Scenes from a Convention
It went pretty smoothly, actually. Bearing in mind that "smoothly" for a Democratic convention means "no fist fights and nobody called the cops." For some strange reason, I was elected permanent convention chair. The county vote ended up being about 70% for Clinton and 30% for Obama. Bill Conover did an outstanding job as chair of the credentials committee and was presented with the Earl Pierce Award. Most of the delegates had never been to a convention before, and that was a truly wonderful sight to behold. And yes, I'm pretty much exhausted now.
UPDATE: As expected, Obama appears to have come out slightly ahead in the overall delegate count. And despite widespread MSM hair-pulling about "Chaos in Texas," nothing too terribly awful happened, other than long lines (a new phenomenon) and some frayed nerves (which ALWAYS happens at Democratic gatherings, even when only two people show up). I'm actually starting to like our bastardized hybrid system, since it forces presidential campaigns to concentrate on their ground game and enables local parties (like ours) to make new contacts thanks to a large fresh infusion of activists. Yes, it's a helluva lot of work, but I think the results may be worth it, providing the new folks (and here, they were predominantly Hillary supporters) actually stick with it.
Labels: 2008, Elections, Johnson County Democratic Party
posted by The Local Crank | 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
record turnout will always swamp the process. in some precincts/districts the turnout was more than 10 times that of 2004.
as the Democratic Party is currently constructed, the state Parties determine individually how things will be done, with some major consequences. (see MI & FL this year, part of the perennial argument over who goes first, ala Iowa & New Hampshire)
few states would even consider returning to the ‘winner take all’ format, therefore, i would suggest that the DNC promote to the state parties the Texas model, with a few variations.
the 2/3’s delegates selected by Primary and the 1/3 selected by caucus process could be modified to solve some of “calendar” problems of the past. states, especially big ones, could schedule their Primaries early (which so many of them long to do and did for 2008) which would give them the “prestige” of “counting”, and give the candidates the needed vehicle of publicity.
then schedule their respective caucuses for later in the year (either outright/all at once, or via the multi-step convention process ala Texas) which would double the publicity process if needed and/or helpful (to an early overwhelming candidate or to offset an early overwhelming candidate later found to be flawed, or like this year to winnow/select via voters/party leaders between two relatively equal candidates)
Iowa & New Hampshire could maintain their “prestige” of being the “firsts” by simply being the two states to select all of their delegates on the same day. (by DNC fiat, for whatever that would be worth)
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