Pennsylvania's Roadmap For Progressives Across America Who Are Fed Up With State Democratic Party Dysfunction

"This state's Democratic Party is like the Mickey Mouse Club, only with less cohesion and direction." There may be a few states where that dollop of reality is just plain false. But the state Democratic Parties overall are a collection of pointless messes, run by self-serving men and women with small minds, pedestrian outlooks and ironically big egos. There are almost no state Democratic Parties that aren't pitifully dysfunctional. And the first time I ever spoke with now-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, he gave me the distinct impression that his confidence in Pennsylvania's Democratic Party had been replaced with pity and disgust.

Now that Wolf, despite his party's functional incompetence, is a successful and popular governor, some get the distinct impression that he's ignoring the state party and replacing their functions with his own political action group, Rebuild Pennsylvania.

The stated mission of Rebuild Pennsylvania is to promote Gov. Tom Wolf's agenda and support candidates allied with him... Rebuild Pennsylvania aims to fill a vacuum left by the moribund state Democratic Party. The governor effectively severed ties with the party when he ran for office.

Pennsylvania has long been a swing state-- at least in the eyes of delusional Republicans. Lazy conservative pollsters always predict tight races that could go either way, even pollsters who are reporting in October and November-- as they prepare to be seen with egg all over their faces. For example, Susquehanna Polling predicted, a month before Election Day 2012, a 47-47% dead heat between Obama and Romney. Obama beat Romney 52-47%, just as he had beaten McCain 55-44% in 2008. Bush lost the state in 2000 and in 2004 when, respectively, Gore and then Kerry each scored 51%. And Bill Clinton beat incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1992 by around half a million votes, 45.15- 36.12%. Four years later Obama beat Bob Dole in Pennsylvania 49.17-39.9%. The last time a Republican presidential candidate won Pennsylvania was in 1988, when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by around 100,000 votes out of 4.5 million cast in the state.

The state Democrats managed to negate all these statewide wins by losing the state legislature-- right before it was time to redraw the congressional districts. That catastrophic gerrymander alone should have led to the firing of the whole upper echelon of the party. Even though Democrats were winning statewide-- and not just presidential elections (in 2012 Robert Casey won a U.S. Senate seat 54-45% and last year Wolf ousted Governor Tom Corbett 55-45%, a 10-point spread)-- Republicans gerrymandered the state legislative districts so harshly that they, the minority party, control the state House and the state Senate. The GOP-drawn districts yielded them a 30-20 majority in the Senate and a 120-83 majority in the House. Demographics and voting patterns would predict either a 9-9 split in congressional seats for the state or a 10-8 split favoring the Democrats. But the redrawn congressional map gives the Democrats not 10 seats or even 9, but a shockingly low 5 congressional seats. That's what the Pennsylvania Democratic Party's incomprehensible incompetence bestowed on the state's working families!

Currently, the state party is working with Chuck Schumer and Jon Tester at the DSCC to sabotage-- for petty personal and partisan reasons-- the senatorial campaign of former Congressman Joe Sestak. They would rather see Pat Toomey reelected than back an independent-minded thinker like Sestak-- a former admiral who doesn't kiss politician's filthy, corrupt butts.