With all due respect to our cherished donkey, I'd kind of like to see the logo to the right become the new symbol of the Democratic Party. A large and ferocious animal with big sharp teeth seems to me a better representation of the kind of mindset we ought to have when dealing with the minions of Rove.
Well, here in Michigan, the Blue Tiger is now officially on the prowl.
Meet the Blue Tiger Democrats. It's a brand new organization founded by former Kerry fundraiser and New York resident Bill Samuels. As fortune would have it, Michigan is one of the first three states in the country to participate (apparently MDP Chair Mark Brewer and Governor Granholm have teamed up to make this happen).
The Blue Tiger Dems website (read it and donate here. gives a far better breakdown of their program than I could ever give you here. However, in a nutshell the idea works like this: instead of blowing all of our money on TV commercials, junk mail, and robocalls, Blue Tiger proposes to create ways to harness the volunteer power of the Democratic Party to do positive and helpful things directly in the community, i.e., community service. What kinds of projects? Well, it could be the Utility Impact Education Project, which is focused on helping people in Michigan with their high utility bills. In New York, Blue Tiger has a program for teaching senior citizens how to use computers. Or in Arizona, an affort aimed at helping newly returned war veterans re-adjust to civilian life.
I dig the Blue Tigers - and I think this could actually work. For example, it only stands to reason that having someone from the Democratic Party help you figure out how to keep your lights and heat on would be much more likely to generate loyalty than the latest boring iteration of the same campaign commercial we've been running for the past 20 years. It's a way of putting our values into action and leading by example - and it's how the Democratic Party used to hold its base together.
The thing is, though, this has to be real - as in not just done to create a bullet point on a press release somewhere. If the primary goal becomes press release creation, it will fail. But if helping and reaching indivduals can remain the first priority, I think they may have something. Go Tigers! |
