There was an extremely unpopular gas tax.
There was the felon in the White House.
There are tiny children held in cages in America.
There was an abortion law that could have been a storyline on “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
There was Republican Supreme Court justices giving indications that they’re on the verge of handing Mike Hubbard a get-out-of-jail-free card.
There are absurd levels of pollution in the state’s waters.
There are still no plans to fix Alabama’s broken healthcare system.
There are absurd approvals of completely unprepared charter schools.
All of those things were ignored by the Alabama Democratic Party, except for two tweets criticizing the passage of the abortion ban.
There was no organized messaging. There was no broad plan of attack. There was no party leadership sending out directives and talking points, or encouraging elected leaders to hold press conferences.
There was … nothing.
And really, more than all of the other stuff — and there’s a whole ton of other stuff, I realize — that explains the real and true problem with the current leadership of the ADP.
They’re not connecting the party to voters.
And if they’re not doing that, what good are they? What’s the point of doing literally anything else, if you’re not drawing voters to your candidates? If you’re not pushing your message to voters? If you’re not explaining to the working men and women of Alabama how your ideas are better?
You don’t win elections on Election Day.
You win them with everyday messaging and everyday planning. You win them by coordinating from the ground up, by making sure that each and every time there’s a controversial topic, the voters of this state know full well where the Alabama Democratic Party and its leaders stand.
None of that is happening with the ADP now. It hasn’t been happening for a long, long time.
That alone should be reason enough to prompt change at the top. For Nancy Worley’s run as chair to come to an end.
But when you add the rest of the stuff to it, dear Lord, it’s like a sitcom.
Did you know that this bunch just decided to blow off deadlines imposed by the Democratic National Conference to rework the ADP bylaws? Just said, “ehhh, we’ll get to it when we can.”
That bylaws rework was part of a larger issue the DNC took with ADP’s recent re-election of Worley. DNC leadership ordered new elections to address a number of problems, and it is currently working to get ADP in compliance with national party rules.
Worley and her enabler, Alabama Democratic Conference chairman Joe Reed, have done all they can to stall and undercut those efforts. By simply ignoring them, it appears.
It’s so bad that the chairman of the DNC Credentials Committee was forced to rewrite the ADP bylaws, after Worley and ADP leadership failed repeatedly to respond to deadlines imposed by the DNC. There has still been no vote on that proposal.
This week, though, after weeks of haggling behind the scenes, the DNC finally put its foot down and told Worley that the new bylaws must be voted on and corrective action taken prior to the new elections for ADP leadership taking place. And all of that must take place prior to the DNC’s Aug. 20 meeting.
It would surprise no one if that deadline was missed too.
Because there’s seemingly only one specialty in the ADP at this point.
Doing nothing.
