MeetUp… For What?

Well, I just returned home from the Decem­ber meet­ing of the Rich­mond Demo­c­ra­t­ic Meet­Up. This is the sec­ond one of these Mee­tups I’ve been to, and I can’t decide which one dis­s­a­point­ed me more. The first one was noth­ing but myself and four oth­ers sit­ting at a local cof­fee shop com­plain­ing about indi­vid­u­als in pow­er we obvi­ous­ly had­n’t vot­ed for. I’m sure you heard about it on the news that evening, giv­en all the sea-change in politcs that ensued.

The rea­son I went tonight, and the rea­son I had my hopes up again for this, was becuase tonight’s meet­ing was at the Vig­inia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Head­quar­ters. I thought this would be begin with a fiery Carville-esque speech to moti­vate the troops fol­lowed by a grass­roots brain­storm­ing ses­sion on elect­ing Lt. Govenor Kaine to the Govenors seat in ’05. Then we’d all be giv­en signs and bumper stick­ers to pass out, call-lists, talk­ing points, etc.

I got there about 5 min­utes late due to a cou­ple of acci­dents en-route (not mine, thank good­ness). Tim Kaine’s cam­paign man­ag­er, Mike Hen­ry, was tak­ing com­ments from the group… none of which I heard were of any use to this cam­paign. I did­n’t hear any­thing that was mak­ing this guy say any­thing oth­er than “yes, good idea, we’ll con­sid­er that.” Next, after some blath­er by the group (about 12 peo­ple), one of the oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cos asked for any oth­er ques­tions or com­ments. Then came a rant by one of the mem­bers com­plaign­ing about nev­er even hav­ing a Dem. to vote for on the bal­lot. I feel her pain, but the par­ty indi­vid­ual said they did­n’t have a “warm body” pol­i­cy for run­ning can­di­dates; that the par­ty only would run viable can­di­dates to win. Mon­ey, peo­ple, time are all lim­it­ed. Now this com­plaign­er went on to ques­tion what is viable? Well, why does­n’t she run for office then? I bet she’d tell you ‘oh, I would­n’t win.’ Well, that’s not viable.

I just got the fol­low up e‑mail for the meet­ing. It goes on about the groups opti­mism. I think Kaine will win, but not becuase of this bunch.