editorial: mainstream v. grassroots?

[gmoses]

The term mainstream keeps coming up as an aspiration for Democratic Party strategists, and this worries me.

For one thing, mainstream to me screams status quo, and how are we ever going to get anywhere with an aspiration like that?

For another thing, if I go to the party website for Texas Democrats, I find mainstream on one page and grassroots on another. And I want to know, how can you do both at the same time?

http://www.texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/

[cornermouse]

1. I would consider mainstream and grassroots one and the same.

Mainstream and moderate are not necessarily the same as far as I'm concerned.

[ashling]

2. they do not have to be mutually exclusive

:)

[sonias]

3. old habits are hard to break

That's my explanation Greg. We've all heard that saying "if ain't broke don't fix it". Well that's the m.o. around the party still, but at least they are now willing to try. The grassroots committee is completely brand new. They just set that up at the last SDEC meeting in January. The SDEC simply wouldn't give up on that. Supposedly it had been proposed for many years but never approved. I think the success of the Dean organization finally woke them up. And I mean success, in terms of the Democracy for Texas growing, the Progressive Populist Caucus growing, and what happened with Travis getting bluer etc.

With Dean now the DNC chair that will mean more equal distribution of money back to all 50 states, so why not work the roots with it. We need to rebuild the party and give it back to the people.

As for the mainstream, well that won't ever go away. As long as money is being spent, there are consultants to suck it up.

If we get just 10-20% of the money the usually spend on consultants to go to the grassroots, things will change in Texas for sure.

Sonia