On Friday, June 17, I got up early to catch a train to get to St. Louis in time to catch the rally to save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security outside Senator McCaskill's St. Louis office, and then go on to the Missouri Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Renaissance Grand in Downtown St. Louis.
Basically, if all the statewides are scheduled to appear somewhere, chances are pretty good that if you look for the table at the back, where the tripods are set up and the hand-held recorders are out on the table, you will find me and assorted other members of the political media -- especially my partners here at Show Me Progress. We try very hard to have someone at every event.
Sometimes that is short notice and it frequently sends me scrambling for resources if I haven't had time to plan ahead, but we get there and we cover it and we archive audio so we can fight back with context and/or accuracy when Democrats are misunderstood -- or as happens far to often, deliberately misquoted.
Take Friday night for example -- Jo Mannies, who didn't sit with us lowlife bloggers at a table, but chose to hug the wall just inside the ballroom doors instead -- decried Democratic Governor Jay Nixon for lapsing into "partisanship" because he dared say the words "right wing extremists" and call out the nutjobs in the state legislature for what they are during his address Friday night...Even though he wasn't speaking at a campaign rally, he was speaking to a room full of 500-plus of the most hard-core Democrats in the state, all of whom paid $125 per plate to attend.
When that sort of money is shelled out, red meat is expected, and since the menu was chicken and shrimp, that red meat came from the speakers. And did they ever deliver!
Governor Nixon gave one of the best speeches I have heard him give, and I have been covering him since he was our Attorney General, campaigning for Governor. He is in Jefferson City with the right-wing extremists who want to return us to the era before the New Deal and the Wagner Act, to the cutthroat era of the robber barons and union busting and the systematic disenfranchisement of the "wrong" people who tend to vote the opposite way that the rich and powerful do.
Nixon appeared before a crowd of Democrats just hours after vetoing the right wing extremists' latest attempt to disenfranchise anywhere between 170-240,000 Missouri voters. hell, yeah, he was going to deliver some partisanship and get these people -- you know, the folks who open their wallets and man the phones and go door to door and basically and keep the Missouri Democratic Party functioning -- fired up!
I was also impressed with Claire McCaskill's more pugnacious tone. Of course, the fact that 200 people were outside her office in 90-degree heat with 190% humidity for over an hour "encouraging" her to stand up for the safety net didn't discourage her any from kicking it up a notch or two, either. When she said that teachers and police officers and firemen aren't the problem, and that "their pensions sure as HELL aren't the problem!" the crowd was on it's feet and she had to pause before going on and wait for them to take their seats.
It's not this guy's fault we're in this mess.
What I heard from the speakers who addressed the rank and file who, while in their finery on Friday night, in the coming months will be in jeans and sneakers canvassing neighborhoods, and manning phone banks, and working for candidates and raising money and donating money, and time, and talent -- was that they are going to work as hard as we are and they will fight for us.
Jay Nixon fought for us on Thursday when he addressed boys state and told them something I hope they take with them the rest of their lives. He pointed out to them that they were going to be okay no matter what. Their tickets are punched, it's all in front of them and it's all theirs if they don't piss it away. But, he told them, "you have to have compassion. You don't make yourself any taller by cutting off the heads of those around you."
Then he fought for us on Friday when he vetoed the odious Voter ID bill.
I hope he is just getting started and spends a little of his political capital to fight back in the rural areas where they are a natural Democratic constituency. They have potable water, electricity, gas, roads, mail delivery, phone service, internet access, hospitals and doctors and nurses to work in them, Social Security, Medicare, S-CHIP and Medicaid to access them and they can get drugs from a pharmacy that is regulated so they are sure they are getting what the doctor prescribed and not baking soda because Democrats didn't just make those things happen -- Democrats made those things possible.
The thesis of one of the first posts I wrote when we launched Show Me Progress was me arguing that the Missouri Democratic Party needs a concerted 114 County Strategy, that we need to get offices back on the square in Albany and Bethany and Princeton and Trenton and Gallatin and Grant City and all the other small counties that lost their long-term Democratic Senators and Representatives in 2000 when term limits took over because -- lets face it -- term limits caught us unawares. We were content with the "old bulls" like Harold Caskey running things for decades on end. There was comity and things got done and worked pretty well. And in those rural areas, no new talent was being recruited and groomed by the Democrats, but the republicans were doing just that on school boards and municipal boards and county legislatures. Then they sprung term limits and they had their candidates ready to go.
And the state party responded by...abdicating the rural areas to the wingers.
I hope some of that pugnacious talk I heard Friday night means that the days of that nonsense are over. Instead, I hope it gets repeated in every county seat of all 114 counties by every statewide official on the 08 ballot at least twice between now and then, and I hope they have an aggressive social media presence, because every one of my country cousins uses Facebook five times as much as I do, and I use it every day.
There are votes to be had outstate -- but only if you go and ask for them and talk to them about the issues that matter to them. And for god's sake, they deserve better than the likes of Casey freakin' Guernsey.
Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, Susan Montee (center left) and Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor (right) at the pre-dinner reception for the Missouri Democratic Party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner in St. Louis on Friday night.
Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor (D), one of the fourteen, was a featured speaker at the Missouri Democratic Party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner in St. Louis on Friday night.
On Friday night the Missouri Democratic Party held its Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Renaissance Grand Hotel in downtown St. Louis. There were over five hundred in attendance.
The ballroom before the start of the evening's activities.
Senator Claire McCaskill (D) (center) at the pre-dinner reception.
@sarahfelts Sarah Felts
.@clairecmc: "We've got problems, but the problem isn't teachers...The problem isn't gov't wotkers & it sure as hell is not their pensions." 19 hours ago
@sarahfelts Sarah Felts
#MO Sen. @clairecmc on redistricting: "This state is not a 6-2 state & we're gonna show everyone that in November." 19 hours ago
Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) and Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana), the keynote speaker.
@sarahfelts Sarah Felts
Sen. Tester, Senator from Montana & keynote speaker at JJ Dinner, gives a shout-out to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Amen! 19 hours ago
@BGinKC Blue Girl
John Tester gives good speech. I could vote for him, if I lived in Montana. #JeffersonJacksonDinner 19 hours ago
@sarahfelts Sarah Felts
Sen. Tester @ JJ Dinner: "On the debt-limit, we're playing around with something that could put us into a severe depression." 19 hours ago
Former State Auditor and current Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee was the keynote speaker at the annual Cass County Democratic Committee "Back to Blue" dinner in Belton on April 30th.
Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee spoke at the Cass County Democratic Committee "Back to Blue" dinner in Belton on Saturday night.
Missouri Democratic Party Chair Susan Montee ....We now are faced with needing to do something differently. Now, I'm a big proponent of the idea of the self-sustaining party, but it, it wasn't my idea. It came about after our election in two thousand and four, where we narrowly lost the governor's election. Um, and it was largely due to the fact that [presidential candidate] John Kerry pulled out of our state with three weeks left. And we had no infrastructure in place to do anything about it and to get our votes out. And at that point we said, never again, we don't want this to happen to us again. We have to have a party that is active and able to get a message out and to get people out and, and we can't be reliant on these outside forces.
We actually came up with a plan, we were going down a path, but a couple of wonderful things happened to us. Uh, Claire McCaskill decided to run for the Senate in two thousand and six and a ton of money came into the state so we didn't need that plan. Uh, two thousand and eight, uh, the Obama campaign dumped a ton of money into the state, was the narrowest, uh, margin in the country, tried everything, we had all this money, things were great, we didn't have to get our plan in place. In twenty-ten when there was no money coming into the state from the federal and we had never activated our party structure we found out what it's like if we don't get our votes out...
CORE PROGRESSIVE MESSAGE: WE BUILD AMERICA ON A STRONG FOUNDATION, ONE PERSON AT A TIME.
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas." John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960 speech in New York City.
Progressives believe in the dignity of every human being and will rebuild our country from the bottom up. Healthy, educated people can take care of themselves and, when given the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, will create new technologies and business opportunities for themselves and others. A society, just like a tall building, needs a firm foundation or it will crumble.
Progressives believe that strong families and communities are intrinsically valuable, not just for the emotional rewards people feel from belonging to a caring society, but for the stability a strong community provides for economic innovation and advancement toward prosperity.
An article By Jo Mannies of the St. Louis Beacon on the challenges faced by Susan Montee, the New Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, raises some interesting issues. Mannies notes that Montee and a new activist group, the Progressive Democrats of St. Louis, are both concerned about the organizational and communications failings of the state Democratic party. Beyond that point, though, Mannies' report implies that when the smoke of the last electoral defeat clears and Montee gets down to work she may not see eye to eye with progressives about the correct direction for the state party.
I find it telling that Montee describes the "messaging" failures of the Missouri Democrats in the last election as follows:
We didn't talk about what makes state Democrats different from national Democrats or California Democrats.
Would the crucial difference that Montee is hinting at have anything to do with the fact that the most prominent elected Democrats in the state, Senator Claire McCaskill and Governor Jay Nixon, are essentially old-time moderate Republicans in disguise? Although the article makes it clear that McCaskill and Nixon aren't claiming responsibility for Montee's selection, it seems equally clear that Montee is the choice of the state Democratic establishment which, from my admittedly limited perspective, seems to bless only good, well-mannered little boys and girls like McCaskill and Nixon.
Montee's view that her job is to distance the state party from what the GOP represents as the socialist-communist-facist policies of the national Democratic Party (or Nancy Pelosi's Gay California Hippie Party) indicates that she may have taken too deeply to heart the Republican message, as articulated by the Missouri Republican Party Executive director, Lloyd Smith:
... that Missouri is becoming an increasingly conservative state, .... Susan Montee was soundly defeated because she embraced the failed policies of Barack Obama and national Democrats.
If this is indeed the case, I would invite Montee to ponder the defeat of her colleague, Robin Carnahan, who was at the head of the losing Democratic ticket in November. As a progressive, the first big disappointment that I experienced in regard to Carnahan was her rush to embrace the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy. Before that time, I had been annoyed by her incipient posturing as a "deficit peacock," but her lame effort to deprive the GOP of a campaign weapon at the cost of the core Democratic value of fairness was something that no messaging strategy or slogan could have overcome, not even the "caring, fair and smart" refrain that the spokesperson for the Progressive Democrats of St. Louis, Rea Kleeman, suggested to Mannies as a first step in reviving the party message. I don't think that I am alone in this feeling; I believe that was the point where many in the Missouri Democratic base cashed in their chips.
I ultimately stuck with Carnahan because I decided a vote for her was a vote for a national Democratic majority, and even - in the long run - a vote for Nancy Pelosi (of the California branch of the party). Lots of Democrats that I know weren't so forgiving. Carnahan lost decisively and, as I remember, didn't even do that well in the Democratic strongholds of St. Louis and Kansas City. I wonder if her willingness to betray a core Democratic principle might not have been the final straw in the broom that swept away her margin in those regions?
It bears thinking about, and I hope Montee will be able to take it into consideration as she tries to shape the Missouri Democratic message. Democrats are eager for a strong narrative, one that grabs at our core values with two fists, something that nice girls and boys who are worried about offending Grandma and Grandpa Grundy can't offer.
Every once and a while I take a look at the The Record Blog, which is sponsored by the conservative Missouri Record online journal. I like to see what the other guys are talking about and how they are arguing their points. Occasionally, my curiosity is repaid and the journal's editor and main blogger, Patrick Tuohey, or another contributor actually construct an argument for their point of view that that is really an argument, not simply a litany of slogans. However, I am at a loss to explain this short post on Susan Montee's appointment as the incoming Chair of the Missouri Democratic party:
.
... state Democrats have given us a chair. To wit, Susan Montee, former State Auditor-elect has been chosen to serve as furniture.
...........
... We're just worried about the rest of the office suite. There is no word yet on who will be serving as table, credenza or file cabinet. But rest assured, once a capable credenza has been elected, a margarita machine will be placed upon him or her forthwith.
I am taking up your time by drawing your attention to this clunky attempt at humor because I don't get it. Do I have to be a right winger to understand what Tuohey is getting at? Is he that worried that substituting "chair" for chairman is too politically correct - a label that makes strong wingers tremble? Or, if he concedes to the desire for courtesy that leads some to use gender neutral words now that more women are active in business and political life, does he just prefer "chairperson"? Is he trying to lampoon Montee specifically, or the state Democratic Party (here the comparison to furniture might actually be kind of apt given the Party's general lifelessness)? Or maybe, like some five year olds I have met, he thinks the word "chair" in this context is funny all by itself? If so, it explains a lot.
At any rate, the bit about the margarita machine on the office credenza (elected or not) is not a bad suggestion, and Montee should take it under consideration. It might liven things up a little - which would be a welcome change for the state party. Ooops! Did I just get the joke?
We just received word that outgoing State Auditor Susan Montee was elected chair of the Missouri Democratic Party today.
Missouri Revised Statutes
Chapter 115
Election Authorities and Conduct of Elections
Section 115.623
State committee to meet and organize, when.
115.623. The members of the state committee elected as provided in section 115.621 shall meet at a time and place to be designated by the current state committee chairman. The meeting shall occur no earlier than two weeks following the election of members to the state committee. At the meeting, the committee shall organize by electing a chairman and a vice chairman, one of whom shall be a woman, and a secretary and a treasurer, one of whom shall be a woman, and who may or may not be members of the committee. In the event a vacancy shall occur in the office of chairman, a vacancy shall also be declared in the office of vice chairman and a new election shall be held for filling the vacancies of both chairman and vice chairman, one of whom shall be a woman.
I would like to thank the members of the Missouri Democratic Party State Committee today. I am honored to serve as your new Party Chair. about 1 hour ago via web
I look forward to working with all Missouri Democrats as we move ahead towards the 2012 election cycle! about 1 hour ago via web
[Susan Montee] says Democrats did a poor job of getting their message out during the past election and a poor job of getting Democratic-inclined voters in rural areas to the polls. But she says there's little that an auditor's candidate could have done to drive up voter turnout.
Montee has served in various Democratic Party roles over the years. She declined to say whether she was interested in a Democratic leadership position after her auditor's term ends in January.
Let's not be that narrow, Democrats didn't just do a poor job getting Democratic-inclined voters in rural areas to the polls, they also did a poor job getting Democratic-inclined voters in urban areas to the polls. I need to write up and finish up the Kansas City Ward-by-Ward summary that proves that exact point.
Susan Montee is the new Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party!
Considering the fabulous electoral record of the Missouri Democratic Party in the last decade, I suspect this will be the last we hear of Susan for 2 years or so.
We can continue to lick our wounds and play the blame game, or we can regroup and do the job ourselves. We can all agree that messaging is not the Dems strong suit. We can continue to beg them to wake up and start fighting back or we can become our own think tanks and fire up the people who just don't get it.
Last night on Rachel Maddow's show, Gail Collins (progressive columnist) pleaded with the national Democratic leaders to grab and use the "fiscal responsibility" hypocrisy of the Repugs. Less than 24 hours after the election, Jim DeMint said it was going to be necessary to raise the debt ceiling again. The tea partiers are counting on the Repugs to slash everything in sight (especially all those "job killing" regs.) So we have to find a way to explain to anyone who will listen that adding $700 billion (tax cuts for super wealthy Americans) to the national debt does NOT reduce the total debt. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Then how come voters can be bamboozled into thinking we can have tax cuts for the rich and still reduce the debt? Because the other side is expert at bait and switch.
Fiscal responsibility is just one issue. Then there's Karl Rove's "climate is done" statement. And the new House leaders are already lining up witnesses for hearings in the spring to "prove" that climate change is a "hoax."
And then there's the repeal of health care reform. Mitch McConnell already is using (and you can be damned sure every Repug will repeat) Health Care Spending Bill to describe the Affordable Care Act.
President Obama has invited the Repug leaders to a White House dinner to discuss the economy, taxes etc. I hope he has a "taster" check his soup for him.
It doesn't look like we're going to get any help from the national or state Dem leaders as far as pushing back against right wing muggers, so we'll have to do it ourselves. If everyone who posts on this blog finds 10 other sane folks, they can form their own think tank. Repeated often enough, our message will find receptive ears.
Yes, I know I'm spittin' in the wind, but I'm Irish and don't like getting stomped on.
Brian Zuzenak was recently appointed Executive Director of the Missouri Democratic Party. I spoke with him last week at the state party headquarters in Jefferson City:
Show Me Progress: So, you've started your tenure here just a few days ago. And you, you've had previous experience in Missouri politics?
Brian Zuzenak: I have. I start, I actually started my career in politics here. Actually, while I was still in college down at Missouri State. And worked on my first legislative race in 2000 for a, it was a, open seat, open state House seat in Springfield that we were probably not, I, it was, it was, very, one of those toss up districts, this was before redistricting. It was a decent seat for us, but were running, unfortunately we were running against the former incumbent who had come back to take the seat back. And, and, you know, I didn't really, [laugh] I didn't really know what I was doing at all. I was trying to finish college and I had done an internship up at the capitol for Representative Liese in the, during session. And had gone back to school and really enjoyed politics and sort of got bit by the political bug. Probably not for the first time, but sort of the first time I really became engaged in politics. And went back and had the opportunity to run that, that House seat, We were unfortunately, came up short by a couple of points...
A commenter at Fired Up makes an excellent point: as pretty as the Missouri Democratic Party website is, it's devoid of regularly updated content.
In fact, a lot of the same flaws I noted in Maida Coleman's website are present in the MDP website, too. It's not something that someone would check on a regular basis for new information - aside from the upcoming events section, there is virtually no new information since Robin Carnahan's announcement of her candidacy for US Senate. It isn't a hub that collects potential volunteers and contributors and steers them to opportunities, nor does it spur visitors to create their own ways to contribute to the party's efforts. And there are no prominent links to any Democratic presence on social networking and media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The best I can say about it is that at least the information that it does provide is better organized and presented than Maida's website, with contribution buttons front and center.
I wonder why the MDP can't get it together on the web front. And I hope Robin Carnahan does a better job when her full campaign website finally goes live.
Remember when Dick Cheney was caught in a lie about how China and Cuba were drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico? Republican Sam Graves, the first Republican to get a fundraising visit from both Bush and Cheney this cycle, is still repeating the lie.
The Missouri Democratic Party has him nailed on video.
Find out how you can get this clown out of office by going to Kay Barnes' website right now.
UPDATE: TPM Election Central got Graves' spokesman to confirm that Graves is sticking to the discredited story.
When I opened my New York Times this morning and saw the headline that Obama is taking the offensive, and challenging McCain in traditional republican areas, I did the happy dance! Barack Obama is openly embracing the 50 State Strategy and spurning the cynical DLC model of falling back on traditional liberal enclaves and writing us off out here in the middle.
It's a glorious day! It is a day that this red-state riffraff has been waiting for with bated breath since the day John Kerry punked us in October 2004 and sealed our fate to suffer four years of Blunt-force trauma at the hands of a couple of juvenile brats posing as a governor and his lobbyist brother.
Some of us have been pissed off at Rahm Emanuel and the DLC limousine liberals ever since.
Dr. Dean resonates with us because he listens to our concerns and treats Missouri like our eleven electoral votes matter - because in 2000, they sure as hell did. In 2000, aWol took this swing state by a mere 80,000 votes, and if he hadn't, our votes would have swung the electoral equation to Gore, even without Florida, and spared the entire world the abortion of government that has been the bu$h administration.
I've been taken aback by some of the harsh rhetoric in comments aimed at State Senator Chris Koster, with the epithets "Flopster" and "not a real Democrat" being the most commonly applied. The first thing I think when I read these comments is, "Are these people out of their freakin' minds?"
Anytime you pick up a seat by a member of the opposing party switching sides, that's good news. It means you have one more vote in the legislature for the issues that your party cares about, it means you didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to pick up the seat, it means you have a credible voice arguing that the other side is just too extreme. I'll applaud Chris Koster for helping us out like that, just as I'll applaud any Republican who changes their mind about the direction their party has been taking the last decade.
The charge of opportunism strikes me in particular as a bit hollow. Yeah, Koster's term-limited in 2012, but surely Koster could expect an easier opportunity to come along in the next six years than facing the House Minority Leader and a respected female attorney from St. Louis in a 3-way fight as a newcomer to the Democratic Party.
Now about that Attorney General's race... more below the fold.
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An 
I've been taken aback by some of the harsh rhetoric in comments aimed at State Senator Chris Koster, with the epithets "Flopster" and "not a real Democrat" being the most commonly applied. The first thing I think when I read these comments is, "Are these people out of their freakin' minds?" 
