you said heroes are needed so heroes get made

It's amazing what a little disgust will do; I fired this off in one draft tonight:

Dear Democratic Party,

I am a registered Democrat and I came to the Democratic Party website looking for information on the nominating process for the presidential election. I'd hoped to find a detailed schedule and explanation of how things worked from here, but I wasn't necessarily surprised when I didn't find it. I can check Wikipedia or news sources for that information, and that's fine, although it would be nice if the organizers of the primaries were a firsthand source.

What did surprise me, however, is that the main page of the Democratic Party website is all about the GOP. Do you not realize that this only reaffirms so many of the criticisms of the Democratic Party, especially regarding a conspicuous lack of leadership? Our country is at a major crossroads and Democrats have (and have had since the 2006 election cycle) an historic opportunity to shift the balance of power in a fundamental way. Not since FDR has the opportunity for realignment in the DNC's favor been so ripe. Seven years of Rove and Bush have left the Republican party in tatters, and more independents and Republicans than ever before are looking to the Democratic party to lead the nation out of this mess.

And yet, the Democratic majority Congress seems to have been sitting on its hands since its inauguration, and the party itself, as evidenced by your website, the most easliy-accessed source of direct information about the party and its platform, says almost nothing about the party or what it stands for, but instead seems content with complaining about the other side of the aisle.

I sincerely hope that Barack Obama's new kind of politics keeps its momentum going through New Hampshire, South Carolina, and beyond. Among the field of Democratic candidates, he holds the most promise of rallying the Democratic party to its calling and bringing true leadership to a lost and bruised nation. But even if he doesn't prevail, it is my hope that the party will somehow realize that strength, courage, and conviction are leadership qualities, and that whining is not. It is not enough to simply offer an alternative to the status quo. We should be defined in terms of what we believe in rather than in terms only of how we differ from the other guys. Rather than talk about what they're doing wrong, shouldn't we focus on what we can do right?

Wake up, smell the caucus results, and stop making us look bad.

Song for today:
Bruce Springsteen - Devil's Arcade