Good read; thanks for the link. I was convinced until I got to the end and realized, "Wait a minute, this is the 21st century. There's no point and no way to resuscitate political machines on the 1850s model, with naked patronage, ballot-stuffing, wardheelers and bags of kickback cash stamped with $ signs." The author is right that the Democrats have largely conceded to the GOP their organizational clout at the school-board, county, state-house levels. And that down-ticket failure has bubbled up to cost them at least half of Congress.

So yeah, the Democrats need to rebuild their permanent base. But any new machine can't rely on a Richard Daley clone delivering the requested number of pre-filled ballot boxes on election night; it has to build on the enthusiasm, idealism and thirst for "hope and change" that Obama (and yes, Sanders) tapped into. For it to work, though, political leaders need to deliver. Voters are fed up with unfulfilled campaign rhetoric.

Peracles makes an interesting point (one that the article touches on only briefly). Howard Dean gave the DNC a "50-state strategy" that aimed at nurturing the grassroots while using social media in effective new ways and soliciting small donors. Barack Obama basically stole that template for his own successful campaign, and in the process sucked much of the oxygen out of the DNC. I never quite understood why Obama and Dean couldn't pool their skills to cement the party's ascendancy; perhaps it was as simple as a turf war over whether the president would run the party or vice versa. But Dean was basically dumped, not even getting offered Secretary of Health.

Obama kept Organizing for America going as a parallel structure to the DNC, and the party responded by choosing in turn Tim Kaine and Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chairpersons. As I've noted elsewhere, the Democrats proceeded to lose the late Ted Kennedy's crucial Senate seat, dozens of House elections, governorships and state majorities. It was like two kids seeing who could hold their breath longer.

Peracles thinks Hillary will heal the split between White House and Democratic establishment. That's quite likely; even out of power, she never ceased to be an insider. Whether that translates into a revitalized party at the grassroots remains to be seen. I certainly hope so.