These (more or less) were the remarks I delivered last night at the PDD event honoring PDD’s “Bob Stachnik Progressive Courage” awardees.
Thanks for having me here to say a few words about Bob Stachnik on the occasion of awarding these first Bob Stachnik Progressive Courage Award. Having worked with him through the Howard Dean meetup days and into the founding of PDD, I can say one thing with absolute authority – Bob would hate the name of this award.
This I know for sure. That is an objective fact. He was as humble as I am show offy. So everything else I say from here on out relies on entirely my faulty memory, and my biased world view.
Anyway, I can tell a story about the early days of PDD and it reveals a little bit about Bob and, I think why this award IS aptly named.
One of our early pieces of business in the PDD was setting up a meeting with Tom Carper to discuss his voting record and our group’s displeasure with it. I think Bob, his science mind at work, was under the impression that if we showed Carper compelling evidence that his votes were giving Bush a lot of bi-partisan cover, HURTING the party and really hurting the country, then we could influence him a little.
So we were in Carper’s office, Bob, Rebecca and I, and Bob laid out all of this research… By the way, the office was located within…I guess leased from Chase. That tells you everything you need to know about how this meeting is going.
At some point Caper brings out his own research. It was like a photocopied sheet from some organization’s directory that listed all the senators from most conservative to least conservative. Carper points out his name on the list and was very pleased to point out that his name fell between, someone like Mark Udall and John Glen. More conservative that Mark Udall, but less conservative than John Glen. “Big fucking deal” – is what I was thinking. But it was very meaningful for Carper.
And that was pretty much that. He satisfied himself that he was doing a good job, and everyone stands up to shake hands. But there is this little feature of meeting with a Senator that I didn’t know about. A staffer approaches with a camera and you get a picture to take with you as a souvenir.
I didn’t know that was the standard operating procedure. So I look at Carper and he is giving that same smile he always gives – like he just dreamed up a great new tax break to give banks, or something. And, being normal humans, Bob and Rebecca are smiling, and I have this wave of disgust washing over me so at the last second I give this big theatrical smirk and eyeroll.
So I’m pissed off, and as we left, I was fuming and said something to Bob like. “That was a waste of fucking time.”
And he looked at me a little confused and said, ”No it wasn’t.” He said. “We took a chip out of the wall. And that’s what we have to keep doing.”
He said that the other side appears to have everything; well-funded think tanks, a whole media infrastructure, lobbyists as far as the eye can see, Senators on the payroll… and we appear to have nothing. But that’s not true. We have our ability to keep chipping away.
We have people who, like Bob, know what the Democratic Party should be, we have people who know that the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party unless is looking out for the little guy – and we keep chipping away at it. And that takes courage.
So we need to chip away, but we don’t have forever. Bob’s untimely death teaches us that we are all on a clock. Our energies and creativity have an expiration date. So the ‘Bob Stachnik Progressive Courage Award’ says two things to me. It says – pick up that hammer and hit that wall, and do it today.
Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you guys.