I was recruited as Vice Chair of Precinct Operations for the Arlington County Democratic Committee in 2005 and elected President of the Arlington Young Democrats in 2006 so I have been dealing with Democratic Party complacency and complicity in our political warfare industrial complex for over two decades.
I saw the dangers of machine politics first-hand when I served as OFA’s first Volunteer Database Coordinator and founder of Generation Obama, DC in 2007 before supporting Barack Obama was mainstream and we even had to confront hate from the President of the Young Democrats of America.
I learned my lesson that the party was broken after 8 years of Obama led in 2017 when the DNC and their enablers drove the party into a ditch and ignored every lesson of the Obama campaign by focusing on fundraising and top-down autocracy with the coronation of Hillary Clinton.
Considering recent failures, i think it is time that the generation of grassroots democrats to demand better party leadership and decision-making or prepare themselves for President Rubio and an all-out civil war inside the Democratic Party.
Over a decade after the first Women’s March, mostly corrupt men are driving activists who demand a strategy to win out of the party and are gaslighting the remaining base that they should remain silent because they alone can protect them from fascism.
DNC AUTOPSY
I think it is great that Ken Martin recently published a DNC Playbook with very Obama-esque organizing lessons and finally put out an “autopsy” which hinted at the mistakes of the 2024 campaign with their 2024 After-Action Report which for some reason was written by one guy and was never completed. The drama involved is the direct result of Ken not being ready for the challenge of saving the democratic party but I understand the pressure he is under to sell happy talk and move on. He is still better to deal with than Jaime Harrison who hired arrogant staff and still thinks Biden was the best option in 2024.
Here is my autopsy: The Democratic Party’s culture of bureaucracy is the root cause of why the Democratic Party lost to Donald Trump twice.
If DNC Members had any backbone they would have pushed for Biden to retire or at least participate in one debate or forum versus jokers like RFK Jr. and Marrianne Williamson in Summer 2023 so he could prove he was up to the task of competing in another presidential election.
Under that scenario there would have been an opportunity for an open primary where Kamala Harris and other candidates could have been properly tested by competing for the nomination. All the messaging and organizing mistakes are the result of that undemocratic process.
Grassroots Democrats need to demand that party leaders stop “fighting fire with fire” because they are fighting corruption with corruption, coronations, complacency and complicity because the insiders want it that way.
I gave a presentation to a diverse group of young people at New Leaders Council last weekend where I discuss “Leadership Lessons for using the Obama Playbook
To Create Change In 2026 and Beyond” that the foundation of understanding how to win begins with our democratic values.
VIRGINIA REDISTRICTING REFERENDUM
Those lessons are abundantly clear in Virginia right now and Democrats should stand with Governor Spanberger not corrupt Richmond Machine Democrats who control the Democratic Party of Virginia and New York Machine Democrat Hakeem Jefferies.
Over the past six months, we have witnessed the “fight fire with fire” strategy blow up in their face like Wile E. Coyote chasing the road runner because he thought rocket roller skates were safe.
They sold the base a giant pile of “wishful thinking” that they could pass a redistricting referendum that would hold up in court and pushed a special election to approve a 10-1 map against the reported advice of Abigail Spanberger, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner who have actually won statewide elections. I know for a fact Spanberger didn’t want to campaign on it after I watched her interview with Bryan Tyler Cohen in August when he asked her about redistricting four times.
The facts are that by passing the amendment for the first time on Halloween they violated the spirit of the process that voters can learn about amendments being considered before they cast their ballot and there were one million voters who literally were unable to consider the amendment. And then when the Republicans sued and the case made it to the Virginia Supreme Court the democratic lawyers dared the court to throw out the referendum after the special election was held which cost Democrats around $70 Million along with countless hours of work and infighting drama.
The worst irony of this is democratic lawyers had to use Donald Trump arguments in the Virginia Supreme Court where they claimed an election only occurs on Election Day and in the United States Supreme Court where they claimed that state courts cannot over-rule a state legislature as reported in the New York Times.
I sent an email to legislators in October with concerns about the redistricting referendum and posted on substack why I voted NO on March 6th to let Democrats know I was not going to support it even though I decided I would not actively campaign against it. Within three weeks I posted a follow up update on substack where I detailed why my decision was correct as the campaign appeared more and more like a partisan witch hunt that was damaging the party.
And now we see the results. Spanberger’s approval is hovering at 47% and the referendum only passed by 3 points which is now worthless.
As a result, Spanberger has asked Jeffiries to focus on WINNING ELECTIONS IN NOVEMBER and to stop spending his time on “Maximum Warfare” in Washington.
Meanwhile, Richmond Machine Democrats are now declaring war on Spanberger because she vetoed collective bargaining, marijuana and other bills that she thought were ill-conceived despite the fact that she signed nearly 1,000 bills which is over 95% of the legislation that the general assembly passed.
CNN Analyst Adam Mockler called out State Senate President Louise Lucas on X/Twitter this week because she shared a post of a first-year law student who explained the veto situation and berated him as if she was the only person who understood politics. The same attitude she uses when demagoguing a budget she has failed to pass during the regular session.
He social media guru Ben Tribbett is a favorite consultant of State Senate and state party leadership, who paid his consulting firm over a million dollars, is posting memes of the FIRST WOMAN GOVERNOR IN VIRGINIA HISTORY in a Youngkin 2.0 vest and labeling her as a Woke Gestapo version of Donald Trump. He might be upset because he is being sued for defamation by Spanberger’s Chief of Staff for $18 Million which was a direct result of the redistricting infighting.
It is time to tell Washington and Richmond politicians that selling corruption and gerrymandering schemes that kill the political capital of elected officials is not a recipe for getting shit done for Americans and winning elections in 2026 and beyond.
Contact your Member of Congress and let them know you oppose the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries.
If you live in Virginia, contact your Members in the General Assembly to say you support Governor Spanberger not Richmond Democratic Leadership.
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