Offering Candor

 

You’re signed up for 2025 Delaware Democratic Platform Public Comment Meeting | Wilmington. Thursday, May 8, 2025 6:30pm - 8pm EDT Location TBA, Wilmington, DE, 19805 They haven't told me where to assemble, only what day.  I'm not sure they want what my analytical, evidence-based mind has to offer.  Like my synagogue and parts of my medical world, my Democratic party often regards challenges to Important People of Title as a threat to agenda, when it should be the creation of agenda.  At least my medical world thrives amid its limitations, though now being challenged externally.  While good and decent Democrats control our state government, a fair number of the party's endorsed banner carriers got voted down by party primary voters.  The capable prevailed over the ideologues.  I am mostly happy with the people who represent me in Washington and in Dover and the County offices. People are good.  Policies are more open to discussion.  If the national scene mirrored my state better, we might have fared better.  My FB feed and email get messages from our elected officials, though not from party officers.  They tell how they will make speeches in opposition to the unfavorable electoral outcome.  Somehow, the wisdom of Pogo, "we have met the enemy and he is us" remains in denial.  I attended my local committee meetings for a few years.  I left when a newcomer introduced a resolution supporting a scripted anti-Semite.  As I questioned these supporters by Zoom, they went to different colleges than me and had limited historical knowledge or analytical skills.  They did fine at crowdspeak.  We can expand that nationally.  My text messaging feed is basically useless, cluttered with pleas for money from the Democratic Party to resist what the voters expressed as their majority will.  I cannot use this smartphone asset for its intended purpose of connecting with friends and doctors, drowned out by multiple pleas daily for the generosity of my credit card.  At least ask what I think about what they intend to promote.  They haven't. So an invitation came for input.  From a senior whose first Presidential vote went to McGovern.  He lost.  The media publicity seems to get directed to his ideological descendants who I can predict will have a similar electoral result.  I have a lot of opinions, most very centrist.  I think people do best when they get university degrees or post high school training.  I missed out on the draft, and other forms of public service, though one job could be called a variant of public service.  Should it be mandatory?  I think America and the people who have to give some of their young adult time would be better off for doing that.  The Israeli's have already conducted that experiment.  DEI?  Been done right by the Endocrine Society. Been done with harmful results in a lot of places.  Middle East?  Protest in a dignified way like I saw the students at NYU do recently.  Vandalizing my car if I kee;p my tallis bag emblem side up on my car seat just needs zero tolerance as official party platform. Even personal stuff like staying married for a long time, being loyal to profession and employers, reserving a few evenings a week for the public good, supporting my preferred religious community, giving my kids music lessons and Hebrew School.  Those are timeless contributions that have atrophied in importance by much of the Democratic public faces. When I lived in St. Louis in the mid 1970s, it was a swing state.  My representatives were Democrats as was one Senator.  The democrats controlled the state house, with the Speaker living in a townhouse across the street from my apartment.  No more.  That majority has been piddled for a lot of reasons, never to return in my lifetime.  When voters flip for cause, they rarely return.  The flipped for cause.  Southerners to restore what never should have been.  Working people and farmers with legitimate resentment of their perception of disdain that college grads have for them, to say nothing of appeasement of groups that have accomplished less than they did.  Jews next, perhaps.  Like the others, for cause. While my party does not tap my mind for its wisdom when it can tap my wallet to continue piddling any chance they might have to acquire political power again, the invitation to express myself to them requires me to take advantage.  They know they need centrists, having chased away their share one electoral drip at a time.  If they tell me where this event takes place, I will do my best to attend.