Dysfunctional Democrats
How can a political party that can’t pick a chairman win a race for Governor and the U.S. Senate in a political climate where the President of their party is polling at 38% heading into the 2012 elections? That is the question Indiana Democrats will have to answer. Following a weekend political family fight that looked like something out of the Jerry Springer show, Democrats are going to have to do a lot of soul searching if they plan to have any victory next year.
As we first reported, on both occasions, Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker turned in his resignation last week. The decision was based in part on Parker wanting to move on and members of the party (i.e. Gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Donnelly) wanting a fresh face. Several other party members wanted a clean break from the Evan Bayh days.
The original choice to replace Parker was former Gregg Chief of Staff Tim Jeffers. However, too many Democrats were not happy with the way Jeffers was being forced on them, so he dropped out of the race, leaving the contest between Joel Miller and Sarah Riordan, both Democratic operatives in Marion County. Miller was backed by the Marion and Lake County delegations while Riordan had the backing of Gregg and Donnelly. Miller was also backed by Marion County Democratic Chairman Ed Treacy, a longtime enemy of Parker.
It turns out during Saturday’s meeting Riordan did not have enough votes to win so Parker withdrew his resignation and used a procedural move to allow appointed members of the State Central Committee to vote to accept his non-resignation. This has resulted not only in a cornucopia of bad blood between Democrats but Republicans are also taking shots at Gregg’s leadership.
This is not a good lead-in to 2012.
As I stated earlier, the political climate does not favor Democrats. Also, in order to successfully combat Republican efforts to implement Right to Work legislation and other measures, Democrats need to be united in both the legislature and on the campaign trail. In addition, the rank and file have to have faith in the party leadership as well. Yesterday did not help as numerous comments on Facebook and Twitter revealed angst to disgust at what happened Saturday.
Also, throw in the fact the Democrats have to find candidates to run against Greg Zoeller for Attorney General and more importantly, Tony Bennett for Superintendent of Public Instruction and you could see how 2012 could turn into a political disaster of Titanic proportions for Indiana Democrats. Right now the only declared candidate against Bennett is Justin Oakley, a teacher from Martinsville.
I think Hammond mayor Thom McDermott served up the sentiment the best in this quote from his Facebook page, “The Indiana Democratic Party should lead the way in holding fair & DEMOCRATIC elections. Instead we get this, a fraudulent chairman who is beholden to a former US Senator that doesn’t even live in Indiana any longer. Our party leadership is a disgrace.”
Granted people can always bury the hatchet, but from the feedback I saw following this weekend yesterday, the only place where Democrats are likely to bury the hatchet is in each other.
