Seriously, i wasn't there to play hall monitor, but i got in a little early, like several other out-of-towners, so i had some time to observe. Few of the people i saw come off that escalator got past that sign without some sort of reaction. And i had about an hour's time that morning lounging on the second floor luxury lobby furniture, to gauge the degree of irony appreciation in each escalator riders' registry as they saw it.
I spent some of that time with Rudy Clark, long-time Native American activist and lobbyist, and a retired teacher. He came down from Peach Springs this morning, but had done some time in the trenches in DC. He warned right now the Democrats look weak and frightened, "pushed into a corner, heading for failure." And Clark wondered why all state and national Democratic leadership allowed that characterization of Democrats to happen and become lodged in the public mind. He also wondered why the Republican party and in particular the Supreme court "had lost their minds, offering the extremely wealthy people even more advantage."
Statewide, Clark, himself, felt a bit shellacked over victories by pro-SB1070 candidates. "I keep hoping Joe Arpaio will have something to do to take him to our reservation and then I'll ask him where are his papers and what's he doing in MY country?" Clark quipped.
Just before joining the crowd flooding into the main meeting hall, we caught up with the Safford contingent of Democrats. Jay Rasco took a second to explain what he saw as the upcoming GOP agenda: "If you keep the working man down, nose to the grindstone, everyday, nose to the grindstone just to keep up, and make sure they have lots of kids and have lots of bills, then they'll be too busy to rock the boat. That's what the GOP has in mind for us."
That in mind, the Dem choice should seem a simple sell. Yet, at a time when the "Party of Change" could be saddled so easily as the party of status quo, the Dems had obviously lost track of their message. I was hoping to bring them back to their sense. But you know what they say, the first step to fixing a problem is being willing to admit that you have a problem in the first place; and the Dem hierarchy there that day were all as happy as campers, despite the fact we were all still drippy with beetle juice. Vince Rabago's campaign chairman, Gilberto Zaragoza, for example was a happy camper with party's campaign effort this year. "Everything went well," he concluded. "We did everything we could." Except win, of course.
And despite the fact that the long-standing and wide spread nickname her organization has gained within the Democratic Party to the point it is mockingly referred to as the "uncoordinated campaign," Michelle Davidson, the coordinator of the party's "Coordinated Campaign," was shockingly proud of her efforts as well; and could and did well substantiate her claims of actively running an extensive campaign, through numerous charts of various grafts ... though polling had shown that by May of '10 the public's goodwill for Dems had decidedly dwindled. Considering all the robo-calls that were made, the pieces of campaign literature created and distributed, and all the personal connections pretended, and, with all of it duly documented on the big screen PowerPoint presentation, i can vouch Davidson's campaign had indeed stayed busy, fiddling away as the whole titanic enterprise sank beneath waves of GOP voter resentments.
Recent shellacked Mesa state representative candidate, Mike Conway, thought of the backlash he was already seeing, and said bitterly, "I am already sick of hearing about repealing 'Obama-care.' I mean come on, at least Democrats do care!"
Conway elaborated, "Look, i did better than some of the targeted candidates. If the targeted candidates did this badly, the ones who got additional funding and support, if they did this badly, then what does that say about the effectiveness of state party efforts, no matter what their expense of energy?"
If the Arizona Democratic Party leadership was aware of this widespread dissension, they were in emphatic denial. For the first 1/2 hour of their presentation it seemed possible no one had told these assembled experts the results of the election. They were very busy talking about their success in fundraising and the challenge of logistics and how good they had done as if losing by 20% or so was a fine race run.
Unfortunately if the rank-in-file were there to get a display of what party higher-ups cared about, it was obviously still money, to the point of being oblivious about almost all else. As state party chair Don Bivens gushed ecstatically, "We raised the money we wanted and spent it the way we wanted to."
Bivens set the tone for treasurer and others who focused on the success the party had had in fund-raising. The roster of morning speakers were likewise money minded. True, early on in the election cycle the fundraising for Democrats versus Republicans, both nationally and to a degree in AZ showed that Dems while anemic were more robust than the Republican party. In fact in 2009, prior to the Citizens United case, the Republican Party was supposedly on the fundraising ropes.
The first person to move past applauding effort expended and openly acknowledge the actual vote count was state treasurer candidate, Andrei Cherny, "We had an unmitigated disaster and there are people all over the state who don't even realize the consequences that will devastate their lives for years to come." It roused the most vocal applause all morning.
On the floor the party leadership spent as much of that morning's energy as they could get away with by blaming Obama. Over-all the talking points that morning were AZ racists love SB 1070 and Obama let us all down. And then there was that most predictable of mechanisms, the backlash of midterms. Yet we had our best year ever ... except for that losing part. One of the more comic unintentional ironies was when a presenter noted, "We had more data than ever and better data than ever .... So we made a huge investment in data collection and it came out to tell us exactly what we expected all along: 65% of the GOP showed up to vote, only 55% of Democrats," and thus we lost. A spokeswoman for the Goddard campaign added, "As Democrats, we see ourselves as a party of intellect. The GOP present themselves as a party of emotion and the emotions they build on most are fear and anger."
When the floor opened up to Q&A, i was offered a chance to frame a question for the panel and scrambled through a series of near misses, such as: "Nationally the pundit class is claiming the message of this election is that Republican ideas should rule. How are Democrats to take this?" Or, "Nationally this race showed that the plutocrats can, in most cases, buy the candidate of their choosing. The big corporate money went to the GOP slate of ideas. Are we, as a country, fated to that kind of existence, to be bought and sold by such hateful ideas?"
OR, "The division is clearly between money and people, in this next election, does the Democratic party intend to work for the money or work for the people?" or rephrased, "Let's be honest about the moral of the Citizens United Supreme Court case decision. This election showed the plutocrats can buy the elections that they want. Their message was clearly hate, fear, and division. This meeting has talked about money quite a bit already. Does the Democratic Party in AZ intend to work for the money or work for the people?"
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