
They served lasagna and some kind of fettuccini pasta. They also had some salad, the kind with cranberries in it. And they had some garlic bread.
To get the food you have to stand in a long line, one that snakes around the room a bit. It’s self-serve, and there was ample opportunity for seconds.
I enjoyed the food. The presentation, well…not so much.
- First of all, the acoustics in that building of the fairgrounds is just terrible. This was made abundantly clear on numerous occasions when people got fired up, especially when Carville was speaking. His ‘th’ sounds were dreadful on the ears at times. So loud were they I thought about leaving early.
- Next, I never felt that our real problems were defined. I suppose one of the main reasons for this is because there’s still no game plan for 2016. People don’t know what to fight for, unless you count some failed accomplishments in the legislature. Of course, you can fight against what the other party is doing, and that’s about all the Democrats are capable of right now – holding the line.
- Finally, things weren’t coordinated. I walked into the building and showed my ticket and was told to head inside. Inside was a huge room. I’d never been there, I had no idea where to sit, I had no one to guide me. Paying $60 is a lot for me, and I didn’t bring friends, and I didn’t really have any there. Wouldn’t it be better to direct the proceedings a little more, helping to usher in a successful event?
I suppose the lack of coordination and direction that I saw tonight at the 2015 Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner is indicative of what Montana voters are seeing. It’s why they’re voting Republican. And they’re not just voting Republican in 2014 or the few years before that. They’re voting overwhelmingly Republican year after year and have been for decades.
We have no unions, yet all I heard tonight was how important fighting for unions was. It’s important to MEA-MFT, which is the only union they have. So few belong to that union that it’s not even funny. But when your party has so little left, you’ll cling to whatever you do have. Often that clinginess dissuades other from ever getting interested in you.
Democrats are real clingy with MEA-MFT right now, but most Montanans don’t even know what that is. And you see that year after year as the state gets redder and redder. I’m sorry, but paying some decades-long union boss $125,000 a year so Montana Democrats can collect more dark money through their teacher union funnels, well, I’m just not interested in that.
Most Montanans aren’t either, and it’s why this state is going red each year.
Democrats prided themselves on helping minorities tonight, and that’s great. More and more minorities and groups that are discriminated against are getting attention and better rights. But too often we neglect the majority to get this. Oftentimes our continuous efforts at getting this marginalize and alienate that majority, turning them away.
Democrats prided themselves on helping working people tonight, but I couldn’t tell you any specifics about that. I suppose that’s because none of the people that spoke is, or ever really was, a working person.
Monica Lindeen…wasn’t she a teacher? Angela McLean was, and I’m pretty sure Denise Juneau was too. Hell, Tester was a teacher and Hunter and Sesso were more white collar than blue. Bullock was a lawyer.
So you can understand why these folks can’t really address the huge and gaping problem within the Democratic Party right now – we have nothing that appeals to the vast majority of people in this state. But by God, we’ll stick with that, because the alternative come the 2017 legislative session is just too dire to think upon, should a Republican get into that governor’s chair.
Bullock is our best chance, for we’ll go another cycle without that legislature, and probably with even less gains than we got last time. I saw that clearly tonight, for it was nothing more than a bunch of beaten and whipped curs trying to lick their wounds while pretending they never got any. But that’s right – they never really got any new wounds, because they’ve been beaten and whipped and wounded for years now. What’s another shellacking in an off-year election compared to decades of slow defeat?
Hopefully Montana Democrats can look at how they got into this mess so they can devise how to get out of it.