User:Billeger

Bill Eger, 73 and presently a resident of Hawai`i, is an active member of the Democratic Party of America. He first became active in his native Texas supporting Ralph Yarborough, the populist candidate for the Senate seat held by Lyndon Johnson in 1950. In later years he was a news reporter and editor with radio, television, newspapers and United Press International.

In California he left journalism and became a public relations professional, specializing in political campaigns for both issues and candidates. He was a member of Democratic Party committees on rules and platform and had an active role in two groups charged with re-writing rules of the state's party and, separately, the California Democratic Council.

Rules and platform of the Hawai`i Democratic Party continued as his primary interest after moving to Hawai`i in 1980. His regret in these years is that the national and most state Democratic Party organizations have departed from the essential role of precincts as the originating point of most party basic goals, the declining discipline of the party when candidates elected as members of the party fail to support its platform when in office.

To him, a government without political parties is one without clear control by citizens that elected officials are meant to represent. He believes this started when the Dixiecrats walked out of the 1948 National Democratic Party Convention thinking they could not be re-elected under the civil rights plank authored by Hubert Humphrey. Despite that walkout, Harry Truman won, establishing in Eger's mind the principle that party goals are important to the citizens of the nation keeping faith with Truman who called the platform, "A contract with the people."

The election of 2008 exhibits to Eger a continued erosion of traditional American political party functions. Neither the Democratic nor Republican party show evidence of a significant platform to define the goals of the organizations. It continues that when an individual is identified in the press or by their own statement as a "Democrat" or "Republican" the public has little clue as to what that means, he suggests.