The flurry of holidays was a blessing.
Thanksgiving arrived and then Christmas, providing convenient detours to talk literal turkey and be a gift of absence- a respite from duties that were initially shirked and now abandoned.
We’re thinking, though, there was a consciousness of dereliction given the chivalry of the executive who offered up his shoulder to be laden with blame.
The preemptive apology may as well have come with flashing red lights.
It was coming from the Party Chair, whose five year tenure has been an extended mea culpa for his winning streak of losing campaigns at every level of competition.
We may have been impressed if we hadn’t seen that stab at honor before.
Even if we hadn’t, we’re amongst the constituents with the kind exposure that equips us to recognize… to be kind… shallow sincerity in absorbing blame to deflect the magnitude of failure.
And if it weren’t coming from the Party to which we’ve hitched our political fortunes, we may have read the apology and moved on but it’s this pattern of repetition and promise to ‘soul search’ that tells us TEAM EXECUTIVE thinks we’re not nimble enough to recognize their administrative irreverence, when we see it.
They’ve spent the period postelection in a protracted narrative of pointing to what the rival Party is doing…as if that’s the balm to soothe our political wounds after yet, another trashing, in yet, another election.
It’s another rewind, were thinking, after touting initiatives to expand voter registration and airing weekly podcasts claiming South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) in roads into areas that were not always reachable.
It’s not even like they over promise. It’s more like they under work because they roll out the same failed plan of the last loss, add a few new catchwords then label it a new plan. Register 46 has seen its share of nominal variations and rebirths and the Party loses consistently with the same margins, then rolls right along into its next election misadventure.
We’re submitting again, that there is a duty to debrief us,constituents, that the SCDP Executive is yet to fulfill. They are salaried employees, ostensibly working for us and raising funds for the political entity that exists in our name. So we’re taking the absence of a debrief, almost 60 days postelection, as a failure to fulfill their paid obligation.
As paid operatives, with resumes that tout their expertise in political administration, we’re thinking that they know a debrief is done immediately after an election, when experiences are palpable, when recall is fresh, and when foresight could be honed, based upon these elements. To postpone a debrief, which is critical to future planning, is to defer an opportunity to do better.
This is why the Chair’s falling on his sword, in a dramatic rendition of accepting blame for his winning streak of massive losses, is a distraction we’re ignoring and vociferously, this time. We know that taking blame is easy to do because all it requires is you, in your choice of histrionics, to say you take the blame.
What we’ve never heard is that they’ve taken the responsibility because this requires action that is visibly remedial, strategy that is fundamental change and masterful tactics that are flexible enough to meet evolving needs.
What we’re waiting on in the debrief is for TEAM EXECUTIVE to break down the factors that contributed to losses in every contested area, from knowledge of demographics, to candidate outreach and all the political vehicles that were deployed in the effort.
And this will give us a true picture of effort expended.
The Party Chair’s preoccupation with correcting perceived wrongs in the rival Party seems to supersede his duty to plan and produce a debrief. His proclivity for the public brawl is another workplace behavior we wouldn’t file under ‘strengths’.
His recent post, supporting a call for Ralph Norman’s resignation, is the kind of dramatic irony we get too often from the SCDP ……overconfident that we lack the political sophistication to separate stuff from substance, that our preference has surrendered to the political pugilism he has branded the Party with.
We’d like him know that his reputation doesn’t get to hide in our amnesia…that we’re still waiting on the ’22 Election Debrief- the administrative tool for course correction- and that we’re expecting it to be an open forum and not the closed club meeting that ends with a stubborn reliance on what worked in the past, accented with the proverbial minor tweaks, to feign overhaul.
After all, we are the Party.
