General Discussion

Some of us have checked out for a while to protect our mental health. But it is also true that we have stopped doing anything politically because we know we have to regroup. We have to figure out what is broken in our methods and address them before investing any more of our energy into them. Otherwise we are just wasting time, energy, and money.

I can't speak for other state parties, but the party in Texas is poorly organized, poorly funded, and poorly supported by citizens. We need to figure out what needs to be done to garner more support and I suspect a lot of it has to do with providing education to citizens and making it accessible. This is something that the party has really overlooked and it hurt us. I feel like we had so many volunteers sign up to help with the election, so much energy available but we were unable to use it to our best advantage because we simply didn't know how and didn't understand what activities would return the best results for victories at the polls.

In addition to election and campaign volunteers, we need to be working in our communities, build our grassroots and educate people about who Democrats are and why we support our party. That is something we are woefully inadequate on. Now the party is mostly run and powered by retirees who have experience, but don't understand new technologies and how to harness them to candidates' advantage. And we need to have some damn fun! How else are we going to bring in younger, brighter, and more creative individuals? The trouble is, we need to study on these issues and others like them to figure out how to accomplish our goals.

So it's not that we've given up on the party. It's that we've stopped running the machine that is guaranteed to take us over the cliff if we don't overhaul it completely. We are regrouping so that we can have a shot at winning back and protecting our democracy.