The Strong Party Agenda

I have started a new “web-log” (blog) called the Strong Party Agenda. Access to this facility is limited to those as can contribute to the development of a competitive, as distinct from collaborative, Democratic Party in Harris County, Texas.

The historical premises of this undertaking are but two:

First, …

The present party has declined county-wide since 1974 and became a wholly submissive element of the bi-partisan, “Jim Crow”, concession-tending regime that had been established here a century earlier. In 1994, that degeneration took the form of a reactionary revolution statewide. Since then, the Democratic Party statewide has been in freefall with its incumbent office-holders routed and its other leaders searching for reciprocity from a concession-tending regime that is, simply, no longer bi-partisan.

Second, …

This party must now recover its republican foundations and focus on restoring majority rule within the party and within the Home Rule municipalities and Independent School Districts where it has (a) an electoral majority and (b) potential for raising the rate of political participation by those eligible and inclined to vote Democratic but not usually able or motivated to do so.

This situation calls for a party the likes of which nobody has any experience with here.

We need to restore some powerful, but archaic, traditions. We can only do that within our Convention System, where we still have “inherent”, if vestigial and largely unused, “powers” and do not have to seek permission from the other party. In other words, the party can be self-governing but only by going back to its roots, indeed, to its pre-Civil War origins.

The state subsidy of a “party nominating by primary election” is not adequate to maintain a party capable of doing much more than filing state-required forms with the Secretary of State or the County Clerk. The party cannot function as a “patronage chain” because, out of office, there is scarcely any patronage to distribute. This means it must be enterprising in order to be resourceful, eventually even self-sustaining.

Technology is pivotal in both these regards. It is the only declining-cost resource available to a washed-up patronage chain. The challenge is rapidly and efficiently deploying technology to “leap-frog” the other party in matters of political formation, mobilization, discipline, and action – the actual functions of a party.

TRADITION, ENTERPRISE & TECHNOLOGY are the components of this blog.