This is my fly-on-the-wall narrative from a newby, first-time, California Democratic Party delegate.
The next CADem convention will be held in 2008 in San Jose, on the last weekend of March (as of this writing), according to the in-briefing for new, first-time delegates which was held on Friday afternoon.
On Friday evening, I attended the meeting of the Progressive Caucus of the CDP. This caucus' presenters unfortunately did not state, reiterate, and repeatedly emphasize to the (full) house that if there was a resolution they really cared about up for voting, they must remain in the main meeting hall Sunday morning, until the resolutions were all voted on. I am told that the PDA meeting did tell their members this. This detail was to become quite important on Sunday morning.
The Progressive Caucus presenters had a great bon mot: "The Republican Anarchy Collective". Brad Parker rocked the room, and said among many things, "resist the temptation to become what we see in our opponents... stay engaged, not enraged." (This also was forgotten by some on Sunday morning.)
More (much, much more) follows...
After the Progressive Caucus let out, I went to the Rules Committee, chaired by Garry Shay, to observe the proceedings. I lucked (?) into a dispute involving the Disabled Caucus, wherein their recent officers' election had been challenged, and the challenge sustained by the Rules Committee at the recommendation of the Compliance Review Commission. Those who had run the contested election were there to challenge the ruling.
To thumbnail the dispute, as best I could understand it:
The original holders of the election had discovered, just prior to their meeting on December 8, 2006, that the membership list had been mismanaged by that officer (who had just departed) and was "hopelessly messed up". The people at the meeting basically panicked and said, "we need to freeze eligibility to vote until this is straightened out." In other words, nobody who joined after that date was eligible to vote for the officers.
In a few days, apparently, saner heads prevailed and said, "no, we need to follow the CDP rules and let people who joined at least 60 days before the Convention vote for the officers of the Disabled Caucus. Unfortunately, word of this didn't get out to the membership, many of whom thought they had been declared ineligible to vote at a too-early cutoff date, and this was the basis of the challenge.
The current (and re-elected, under the challenged election) head officer resisted the Committee's directive to re-hold the election. Her arguments, however, were fairly rambling and incomprehensible to me, and also she seemed rather confrontative. I left to go to the Chair's Reception. Later on, one of the Rules Committee members (who comes from my AD and I know him well) told me that they finally figured out the head officer was just trying to hold onto her seat without having to run for it again. The original directive held the day and the Disabled Caucus will have to hold their officers' election again, in July.
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This was the convention of Interesting Candies. I was handed ImpeachMints. In our bags were boxes of Tribal GovernMints from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, who were lobbying hard for a proposed new gambling compact with the state. At registration I also received a multicolored candy whose design included the words "Robbie Anderson" surrounding the number "14".
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Here some brief comments on the speeches. I rank them roughly in the order I liked them (best first).
John Edwards: Great speech, great on all the issues, and he gave detail on how he would accomplish each goal. He also said, "I will be straight with you. I voted for the Iraq war. I was wrong, and I have been working tirelessly to put an end to it." (I posted the details at MyDD)
Hillary Clinton: Very moving speech, I had tears running down my cheeks at the end of it. However, she was more general on the goals and did not go into specifics as much on how she would accomplish them. She did not directly address her vote on the Iraq war.
Maxine Waters: Wow! You go, lady! Just as Art Torres promised us, she had us out of our seats time and again cheering and applauding. Her gift of the day to us: "Not another nickle, not another dime, not another soldier-- not this time!"
Mike Jimenez, president of the Corrections Officers union, said some moving words about how he was worried about his son, who had recently estranged himself and moved out. Mike also said that he and the Corrections Officers were "very disappointed" in a "decision that occurred Thursday" (apparently to expand California's prison system) and that he is against the expansion of the "prison-industrial system" (his exact phrase).
Barack Obama: I kept zoning during his speech and smacking myself upside the head for not being respectful and paying attention. I was told later on that his speech was composed of parts of 3 other speeches he routinely gives, and has given for quite some time. Perhaps I sensed the "roteness" of it. Overall a nice, workmanlike speech.
Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco: basically his theme was he was calling Republicans out on their hypocrisies, esp. on "values". He mentioned the Bill Clinton quote about "wrong and strong vs weak and right", and told us "if we have strength of character, strength of conviction, and integrity, we will be strong and right." "The future is not just in front of us, it is inside each of you."
Chris Dodd: A nice, solid, decent speech from a nice, solid, decent guy.
Dennis Kucinich: His vocal tones were very artificial and affected; "sing-song-y", as one of my fellow bloggers described it. While he didn't scream into the microphone like he did at the 2004 national convention, he still needs to work a lot on how he uses his voice.
Everyone else: Their speeches were decent-to-OK, and didn't really stick in my head much.
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Sunday morning, near the end of the session, they do the Standing Committee Reports. Since the Resolutions Committee is one of the Standing Committees, this is when the vote on the resolutions occurs.
The first resolution, Resolution 6, was basically to the effect of "let's stay civil to each other as Democrats during our disagreements." Soon to become very ironic.
We got through all the other resolutions, the hall voting most of them in by "ayes". Several, including the out-of-Iraq resolution, were "pulled". "Pulling" means they are set aside to be debated on and/or amended by delegates, then voted in or out in their final form. We got through all the "pulled" resolutions, duly amending then approving them, and finally, came to the out-of-Iraq resolution. The original one, on the printed list, had been presented by Art Torres and Dan Perata (IIRC).
3 amendments were proposed to this from the floor. The first, was to add language specifically urging Congress to cut off funding for the war. The second, was to urge Congress to rescind the war resolution that Bush used to start the war in the first place. The third replaced "and the Republican presidential candidates" with "all candidates" so as to include the Democratic candidates as well.
Then, the chairman of the Resolutions Committee stepped up to the mike (I think it was him, maybe the chair of the Rules Committee?) and said, "I am going to suspend the rules this one time. Let's go ahead and vote on the original resolution as-is. Then, we will treat each of these proposed amendments as a separate resolution and vote on them individually." There was much confusion and looking-at-each-other at this amongst us delegates.
But we went ahead and voted in the original resolution; then as debate was to start on the amendments/new resolutions, someone, who said she was "a lawyer", stepped up to the mike and berated Inola Henry (Resolutions Committee officer running the voting) that this procedure was "bullshit", and the arguing broke out. As Inola attempted to maintain order in the hall, a woman (I'm not sure if it was the same one) then stepped up to the mike and said, "point of order. I'm not sure we have a quorum here, and I'm calling for a quorum count."
So they counted us, and sure enough, with all the knuckleheads who had already left to catch their planes, trains and automobiles, we only had 635 of the 1155 delegates needed to form a quorum. So Art Torres, with much expression of regret and disgust, declared the business closed and any and all voting on resolutions ended right there. More angry shouting from the other side of the room was to no avail. Art did state that he would take up at the next Executive Board meeting in June, and move that one of the amendments (I'm not clear which one) be adopted there.
Take-home lessons of this Convention:
- Read, study, and know the California Democratic Party Bylaws inside and out.
- Read, study, learn and know Robert's Rules of Order.
- Make your travel plans to the state convention such that you can stay til the bitter end of business on the last day, if there are any resolutions proposed that you care about.