Blog: Eric Schneiderman

His suggetion for a principle? None other than one my friend Paperwight wrote a year ago: "Everybody gets a fair shot." Simple and powerful.

During the Q&A, it was amazing to see how, immediately after a speech about how we need to create an organization instead of just find the tactic du jour, most of the questions took the form, "I understand what you are saying, but what about just ?" It'll take a long time for many old-time activists to get out of their well-word ruts of thinking.

BTW, every time I write Schneiderman I can't help but hum a little tune:

Schneider-Man
Schneider-Man
Does whatever a Schneider can
Writes a bill, any size
Beats Republicans just like flies
Look out - here comes the Schneider-Man

Wednesday, a rally with the Alliance for Quality Education with Laughing Liberally comedian Katie Halper, State Senator Eric Schneiderman, and actress Cynthia Nixon, who is a very sweet person, put on the Drinking Liberally button I presented her, and then stayed around to talk to people after the event.

Thursday, Drinking Liberally featuring special appearances by Congressman and mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who stopped by and made a few brief remarks, and City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Gifford Miller, who went one better by staying around for almost an hour, drinking, eating Rudy's free hot dogs, and impressing many attendees.

And on Friday the Thirteenth, the final 42nd Street performance of ImproVision, and Brian Rosenthal's 27th birthday.

I need nearly a whole day off just to edit the photos!

But opinions aren't fixed, and most importantly the relative priorities aren't fixed. Why do many voters think that "Christian values" means banning abortion and gay marriage, rather than improving the quality of education and finding ways to help the poor? Why do they think that "security" means starting wars in countries that didn't attack us while failing to inspect shipping containers or put guards around nuclear facilities?

We should neither "move left" nor "be more centrist." We should identify those core principles of Democrats which do resonate throughout the country and aggressively communicate those to all voters. As NY State Senator Eric Schneiderman said, don't talk about moving to the center, talk about moving the center back to the center. Right now voters hear principled persuasion coming from the right, moving the electorate farther right, and "ok we agree with that but not this" from the left.

As for who runs in 2008, please don't think so much about that. A huge problem with the party is that it's mostly small set of prominent national celebrity figures without a lot of local community involvement. There are a host of local conservative-leaning institutions from Chambers of Commerce to churches across the country explaining to citizens why they should be Republicans. They have surrogates on all the media shows arguing for the conservative viewpoints. Then every four years the Democrats pop up and expect one national figure to singlehandedly build a nationwide party infrastructure, develop a message, communicate it widely, and get a majority of Americans to vote for ideas they're just hearing for the first time.

When Bush ran in 2000 he didn't invent the conservative message. He didn't build up the party. He was just a guy chosen by a larger ongoing organization to run for a specific office. Rather than debating how far right we should move or who should run in 2008, we should be figuring out how to build the ongoing campaign in 50 states starting at the local level. And that's what the DNC chair needs to do.

It's not about where the chair is on the political spectrum, but whether the chair will build a robust party or maintain its narrow, short-term focus. I fear the interest groups that make up the party today want a weak chair who won't challenge their power. We need the opposite. I'm not sure Howard Dean is the guy, but I doubt Tom Vilsack is either. Maybe it's Simon Rosenberg, who has built a credible organization and hit a lot of important themes when he spoke at the Morning After Conference we organized this past weekend. But the building needs to be done and we need a chair who will do it.