Lead, Follow, or Get the Fuck Out of the Way

I am 100% with Bill Hillman on this one. I know that there is a move in the blogosphere to Never Speak Ill of One's Party, but this party must change and it must change now.

Democrats, ask yourselves this:



Where would the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party have been without the energizing influence of Howard Dean, his campaign manager and Internet guru Joe Trippi, and their respective organizations, Democracy for America and Change for America?



Where would the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party have been without the imaginative and truly exceptional efforts of Wes Boyd, Eli Pariser and MoveOn.org?



Where would they have been without Michael Moore and George Soros and Bruce Springsteen and Al Franken and Michael Stipe?



Where would they have been without Rock the Vote, Vote or Die, Declare Yourself, and provocateurs like Chuck D., Russell Simmons and, yes, even P. Diddy?



Where would they have been without Air America Radio and the bloggers and grassroots groups like Operation Truth, Billionaires for Bush and PunkVoter?



And where would they have been without the nearly $130 million overall spending advantage the Democratic Party and Democratic-leaning groups had over their Republican counterparts?



These groups, and many others -- not to mention countless individual citizens -- did everything within their power to defeat George W. Bush. They contributed their time, their money, their energy and their talents. And yet, the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party simply didn't get the job done.



[snip]



...the Democratic Party has been getting away with this for far too long. There is a lack of accountability -- to funders, to volunteers and, most of all, to their voters -- that is breathtakingly irresponsible.



The bottom line for this election is simple: Individual citizens and independent groups, taking the burden upon themselves, did a superlative job of cultivating national dissatisfaction with the president and his policies. But the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party could not provide an acceptable enough alternative. They could not close the deal with America's swing voters.



There are no more excuses for this Democratic Party. It must change -- and change radically -- or it should die.