Alex Sink’s (Second) Failure Is Another In Long Line of FDP Disappointments That Must Be Addressed | The Florida Squeeze

The Florida Squeeze takes its aim at the failings of the Florida Democratic Party and its inability to win "winnable" races, like the one between Jolly and Sink. As we know locally, when we do have an election, the real strength of a campaign is its ground game or field operations. Party operatives have more recently relied on high dollar TV ads and consultants which benefit at the cost of the party's future success. Click title for link. Here is a bit of the shaming contained in the article.

It’ll be easier if you’d just admit it. Stop fighting it, and just concede the fact that the Florida Democratic Party has completely lost its soul and it’s costing us winnable seats, so we can get down to the business of fixing whats broken and whats arcane. Former Bank Of America Banker, Alex Sink lost this race to Republican lobbyist David Jolly despite outspending the republican by a 4-1 margin on the airwaves.   She lost this race 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent even though she carried the district in her 2010 run for Governor and President Obama President carried the district in 2008 and 2012. Yes, as The Young Turks put it, Alex Sink is arguably the worst politician in Florida, but this loss reinforces the structural problems within the Florida Democratic Party.
If you’re a Democrat in Florida these types of losses are all too familiar to you, and if you’ve worked or volunteered for the party in recent years, I’m betting your frustrations are mounting just as high as mine.  We all know what the problems are – candidate recruitment, development, and base outreach. But why, miserable loss after miserable loss, does nothing change? Why don’t the tactics of the Florida Democratic Party change? Because the structure upon which the Party sits is fundamentally flawed. That structure doesn’t care if we win these elections and others like them… as long as the donations keep piling in, our consultants and operatives are paid, and lastly, that our status quo way of doing things and selecting candidates stays in tact. Reality Check: until it’s changed, FDP will continue to suffer heartbreak after heartbreak in non-Presidential election cycles and remain a laughing stock in national Democratic circles.