More of This

Activists in West Virginia have taken control of the state Democratic Party apparatus.

This mirrors what happened in Nevada in April. 

Unfortunately, while the sweep was almost total, it did not include the party treasurer, so I would be looking very carefully at the financial transactions from this point on. (The losers in Nevada emptied the party bank accounts)

I would note that unlike Nevada, it does not appear that the staff has quit en mass, which is problematic.

While it means that some institutional memory is preserved, every one of the employees under the old Joe Manchin aligned party regime is a potential saboteur.

For decades, Sen. Joe Manchin has presided over West Virginia’s Democratic Party, crowning candidates and throwing cushy appointments to allies while the state’s jobs, wages, and environment have gradually been ground to dust. But earlier this month, a grassroots slate of over 50 Democrats took control of the West Virginia Democratic Party after winning a majority of seats on the executive committee and ousting party leadership, thus ending Manchin’s de facto control of the state party apparatus.

Now, after a six-year organizing push, every old guard party apparatchik — save for the treasurer — is out of office, replaced with activists from across the Democratic spectrum set on revitalizing the state and forcing renewed support from the national party. The June 18 victories mark the beginning of the end for an era defined by atrophy, nose-diving voter rolls, and just a single Democratic statewide representative: Manchin.

………

While Democrats treated West Virginia as a lost cause, the state and its party apparatus fell into disrepair at the hands of Manchin, who blamed his party’s statewide failures on progressive trends in the national party rather than his own lack of incentive to help anyone but himself and his allies.

Unlike Nevada, where shoe leather politics drove the turnout resulted in victory, in West Virginia, they immersed themselves in the often arcane rules of the state party and the DNC, and used this knowledge to win elections.  (Progressives should be doing both)

Now, all they need to do is to make sure that the staff, and the treasurer, don't try to f%$# them, because if their is anything true of so-called moderates in center-left parties, it is that they ware willing to destroy the party so that they can, "Preside over the ruins."