Philosoraptor, I haven't always appreciated your posts but this one spoke volumes. Seems to me this is something that has rolled around in your head for a while, you've givent a lot of thought to this topic. Wnat to know what I think was the most important part of this post? This:

Show me. SHOW ME WHAT TO DO. In the meantime, they are robbing us blind and murdering thousands while we all sit around challenging each other to come up with a plan.

First, you are correct in that our discussion here, especially the more useless parts, are doing nothing to stop the horrors you cite. This also frustrates me.

Second was the "show me what to do" part. In the time between election 2000 and election 2002 I read at DU, a lot. It was smaller and seemed more serious, it was packed with really informative posts, both OPs and subsequent commentary full of facts, links, quote, etc. I read and read, like crazy. Learned so much! I was inspired to get involved and jumped in on election day 2002. I have worked on teh effort for full time ever since. In that space of time I went from clueless volunteer to Congressional district chair, it was like the Evelyn Wood speed-course in local and state politics.

Anyway, I feel very qualified to answer your inquiry and shared my background so you'd understand why I felt that way.

From where I sit today, in a 14 county Cong. district, much of it rural and 12 of them having gone red in 04, I see plainly that our potential strength lies in our county organizations. Many are incredibly weak or even non-existent. It's quite sad really. Oddly, even the counties that have zero party activity respond well to contact from the District. I get lots of notes and checks from those counties when I aend out a mailing. After having grown membership for my local county party before district involvement I knew all about how to do it. I went to each county party, or at least the chair if there was no party, and went through how to build the lcoal party. Raised money for the district and funded memebership drives via mailing for many counties. Lo and behold they actually got money and memebers and volunteers! the Gospel according to Julie, as far as these 14 counties are concerned, is this: Build and strengthen the county parties and we will make ourselves gerrymander-proof. If we can build a "chain" of sorts, each precinct being a link of it, and make each link of it strong, they can't be weakened no matter how they are joined.

Find your county party. Go to their meetings. Get involved. Work the fundraisers, recruit dues paying members and volunteers and then gain some visibility in your community. If there has been a lack of Dem candidates in your ara, I assure you a strong local party will remedy that. Here's an example;

Prior to 04 our county party was invisible and very small. After some serious membership drive efforts (aside from mailings we signed up new members at events and the primary/caucus for 04--we signed 72 new members in 6 hours that day!!!), fundraising efforts and smart marketing, we made huge electoral gains (won the city for the first time in living memory!) and established a permanent store-front office. While we still didn't win the county we made a huge mark, everyone knew we were there. Even in our little burg we turned out 1500 protesters when Bush came to town! What do you know, two years later for mid-terms we have five viable county commision candidates, a superb state house candidate and we actually have a primary for the state Senate seat! In 04 we had one county commission candidate and that was it. Incredible what a good reputation for the local party can do in regard to candidate recruitment.

So anyway, I would be glad to continue the conversation via PM with you if you would like any particulars in regard to getting things done. So glad you asked though I apologize for the verbose response. It is my passion after all.

Cheers --Julie