To the editor:
Last Saturday morning, I read with interest Dalton Delan’s commentary in The Berkshire Eagle about how “[t]he death-spiral of the Democratic Party can still be arrested in 2026, but only if they manage to focus hyper-locally in the midterm elections and flip the House of Representatives.” It caused me to reflect on the overall need for the Democratic Party to get back to being “smart” with the agendas it is advocating and the leadership it puts forth at all levels of government. The party needs to get away from its tendency to promote disparate, progressive agendas and instead focus on programs and projects that serve the needs and desires of the greater majority of the population that identifies with “Democratic ideals.” There is strength in unity, and success is driven by focus and resolve.
And then I had the experience of attending the Stockbridge Democratic Committee’s caucus to select those local candidates who would receive the committee’s endorsement for the upcoming town elections. Unbelievably, the committee’s endorsement for the contested Select Board election went not to the experienced incumbent who has kept the town on a steady course for the past three years, but instead to a candidate who has no prior experience in municipal governance, who was unprepared to answer any substantive questions other than to say that she would learn if and when she was elected. Why hadn’t she done her homework? The candidate did proclaim that she was “all in favor of the RTE [resident tax exemption],” but she was completely unable to explain how RTE works and what the impact would be for the town and the local taxpayers. She also did not have the wisdom or the discretion to withhold her personal feelings regarding an open permit matter currently pending before the Select Board, which, if elected, she could be called upon to adjudicate. Indeed, the candidate endorsed by the committee had resigned from her last elected position only weeks into the job; will she do the same when the pressures of the Select Board become too much?
Sadly, this candidate received the committee’s endorsement at the hands of a small, elite, and vocal group of citizens, motivated by their own agendas. It is not an endorsement based on the committee’s professed purpose to promote and support “Democratic values,” and it does not necessarily represent the collective view of the Democratic populus. This situation is emblematic of why the national Democratic Party is in such disarray: The personal interests of a few noisemakers get pushed ahead of the interests of the whole.
Thomas R. Manisero
Stockbridge
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