“This is why we can’t have nice things” is the refrain of a local (and therefore by definition Democratic) member of the state legislature, a relatively middle-of-the-road person who winces when politics manages to inveigle its way into places it doesn’t belong, wrecking things in the process.
We thought about that in recent weeks during the terribly unpleasant back and forth over the McLean Community Center Governing Board election, which concluded a few weeks back.
The Dranesville District Democratic Committee spied an opening, issuing de-facto endorsements of three of the candidates in the field.
(Ironically, the Democrats didn’t seem to even know what their chosen trio was running for, calling it in one missive the “Board of Governors” – the name for the group that runs the Academy Awards but not for the one running the McLean Community Center.)
The Democratic candidates won, and maybe the trio would have emerged victorious regardless. And heck, they may well be outstanding in their service to the community; time will tell. But the whole thing nonetheless has a stench to it. And that stench may linger.
Is it really necessary for a political party, of any stripe, to engage in such a manner? Is the desire for absolute, oligarchical power in Fairfax County among Democrats so all-consuming that they’ll go to extremes such as this to crush anything that might stand in the way of that goal?
Politicization of erstwhile local, nonpartisan bodies is no virtue. You’d think leadership of the Dranesville Democratic establishment would have better things on which to spend its time, but perhaps they’re bored. Our free suggestion: Use some of your resources in an effort to fend off the national political bloodbath Democrats may face in November, rather than taking a governance board of a local community center in a partisan direction.
Mitch McConnell (of U.S. Senate renown) is no charmer, but he does tend to speak the truth. When Democrats, years back, started jiggering with Senate rules to allow court nominations to proceed in a purely partisan manner, McConnell told them they’d come to regret it, sooner rather than later.
Such may be the case here, too.