Below is a note from Gail Worthington, a local volunteer and member of the DNC finance committee.
Vice President Biden will be the guest at this event.

Dear OC3 volunteers and DNC Supporters:
Hope you are all enjoying a terrific summer - and staying cool!!

I wanted to let you know about a special fundraiser event with the DNC that will be taking place here in Chapel Hill at The Carolina Inn on Thursday, July 22 at 5pm. The guest of honor will be Vice President Biden who just returned from another trip to Iraq over the 4th of July weekend. Thus it will be an excellent opportunity to hear directly from him about recent developments in both foreign and domestic policy.

The contribution level for this unique event is $500, with proceeds going directly to the DNC to help support Organizing for America's continued outreach, and the Democratic Party's critical preparation efforts for fall mid-term elections across the country.Please let me know if you have any questions about this event and/or know of anyone else who you think might enjoy attending. Space is limited, so if you would like to attend, please RSVP and secure your ticket by using the contribution link below.

Meanwhile, all the best for a continuing great summer, and hope to catch up with you soon!!

Gail
Gail Worthington
worthingtonfamily@msn.com
(203) 249-4551

http://my.democrats.org/July22NorthCarolina

Here is Dr. Biden’s blog from the trip: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/04/celebrating-fourth-july-with-our-troops-iraq

And a piece on his time there:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/world/middleeast/05iraq.html?ref=middleeas

How can Democrats combat the "Enthusiasm Gap" that threatens to cause severe Democratic losses this fall?
The first step is to ask the right question --- why is Republican enthusiasm so high this year rather than
why is Democratic enthusiasm so low.

Read the complete posting at: http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2010/06/how_can_democrats_combat_the_e.php

Almost all the discussions of the "enthusiasm gap" in recent weeks have tended to define the problem as the low level of enthusiasm among Democrats - a perspective that tends to suggest that "disappointment" with Obama is probably the major cause. From this perspective the most direct response would appear to be for Democratic strategists to try to challenge and refute this perception - to argue, in effect, that "Obama is really better than many Democrats seem to think he is".

But, in fact, Democratic enthusiasm only appears as dramatically low as it does in this non-presidential election year (when turnout is far below election years in any case) because it is being compared with the unusually high level of Republican enthusiasm. This alternate way of viewing the issue leads to a very different set of conclusions about the strategy Democrats should use to combat the problem.

The key fact is that Republicans and conservatives do not see this race as anything like a normal off-year election. Instead, it is for them a decisive battle in a life-or-death existential struggle -- a no-holds-barred campaign to bring down Obama and reverse the 2008 election. It is a vision of politics as a bitter ideological and social war and conservatives as an army on the march with a vast overarching objective -- to "take back our country" from the forces that have literally stolen it from its rightful owners.

At the heart of the current conservative/Republican coalition is a powerfully energized conservative social movement - one with very strong and widely shared military and paramilitary overtones. This generates a high level of what in military terms is called "morale" - a powerful mixture of passion, commitment, élan, fighting spirit, camaraderie and group cohesion.

Among the core conservative activists themselves this high level of morale has developed in the course of work and collaboration. During the last year and a half friendships were formed, afternoons and weekends were spent working together on projects, successes and failures were shared, all of which built team spirit, optimism and a shared vision of heroic struggle against a uniquely evil, dedicated foe. This energy and enthusiasm was then propagated out into the comment threads of conservative blogs, the discussion groups on Tea Party websites and through e-mail chain letters passed virally among families and social circles. This process has established and disseminated an essentially warlike and combative tone to the 2010 Republican campaign that easily meshes with the similarly combative programming of Fox news and talk radio. The resulting mixture has then been transmitted again and again to a large portion of the Republican electorate.

There is simply nothing comparable to this psychology on the Democratic side. Large numbers of the voters who comprised the Obama coalition in 2008 simply do not see the 2010 elections as a vast do-or-die battle between two contending political armies struggling for control of the country and the future of America. They see it as a conventional off-year election where a patchwork variety of opposing candidates with different philosophies compete for office. As a result they simply do not have the high morale and fighting spirit of conservatives and Republicans. The broad and unifying "yes we can" spirit that was created during the 2008 campaign dissipated soon after the election. The massive Obama for America online organization sharply narrowed its focus to building support for specific elements of Obama's agenda while other progressives redirected their efforts to promoting specific progressive issues and causes - a focus that frequently brought them into conflict with the administration. Both of these trends substantially diluted and dampened the broad "yes we can" unity and enthusiasm of the 2008 campaign.