I don't know if I am an activist anymore.

I know that where I live there is not much I can do to make any difference right now. It is strongly entrenched in the DLC mindset, has been for years. It was one of the earliest strongholds because of Governor Lawton Chiles and his Blue Dog type Southern Democrats. Chiles was a good man, I grew up knowing his family. But he was more Republican than Democrat, just like Bill Nelson and others in Florida.

I say I don't know if I am an activist...I am if writing about things that matter to me makes me one. I read Renee's post. My problem is I still care very much about my country. It is my party that I am not sure about.

I think I saw in 2004 the darkest part of the Democratic Party. I really did not understand that we ate our own. We were Democrats, but Howard Dean's campaign made us activists, caused us to do political on the ground work, the grunt work. We loved it. We don't do it anymore, at least not now.

Why? Because we lost faith in the party to stand up for us. We lost more after the 2006 election when we saw how Bush just kept on getting what he wanted.

Now to go into detail. We saw the destruction, deliberate with forethought and malice, of Howard Dean....complete with the attempts to humiliate and marginalize those of us who supported him. The part of the party that did that still controls the policy. They may not be making as much noise as they did in the last primary, but they are nonetheless in control of the issues.

A couple of examples.

Dean's" internet activists are negative and pessimistic

Mr. From:"That raises a critical question: How could the Democrats lose ground to the Republicans when the GOP is performing so badly? The answer, according to Stanley Greenberg, who took the poll, is that voters believe Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view."

In short, voters don't know what Democrats stand for. Why should they? For the most part, congressional Democrats, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, and the party's new Internet activists have delivered a largely negative and pessimistic message -- talking more about what's going wrong than how to make it right."

And these remarks from Mr. Peter Ross Range, editor of the Blueprint:

Dean's" supporters live in a "rarified universe."

He calls us the "cultural divide".

"If we didn't know it already, one critical fact was confirmed by the recent Pew Research Center survey of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign activists: There is a cultural divide in America. What's troubling is that it's inside the Democratic Party.

The Pew study, while focused on 11,500 Dean supporters, nonetheless opened a revealing window on the thinking of liberal activists in the Democratic Party as a whole. One thing it told us is that the party's most active wing lives in a rarified universe of what Pew calls "a different kind of Democrat."
(How snide and condescending, Mr. Range.)

To Mr From and Mr. Range, I still talk about what is going wrong so we can fix it. I still in the "rarified universe" in which some things are right and some things like invading and bombing a country that was not a threat are wrong.

I don't have a clue what the future holds for those of us who really are idealist and demanding that our party do the right thing. I don't think there is a leader of the party right now. Not a real leader who stands up for what is right. Dean has either chosen to be quiet or made to be quiet. Odds are Hillary is going to be the one in charge of the party very soon. In my mind that does not bode well for any of us who want real change.

I saw more of the dark heart of the party again recently when Florida worked with the Republicans to move up the primary...then sent out emails and press releases saying Dean was taking our votes away, to stop sending money to the DNC.

I don't know what my husband and I will do in the future about "activism". It appears not to matter too much locally.

Our party has good people in it, I want to believe they have our best interests at heart. I don't, though, not just yet. A lot of what we do in the future depends on what others do. It depends on who is chosen in the primary to become the head of the party, to be the one with power over all the committees. It depends on what Howard Dean does when he leaves his post. It depends on how hard our party fights back against the extremists who are in charge. I guess I will keep writing somewhere online...because I have to do so..it is part of who I am now.

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