incompetent |inˈkämpətənt; i ng-| adjective: not having or showing the necessary skills to do something successfully.
Sometimes, things just don’t work out the way they were planned. Sometimes they work out exactly as planned, returning surprising results.
Brad at WTL alerts us that the SCDP is still distributing the incorrect ballots to potential voters, despite a press conference last week stating that they were to be collected, corrected and redistributed. Way to follow through folks.
What first looked like hapless incompetence has shifted to willful negligence, or worse, pushing an agenda. Regardless of which is actually the case, there is no doubt that no one will be held accountable.
The SCDP Execom meets on November 6th, two days after the election. By then, either the joy of a Democratic President-elect will overpower any calls for accountability, or another stunning loss will leave the body defeated and deflated, perhaps pointing fingers at each other, perhaps not, with nothing to hold on to, retreating to the little fiefdoms of power that have helped sustain the SCDP’s dysfunction for so long.
I’ve never been much of a joiner, but I’ve never seen an organization of supposedly like-minded people work so hard against their own organization for their personal self-interest, or the interests of their faction leaders. In fact, it is this kind of factionalism that turns me off. Still, as a Democrat, and a delegate to the last county party convention (even though I was unable to attend the convention), it saddens me that the party is in this pathetic state.
One thing is clear from this whole imbroglio, the SCDP Execom has chosen to be and remain broken. Somewhere, somehow, it is in someone’s interest that the SCDP be a marginalized body, pliable enough to be manipulated when deemed necessary. But let’s not marginalize what’s going on in the SCDP by calling it a conspiracy.
Allegations of a conspiracy put us in the “tin foil hat” category that has marginalized activists for years. From selecting a weak, disinterested leader, to stacking the steering committee with devotees of a single faction, this is an organized and public effort to marginalize the party. There is no shadowy hand, or Carliyle Group, or Illuminati manipulating this thing. There is a group of people either more motivated, or just louder than the rest who have successfully worked the system to the advantage of their faction, period.
My hope going forward is that those who currently serve on the Execom will voice their outrage, and demand accountability from the Steering Committee and the Chair, but I’m not counting on it. Consensus building is not something that comes easily in the SCDP, and there are plenty of people who have more to gain from maintaining the current ineptitude of the party than from doing anything to make it everything it could be.