, June 26, 2008

Silos and the Lament of a Yellow-Dog Democrat

I'm a yellow-dog Democrat, at least since the Dems in Virginia got themselves half-way together, so I have no way of knowing the situation on the Republican side. But the situation on my side stinks.

What am I talking about? The decentralized, unbusinesslike way in which we Democrats work our campaign finances. I think Tom McAuliffe helped a little bit, but it's still bad.

Specifically, everyone and his sister solicits me because I have a long record of being a sucker, er--responding to solicitations. There's the DNC (the national committee), the DSCC (Senate campaign committee), the House committee, the individual campaigns (for some reason Clinton had my email address until she dropped her bid, but Obama didn't, but now he does), and then there's the Virginia Democrats and my various representatives and Senators.

I mentioned McAuliffe--once I used to get brochures and solicitations from the DNC every month or two. Then they made me an offer I couldn't resist--they'd drop the mail if I'd give them protection money, er--contribute on a regular basis. But, and here's my complaint, the DNC and the other Democratic units don't talk to each other. It'd be fine if they'd piggyback on the DNC's infrastructure, so they could ask me to boost my contribution and spread my money among the various units. But that's not the way the U.S. works--we believe in silos, everyone doing his or her own thing.

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