Local Democrats heard a message of optimism from elected officials about the 2012 election at the Southern Maryland Democratic Summit Saturday in Waldorf. Governor Martin O’Malley, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, Rep. Steny Hoyer, Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, and representatives of the state party and Obama campaign rallied the more than a hundred registered attendees with a well-received positive message.
Southern Maryland is overwhelmingly Democratic as is Maryland. But the 28,000 advantage in Southern Maryland is almost entirely in Charles County, according to Maryland Democratic Party Executive Director David Sloan. Calvert has a 523 Democratic advantage over Republicans and St. Mary’s, an 811 advantage. St. Mary’s and Calvert have been consistently electing Republicans in recent years, especially with Independent voter registration numbers on the increase.
Researcher Frederick Yang cautioned that even Democratic Maryland is not immune to counter trends. “When the country catches pneumonia Maryland can catch a cold,” was the way he described it. He said polling has shown a “frustrated, disagreeable and angry” electorate but also one that has become increasingly hopeful during 2011.
Yang said the discontent is becoming increasingly focused on the Republican Congress. “A number of the people they think they voted for in 2010 haven’t come to fruition,” he said. Yang said the polls confirm what many of the speakers talked about throughout the day: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
“If these are tough time to be in public office it is because these are tough times for the people,” Hoyer said. He added that the Democratic Party is the party of the great middle class and best poised to solve the country’s problems.
Hoyer said, “The problem is the previous administration dug us in a hole and lost eight million jobs.” Two million of those jobs have been regained in the last 20 months, he said. “We have made progress but not enough,” he noted. Hoyer added later on, “No president since Abraham Lincoln has had a tougher job.”
Hoyer said the administration’s Jobs Bill is the only solution on the table because the Republicans have offered no alternative. “Every economist says President Obama’s Jobs Bill will grow jobs,” he said.
Hoyer said the party’s core values of “commitment, opportunity and responsibility” for “the economy, education, energy and the environment” are also the core values of the middle class.
Thus, he said the goal of everyone in the room and in the party should be “rebuilding the American dream.” That can’t be done, he said, “without revitalizing the economy.” That has been the theme of his recent visits to the district, “Make It in America,” which has the two-fold message of prosperity for Americans but also returning manufacturing to America.
O’Malley pointed out that Southern
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