This is the beginning of wisdom:

DNC field representatives, the DPO officers, and the Executive Director looked expectedly at the lively crowd. The staff and officers formed a circle around the outer edges knowing full well the 2008 elections rest on the shoulders of these willing volunteers. Like a teeter-totter, the DPO needs the county organizations and the county organizations need the DPO. Finding the balance, creating just the right amount of tension between 36 organizations and the Democratic Party of Oregon to motivate one another, is seriously tricky.

It is important to get the balance right, so that everyone is on the same page and the folks in Portland realize there were those in recent years who heard words like "that's not what DPO does..." more often than hearing "This is what DPO does.." spelled out, will make for a smoother campaign season.

Everyone who works to get Democrats elected should be under the umbrella of DEMOCRATS, whether they be on the payroll of the party, or a legislative caucus, or whether they are a current/former county officer, or just a long time volunteer, they are all important.

And unless a paid staffer lives in a particular district, they should not be claiming they know how to win elections and people who live in the district should listen to them. Ain't no such revealed truth in politics, just a lot of people over the last decade plus saying there was. The turf battle stuff has got to stop.

Kathleen Hall Jamison, who works for an organization which checks ads for a factual errors (just wrote a book titled UNSPUN) was on Bill Moyers tonight. When asked about Mike Huckabee, she smiled and said it was great to see someone who didn't have a lot of money doing well in an election because he has excellent communication skills.

There once was a time when Democratic activists were proud of how well they could stretch a campaign dollar, because volunteer work and other things that can't be bought were their "secret weapon". This is not an election where "professionals" should be throwing out numbers saying a candidate without X seed money by Y date can't be taken seriously. It could be an election where an "impossible" candidate actually wins somewhere.

Our underfunded, "forgotten', inexperienced state rep. candidate in 2006 was an amazing woman who happened to be an energetic campaigner with an amazing life story and more in common with ordinary residents than the Republican incumbent with lots of Chamber of Commerce friends. It was the first election where I have ever seen (actions, body language, rhetoric, etc.) the incumbent nervous.

A big part of the challenger's message was a promised town hall every month. Ron Wyden's statewide pledge to have a town hall meeting open to the public in every county every year is the same sort of thing.

The incumbent in our district won but by a lesser margin than expected. The ultimate proof of the power of the challenger's message was that for the first time the incumbent held a town hall meeting during the 2007 session in a local school and everyone was invited to listen to her speak and then ask her questions on any topic.

There should be no reason why that strategy can't work in any district. In previous decades, legislators of both parties made a strong case for their position on particular issues by saying "When I went door to door, this issue was important to many people, and what most of them said was...".

The pendulum has swung so far towards analyzing statistics that perhaps it is time to go back to basics. I heard that Oprah Winfrey said today, while campaigning for Obama, "I am not here to tell you what to think, I am here to TELL YOU TO THINK" (her voice louder on those last words).

If Obama, Edwards, Huckabee (or for that matter Biden or Dodd) do well in Iowa next month, it won't be due to polls, focus groups and statistical analysis. It will be due to well organized candidates striking a chord with voters who were inspired to turn out for the caucuses.

Elections are a lot easier to organize than caucuses. But it is important to be careful about the details when analyzing election returns and other specifics like that. If one is going to quote statistics, they'd better be accurate. I'm glad Jenni did the analysis mentioned above--it should be helpful to Mult. Co. candidates.

But in other counties the problem may be candidate recruitment as much as anything. Like it or not, there are rural candidates / those with part rural districts who in recent years have felt burned by the FP process. On the other hand, there are well meaning local activists who don't pay a lot of attention to details and make flip remarks which alienate others. Along the lines of 2nd hand information passed along that "those last 3 candidates who ran in that district got 40% which is the Democratic base, so they are all the same and we need someone different" when it turns out that a) there was only one candidate who got 40% although being hideously outspent and with very little organizational support, the others got lower vote totals and b)treating potential candidates like interchangeable widgets is not likely to win friends and influence people. To the contrary, the more likely reaction might be "OK, you've got a better candidate? Best of luck on the campaign ".

Campaigns are run by people and are as subject to human nature as anything else. If a maverick Republican were to run for an open seat where the person is well known, and that person were to hold town hall meetings across the district and run a positive campaign, how would the Democratic candidate compete? By saying "This is what I believe and I hope you will vote for me" while engaging in open dialogue with voters? Or by looking at voting patterns and basing the campaigns on those stands on issues as if every voter's views can be assessed that way?

I wrote an email to a columnist recently about political myopia in which I said there are too many short sighted people who think the way insiders view politics is the way to win elections.

Hard work is the way to win elections, along with luck. A friend of mine was going door to door in a neighborhood one year when he saw a man working in his garage and about to drop something. He was able to run to the garage and help the man, and the next week the man wrote a nice letter to the editor explaining how impressed he was with this man and would vote for him. A Republican-leaning friend of mine voted for a Democratic legislative challenger one year because there was a woman in his office who had watched the young man grow up and spoke highly of him. People may vote for a candidate because their next door neighbor thinks highly of that person (or conversely make a decision based on personal dislike of the candidate or someone on the staff).

My point is this: I am glad this meeting is taking place, but Democrats should avoid being the "talking points" party the GOP has been for many years. Coastal cleanup and preparedness is not likely to be a big issue E. of the Cascades, and water rights for arid farmland (or the concerns of farmers which led them to support 49 over the issue of water rights vs. development) aren't likely to be issues in big cities like Portland or coastal towns worried about floods and tsunami threats.

The idea of a grand message for the whole state (aside from dialogue, problem solving, citizen involvement, etc.) has been tried before and was a very tough sell. One thing that did go over well, though, was the idea a couple of decades ago to have a shorter, more readable party platform. That idea came from some rural county chairs who wanted a platform short enough to be a full page ad in a rural newspaper. Long before the Internet, the message of the ad was simple: Don't let others tell you what Democrats believe, read for yourself"

The main point should be to remind everyone that Democrats are, at their best, the party of "we the people", not the party of "the leadership explains it all for you because you can't/ shouldn't think for yourself" which we saw so much of from Minnis, Scott, Rove, et al.

Actually Jenni, you are proving what a common sense Republican said to me in early 2006 (or so) about hoping Democrats would be bigger people if they got the majority than the stunt Scott pulled against Arnie Roblan.

You proved to be one of those "bigger people" Democrats, and you now have a story to tell anyone who says "Well, Democrats are as nasty as Republicans".

She is a lame duck and as I recall cast a few intelligent votes last session.

Now, had it been someone like Kim Thatcher...........