It is all there waiting for you. First there is the really bad news on the declining work force in New Mexico. Thousands are just giving up looking for decent jobs and either moving out of state or becoming couch potatoes. And what jobs there are pay a pittance minimum wage that the Chamber of Commerce and Governor Susana Martinez guaranteed with her veto of a raise in that wage. This state is consuming itself in poverty while the Governor gets ready to have a $10,000 a person fund raiser at a trendy spa in Taos for her corporate supporters to hand over the cash.
This is what prospective Democratic party chairman should be talking about. Constantly! But, Martinez continues to get a break on criticism. Here is an idea. One of the TV News Stations should demand a one hour interview in prime time with her hosted by an economist, a reporter, and an unemployed person so they can try and elicit some answers from her on the current state of affairs. I think then people would realize just how much she is in over her head. And the TV station should do a ten second story every night on how the Governor has refused to go in front of a large TV audience to explain what she intends to do. Every night.
This is what prospective Democratic party chairman should be talking about. Constantly! But, Martinez continues to get a break on criticism. Here is an idea. One of the TV News Stations should demand a one hour interview in prime time with her hosted by an economist, a reporter, and an unemployed person so they can try and elicit some answers from her on the current state of affairs. I think then people would realize just how much she is in over her head. And the TV station should do a ten second story every night on how the Governor has refused to go in front of a large TV audience to explain what she intends to do. Every night.
5 comments:
There's currently nothing on the state Democratic Party's web site critical of the governor. You have to go back a ways into their blog to find any of that.
http://www.nmdemocrats.org/
There is a way to contact them if you want to draw their attention to the excellent suggestions for them made by Jim Baca today, which I will do as soon as I finish this.
If you do go back a ways into their blog they weigh in against the governor now and then, but judging from the fact that no one ever leaves comments on the blog it seems doubtful it's read very much or of any practical use. Something like this could be a way of keeping party members on the same page, but with no comments left, I'm not sure they are paying attention.
A few blog posts back, it talks about a press conference held by some party leaders about the Albuquerque mail-in ballot fiasco, and it looks like the press conference resulted in a story in the Journal.
That kind of thing should be used regularly. Besides getting the message out, it would eventually elicit responses from Republicans, which would, as they say in Journalism, give the story some legs. It would keep it in the news for awhile.
Billboards could have a similar effect. If Democrats started putting up big billboards along the interstate those would have some effect in themselves, and they might cause Republicans to respond with their own billboards. I can envision stories in both the paper and TV about the billboard wars.
If you did more things like this, and things I can't even think of right now, you'd 1, have the visibility of the party raised, and 2, set up a situation where the Republican and Democratic messages are held up against each other, in spite of the best efforts of the Journal. If the Democratic message is a populist one it will always win.
I confess I don't know much about how party politics works. Democrats do get themselves elected in New Mexico. Is this just individual initiative? The absence of a visible, cohesive message from them would seem to indicate they are all pretty much free agents.
I imagine people get involved in the party for their own reasons -- interest, time, social reasons, etc. I don't know how you'd get there but in theory if the party was broadly based, and based in the working class, it could be much more effective, and it could keep these national Democrats in line, who apparently kow tow to the national party line if they do anything at all.
The interests of the majority of New Mexicans who are struggling now, the ones you talk about in your post, are not in line with the interests of Barak Obama and Harry Reid. Imagine, if the working people of New Mexico ever saw that their interests are being forcefully expressed by Democrats in Santa Fe and Washington. That would keep people engaged, make them feel better about life, make them feel like they had a stake in things, and make the party a real force.
You're a whacko dude. Get over it.
Rachel Maddow threw the first stone. Good for her.
It won't be until the national media comes in (and they will) that any of this gets resolved. Sam Bregman is nice enough but he wants to be Governor so he will play nice. Not sure what Ms Lara wants but she is based out of C-Bad. I lived there and they don't even read the Journal, they read the Lubbock newspapers. I don't remember seeing the Journal sold anywhere.
The democratic party is seen by most blue collar people I know as being just as corrupt and bought and paid for as Repubs. The state's economy has always been about resource extraction and low wages with heavy gov't subsidies for the ranching, farming, and war industries, but not so much for education and services. Real estate developers "planned" the city's urban sprawl. Little money was put into infrastructure or education, where it was needed to create an educated work force. Many young people are simply leaving a state they love because the economy and infrastructure is terrible here.
Since the early 60's when my dad retired here, Albuquerque, in particular, has always been one more project or company away from becoming a "real city". Never happened. Probably never will.
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