blogger interrupted

Part 1 of 2.  Part 2 is here.

Upon “hearing” of Pat O’Malley’s guilty plea to one felony count of “obscenity”, Cuyahoga County Democrats protested either WAY too much, or not at all.  Tim Hagan called it “a tragedy”.   Peter Lawson Jones was on TV saying he was “flabbergasted”.  And of course, Bill Mason, county prosecutor and O’Malley’s good buddy, was silent, which was the only response that seemed the least bit relevant.

Tragedy?  Flabbergasted?  Give me a break.  Not one person in county party circles believes that the power players have been completely unaware of Pat O’Malley’s little games.  If there’s one thing the Cuyahoga County Democrats do well it is gossip.  Everyone knows what everyone else is up to, all the time.  

And games like this are about all this county party is good for.  The PD did a front pager on Sunday about Cuyahoga County Democrats, a story which could have been written at any point in the last 20 or so years.  For some reason the PD never got around to this reality, and still hasn’t, namely, that the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party is literally a joke, has governed the county with utter incompetence and cronyism for decades, and couldn’t even figure out a way to deal with a serial criminal like Pat O’Malley.

Now O’Malley threatens to do to the county party what Marc Dann has done to the AG’s office.  And it can’t happen too soon.

When not obsessed with self-preservationary parlor games, the county party exists merely to suck funds from presidential campaigns every four years.  Just try visiting the Cuyahoga County Party HQ before ODP writes them a check in the fall.  If the door isn’t locked, you’ll walk into something resembling a funeral parlor.  Once ODP writes that big check from the soft money funds, and presidential staff start using the place as an office, fingers finally get lifted.  It’s not a political party, it’s a bucket to catch water when it rains.

But that’s not the end of the futility.  Memo to incoming Obama staff - don’t bother to try calling the precinct committee people on the county party list to start lifting those fingers.  They won’t.  A third of them are over 70, a third are waiting for marching orders (read: money) from either Bill Mason, Stephanie Tubbs Jone or Dennis Kucinich, and the other third are either dead or their seats vacant.  

Every presidential campaign I’ve worked on in Cuyahoga County since 1988, either as a volunteer or staff, has had to create an operation from nothing, from lists they themselves create out of the blue, with precisely zero help from the county party.  Zero.  In fact, the county party causes more trouble than it’s ever been worth, which is why in the end, it always comes down to money.  Street money, or the currency of yard signs, or the currency of staff.  

And the money does only one thing - keeps them happy.  Shuts them up.  Keeps them from sticking a knife in your back.  Keeps them from telling everyone else to stop delivering your literature.  It’s blackmail money, plain and simple.  

This year, it will be even worse.  O’Malley’s seat will be filled by a party vote, which will both split the party, and leave bad blood after.  And if Pat O’Malley takes Bill Mason down with him, what in a normal presidential year is merely a Balkan landscape of near civil war will simply become chaos.  Throw in the fact that Stephanie Tubbs Jones was with Hillary Clinton, Frank Jackson was with Obama, and Dennis Kucinich was with himself, and I wouldn’t want to be Cuyahoga County Coordinator for Barack Obama if my life depended on it.

Unless….

…that’s part 2.

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