In the month of June, with the Constitutional Deadline to pass a budget, the CDP did one move on the budget. And it was pathetic. There was no Theory of Change, no path for what they were doing to result in passing a budget quicker, or passing a more just budget. It was quite honestly one of the most pathetic online moves I have ever seen by a state party — anywhere in the country.
And then they got defensive. They started censoring comments at Calitics, giving a ‘0’ rating to disappear any criticism. They censored, again and again and again and again.
I’m trying to figure out how the California Democratic Party could have failed so completely, I think it might have gone something like this:
California Democrats deserve at least basic competence. There was nothing of the sort with a stone’s throw of this whole fiasco. First, there was the sin of omission, by not engaging in any actions that could have helped pass a just budget. Next, there was this pathetic move, that just made the CDP look incompetent (phone calls to 4 legislators is all they accomplished during the last week before the budget ran out, with half those calls coming from consultants or their mothers?). Third, any preteen can explain to you that trying to censor online just results in more people seeing what is trying to be hid. Forth, they didn’t quickly realize that their move was a blunder of epic proportions and react with something that would have helped.
And this isn’t just about the budget, with the CDP lacking basic competence online, how are they going to help Jerry Brown or Barbara Boxer or Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris?
California Democrats deserve better.
John Burton doesn’t even use a computer so he has no idea how bad they are making him look.
Along the same line, I cringed repeatedly at the CDP VBM conversion program after the 2010 Convention. They emailed all the convention delegates with a list of ten voters to go out and convert to Vote By Mail.
Only a few problems,
Link to VBM form didn’t work
When you were done, you were supposed to mail your completed forms to Registrar City, CA. (Is that between National City and Chula Vista?)
The ten voters they sent you to visit in the next week weren’t particularly close, didn’t speak your language, and weren’t householded.
Since you were supposed to send the forms in directly (to Registrar City, CA ), there was no way of tracking results.
So after people noted this, they emailed the request again it again, with the address corrected to the actual city where you were supposed to return the forms, but still no link to the VBM form and a voter select that made little sense. Oh, but you were supposed to report your results to your regional director.