ATLANTA—Here is a good idea I fell over while waiting for the expected cannibal feast that is the election of a new chairman for the Democratic National Committee. Off in a function room, far from what appears to be the biggest student-council election there absolutely ever was, there was a panel discussion made up of the various organizations that among them contain the vast amount of energy that has produced mass demonstrations from the left, organizations which enjoy relationships with the Democratic Party establishment that can best be described as touchy. These included Black Lives Matter, the Women's March, and the Working Families Party.

It also included a new group called the Sister Precinct Project. It is the brainchild of a California public defender named Rita Bosworth, and it is a very good idea.

Bosworth came to political activism in the wake of the presidential election. She noticed that, in deep blue California, the jungle primary system had produced two Democratic candidates running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The spending on that campaign topped out at $20 million. That struck Bosworth as counterproductive. She wondered if some of that money might have been better spent in contested two-party races elsewhere. "It seemed silly," she said. "We spent $20 million on a race that we knew a Democrat was going to win, whereas in races across the country $20 million might go a long way. Also, I live in a very deeply blue district and, to be perfectly candid, I never volunteered because it's just a foregone conclusion that [the Democrat] is going to win.

"So, I thought, there are all these highly motivated people who want to contribute, but there's a frustration that, 'What am I supposed to do? I call my representative and she agrees with me.' I felt like there should have been an infrastructure in place so you can channel that energy to places across the country not in your district, but that need your help. During the election, I would get links saying, 'Call this to phone bank in Florida.' But I didn't get any context about why do I need to phone bank and why do I need to phone bank. The idea with Sister District is not only are we going to create the infrastructure, we are going to assign each local team with a specific race around the country so they have that connection with one other race."

The project has picked its first race. On Saturday, there is an election that will decide majority control of the Delaware state senate and the Sister Precinct folks have thrown in on the side of Stephanie Hansen, a Democratic senator. (The SPP and allied organizations have raised a third of Hansen's campaign money.) To me, this is the kind of actual shoe-leather politics for the cyber age that any political party is crazy not to try, especially at the state and local level. There is, of course, the eternal question of how what Bosworth and her group are proposing will work within the context of the formal Democratic Party. At this point, after the last Democratic primary season, you're almost afraid to ask the question.

"I would say, and that's part of what this panel is going to be about, is that they haven't really reached out to us and we haven't really collaborated with them, and we really want to be a bridge to the Democratic Party," Bosworth said. "But it does seem like there's a reason why people are reaching out to organizations like mine instead of the Democrats, and I understand that Democrats have the infrastructure and they've been doing this for a long time, but there's something about groups like mine, that we're not bogged down by the top-down structure.'

"There's something about groups like mine, that we're not bogged down by the top-down structure."

If there is an actual serious political event at this meeting it is not about who's going to be the next chairman of the party. Despite the great desire of people to continue litigating the 2016 primary campaign, you can't shine a flashlight between Keith Ellison, Pete Buttigieg, and Tom Perez on any of the major issues of the day. As hard as Buttigieg—and his principal surrogate here, Howard Dean—want to push it, the insider/outsider frame is largely a media concoction. (After all, Ellison also is running as an "outsider," largely because he has allied himself with the remnants of the Sanders campaign.) The real story lies in the relationship between groups like Bosworth's and the established framework of the national party. Right now, there is a great creative turbulence outside the party establishment, primarily on the left. This could be a gift from the gods if it's handled right. This being the Democratic Party, of course, this is the furthest thing from a sure thing.

"Those people on that panel," said one longtime national committeeman, "they could represent between them about 10 million people. There has to be a way to tap into that. If we can't, what the hell are we doing here?"

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From the establishment side, that means taking seriously people whom the Beltway wiseguys might otherwise dismiss as marginal. "Talk to us," said Alicia Garza, who was representing Black Lives Matter. "And understand that, for us, we want to dispense with the notion that 'identity politics' are hurting the party. What we're seeing now is the politics of white identity." This is certainly a conversation worth having, once the elite political media gets tired of sending people out on anthropological expeditions to the land of grumpy white folks. There should be room for it and the party likely will be better for it.

At the same time, these organizations, which are perfectly happy operating on their own hook, have to realize that the Democratic Party is not a vehicle exclusive to their issues. So, when a representative from the Women's March insisted that any candidate seeking its support must support 100 percent of their stated principles, you could hear the faint hoofbeats of the purity ponies in the distance. Somewhere, out there, is a synthesis that's going to be necessary if the Democratic Party is going to be able to use this ferment to its advantage. If it can't, it's hard to see from where the power in the party's future comes.

"There has to be a way to tap into that. If we can't, what the hell are we doing here?"

Congresswoman Barbara Lee rose to address the gathering and, in her words, you could see the outline of what might be possible. Lee started out in the radical California politics of the 1970s, including the political activities of the Black Panther Party. "I was a millennial before my time," Lee said. "I was a determined person who was not going to register to vote," she said. "Because I didn't think the two-party system made much sense to myself, my people, the country. I was on welfare. I had two small children. It was during the Vietnam war, and nobody was standing up for the issues I cared about. I consciously said I'm not going to register to vote.

"Here comes the first African-American woman elected to Congress, the Honorable Shirley Chisholm from Brooklyn. So Shirley convinced me, and I had a class I was flunking, because I was working in one of the presidential campaigns, to pass the class first of all and that I had to register to vote because, if I really believed in what I said I believed in, I had to be part of an outside movement to push elected officials to be accountable, but, at the same time, I had to be a party person and register to vote.

"So I registered to vote, and got an 'A' in the class. I went to Miami as a Shirley Chisholm delegate and wound up being the northern California chairman of the Democratic party. My whole life and work has been to try and make the Democratic Party more inclusive, more democratic, more progressive, and more involved between elections. I understand and agree with everyone not wanting to be Democrats, but I want to see more millennials registering as Democrats. I want to find out what to do to show you that we're for real, and that there are many members of Congress that want to connect with you."

No matter who gets elected chairman on Saturday, that's the only thing about the job that's worth doing because, in a very real sense, it's a life or death thing.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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