Peter Dolan

Elaine Kamarck characterizes unenrolled voters as an important and growing part of the electorate. This is a sign that what is about to follow is more of the same thinking that has hobbled the Democrats in recent years. She falls into the trap that snares so many Democrats of late, particularly those in leadership positions, of assuming that voters who choose not to enroll in the party are part Democrat and part Republican. She is off to try to figure out the secret to appealing to these unenrolled voters (let's see, is it socially liberal + fiscally conservative, or socially conservative + fiscally liberal...) without stopping to reflect on why these voters aren't joining, or are leaving, the party in the first place. What puzzles me is why the party would allow itself to be led by a group of voters who do not see how the party is relevant to their lives. Recently, Democrats in Gloucester began a campaign to enroll voters in the Democratic Party. We are going door to door. We are taking the time to listen, and we are taking the time to talk with unenrolled voters about the values that make us Democrats. If Kamarck is right in her observations that Democratic values are relevant at the national level, then it is our responsibility to talk to voters and persuade them that they also matter at the state and local levels. P.S. Kamarck's statement that "...the average working person of the 1990s bears little resemblance to the factory worker of the 1930s..." reflects a romanticized notion of the "information economy" that could only be held by someone who has never spent time in a cubicle prairie.