Faced with Tom Schaller's defense of Terry McCauliffe on the grounds that he doesn't take a salary, it seems appropriate to bring up
McCauliffe's $18 million profit from the sale of Global Crossing stock. You know, Global Crossing, the company that lost billions for regular investors and enriched the insiders.
Telecommunications is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country, where government and business intersect and mix. A lot of Democratic and Republican leaders and donors profited from the dotcom and telecom bubble, but most Americans did not; in fact, they suffered, and suffered badly.
I think it reflects very poorly on the DNC that the party of the middle class has a plutocrat advocating its policies. But it's just a silly argument to make that McCauliffe, and Democratic insiders generically, don't profit from their hard work on our behalf. They do.
I could go on about how it's bad PR for McCauliffe to be the spokesperson for the DNC, and that it's not necessarily a good thing that there's a strong radio placement operation to get his voice on media. Where is everyone else in the party, the old, the young, the poor, the middle class, the 'real' Democrats? Where is the media training and exposure our youth need so much? Also, bad organizations are always whining about budgets, insufficient resources, inadequte money, yada yada, when really, there's a cultural/strategic problem at the heart of the difficulties. This is why Moveon.org is successful on a small budget and without lots of whizbang awesomely expensive technology.
Finally, I am not without sympathy for staffers at the DNC; bad organizations trap a lot of smart dedicated people, and no one is fully responsible for their creation. I fully admit that I don't know that much about politics, and that some of us need to pipe down on the conspiracy theories and the 'DLC controls all' rhetoric. Nor do I think that McCauliffe is a bad guy or a bad manager; I don't know him, and I don't know if he's doing a good or bad job. The Demzilla db is a good idea, of course, but anyone can brag about clean data, and there's no way to tell (the political technology people tell me mixed things). But really, that's not the point. The point is that the charade of the poor little insiders is just that, a charade.
I don't know. We all know there are problems, and that's natural. We are all humans, and no one is above reproach. But I'd really like a mea culpa from someone in the Democratic Party, someone to take some responsibility for all that has gone wrong. Or at least an explanation. That would go a long way towards beginning to heal this rift. Some accountability, a conversation, two-way dialogue. That's not too much to ask, and if the DNC delivers it, they will reap lots and lots and lots of small donations.