BY EDWIN E. VINEYARD

I have attended several Democratic affairs where you were present and reported on what you were doing as party chairman. I am convinced that you have worked very hard at this, and I commend you for your efforts.

You have tried and tried, but we still came out badly in Oklahoma.

I am ashamed of our Oklahoma voters.

It is difficult to know if this is ignorance, bias, just a Red State [redneck] mentality, or what.

Andrew Rice made a valiant effort against a sitting senatorial embarrassment to thinking people, and he still lost. We lost the Legislature. Dirty ads dominated our airwaves.

The question is: What can we do now?

Of course, we know that we have long been without much of a “ground game,” as they call it. You have tried hard on this with limited success.

Party mailings are expensive and of limited value, but we desperately need a regular, consistent communication system with our people all over the state. Websites are OK, but our site has a low percentage of visitors among our people with computers. Neither the state nor the national office has an e-mail communication system in place and functioning.

I think that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both had a highly organized contact system by e-mail. Some of us are also on MoveOn’s list. These were good for fundraising, but also for information, warnings, and happenings.

Andrew Rice had the beginnings of a system, at least with those of us who were donors and supplied addresses.

We need a party-based system for e-mails to be sent regularly and consistently to all party faithful with computers and to any proselytes for which we have data.

Andrew’s list would help. You may have some there. Maybe Obama’s list might be tapped, or Hillary’s.

With a Republican Legislature now in place, we can expect them to try for an agenda of measures repugnant to most of us. We need something going out every week on what this next Legislature is up to.

Some things can be done by volunteers. If I were in Oklahoma City, I would volunteer to keep an eye on the politics of the Capitol and write something weekly. There must be a volunteer or two there talented enough to do something to help with this.

Once the e-mail roster is organized and set up, the technical necessities of launching it are not too intricate. There must be a way to get this done.

We wish you the best of luck. We are going to need it in Oklahoma, the politically backward state.

– The author, AKA The Militant Moderate, lives in Enid, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer