To weigh in on the direction of the state party vs. that of the national.

[coloradodem2005]

I was a Dean supporter when he was running for President. I thought in late 2003, that he stood a good chance of winning. I liked his ideals and I respected him. I still do. He thinks like an idealist and works like a pragmatist. When the chips were down, he knew that he needed to withdraw for the good of the party. To stay in would have fractured the party. After his withdrawal, he did everything to make sure that we were unified behind Kerry. I am so happy that he won the chairmanship to the DNC. I always felt that in the end he did not make it about himself. He made it about the future of the Democratic Party and for the country.

The thing about recent developments in the Colorado state party have been personally troubling to me. I don't know anything about Pat Waak and I hope she is a good person who can make things work in the state party. I can't say that I agree with everything that Chris Gates has done, but I just get sick and tired of the sour grapes that the Miles people have over the primary loss to Ken Salazar. These sour grapes started when Salazar entered the race. This is all from my perspective mind you. I never felt that Miles had a chance to win in Colorado. While I think that the Democrats need to get back to their liberal roots, the state parties need to be somewhat based on how their state operates. Colorado is a conservative state. Why do some of the more liberal dems in the state feel disenfranchised from the state party? Is it because they truly are, or because they are not getting EVERYTHING they want. Meaning that if they get anything less than 100% they have a problem. The fact is Salazar won the primary 75% to 25% over Miles. I doubt that anything Gates did to Miles had a significant enough impact to make that happen. While, for whatever reason, Schaeffer made nice with Coors after his loss, I don't remember Miles ever doing that for Salazar. I could have missed it but I don't remember it. I find a lot of Miles' expressed goals admirable and agree with them. But I get so sick of this sour grapes shit. I don't want to discount Miles or his contributions, but these are the reasons why I am not sold on him and I am not happy that it seems that the State Dems chair results were considered a vendetta for what happened to Miles.

[Crunchy Frog]

1. Speaking as a Miles supporter,

I think that's a big mischaracterization. I always knew that Miles was a longshot, and that Salazar was most likely going to win the nomination. I could live with that just fine. What I resented was the blatent discrimination and open contempt that the party establishment displayed towards both Miles and his supporters. Since Salazar was likely to win anyway, there was no reason to act in that way. Most of the Miles supporters that I knew didn't want "100%", they just wanted to be treated with a little respect and with at least an appearence of fairness.

When you have a newly energized activist base, it seems to me that you have two choices. You can reach out to them and encourage them, or you can try to marginalize and dismiss them. For me, the first option seems the most sensible. It's what the national party eventually decided to do with the newly energized Dean supporters.

I don't know much about the actual details of the Chair race here in Colorado, but I did attend a Democratic meeting last night in which the subject came up. From the way things sounded, there were other issues there that had nothing to do with Miles and his supporters. Nobody at this meeting seemed to treat it like it was that big of a deal, and there was one State Senator and one State Representative there.

I don't think that scapegoating one group of Colorado Democrats and moaning about a supposed "coup de'tat", and that we're now doomed as a party, is going to do anybody any good in this state.