When I decided to run for the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee two years ago, I never expected to be at the center of such an important campaign. At our June 7th meeting, we will select 58 delegates to the national convention: 35 at-large pledged delegates, 20 Party Leader and Elected Official delegates, and three add-on superdelegates. Philly.com wonders if Clinton supporters on the state committee will able to to swing a few more delegates her way at that meeting:
Three of the state's superdelegates and 55 of its pledged delegates will be chosen in June at the convention of the Democratic State Committee, which is heavily influenced by Gov. Rendell and whose chairman is T.J. Rooney. Both are strong Clinton supporters.
Could party leaders stack the deck, handing Clinton the three superdelegates, and assigning Obama pledged delegates whose loyalty is questionable?
Absolutely not, says Rooney.
"This is not a situation where we can sneak in Clinton delegates," Rooney said. He noted that the lists of pledged delegates to be voted upon by the state committee are submitted to the campaigns for approval.
"The onus is on the candidates to ensure that the people they've slated stay true to the cause," Rooney said.
What about the three superdelegates to be chosen in June?
"A lot of people will make requests [to be superdelegates]," Rooney said. "We play things straight. And the fail-safe for anybody who's concerned the deck is stacked is that they have to be approved by members of the state committee, many of whom support Obama."
Clinton and her campaign officials have insisted they're not trying to talk Obama delegates into switching, and Rooney said he's heard no such talk in Pennsylvania.
As a member of the state committee, I'd like to set one thing straight about this story: while T.J. Rooney is incredibly influential over the state committee, Ed Rendell holds virtually no sway whatsoever. During my two years on the committee, I have repeatedly seen every single request Rendell make to committee members go entirely unheeded. In fact, back in 2002, the state committee endorsed Bob Casey over Ed Rendell in the gubenatorial primary, an endorsement that requires two-thirds support on the committee. Congressman Bob Brady holds far more sway over even how the Philadelphia caucus votes than does Ed Rendell.
Power on the Pennsylvania state committee resides mainly with the chairman, the eight regional caucus chairs, and the other 50 or so members of the executive committee. Since I would like to eventually be a member of the DNC, I'm strongly considering running for Obama at-large pledged delegate, of which there should be 15 or 16. As a white dude from Philadelphia, I don't do much for the affirmative action clause in the delegate selection plan, and as a general committee gadfly I'm not sure if the executive would go along with that. However, at this point, there is a 100% chance I would vote for Obama at the convention, and I'm not sure how many other state committee members can make that claim as strongly.
Right now, I really wish that I hadn't chickened out at my very first state committee meeting, and that I had taken the spot on the executive committee when it was briefly available. At my first state committee meeting back in June of 2006, I discovered executive committee members in the Philadelphia caucus are chosen by the majority vote of the committee members from each state senatorial district. My senatorial district, the 8th, had only three members in attendance at the meting: myself, my write-in partner Kevin Scott, and the one committee member who had actually been on the ballot. As such, Kevin and I could have elected one of us to the executive committee had we thought of it in time, but at our very first committee meeting we weren't quite ready to rock the boat like that just yet. Had we done so, now we would have more say over how 58 delegates to the convention are selected.
I'm not really sure what the point of this anecdote is, except that perhaps one should seize upon opportunities when they arise. While I honestly believe that power in the Democratic Party is there for the taking, it does require actually grabbing hold of it when the moment arises. As such, it occurs to me that I would be an idiot not to run for Obama delegate when I have a chance--and this might be my only chance. All I have to do is decide whihc type of Obama delegate to run for, at-large, PLEO or add-on. I'll will provide update on my campaign over next two months.
The 2008 nomination campaign has generated quite a bit of talk about internal divides in the Democratic Party: young vs. old, wealthy vs. working class, African-America vs. Latino, male vs. female, etc. However, for my money, the most interesting divide by far remains the full-blown activist class war that the nomination has revealed. A changing of guard is taking place in the Democratic Party, and it might not be long before the entire Democratic Party leadership is transformed.
Consider the current delegate counts from primaries, and from superdelegates who currently hold public office:
Primary delegate totals: Obama 1,081.5--1,063.5 Clinton
Supers who hold public office: Obama 99--96 Clinton
Tight as a glove. The "public" portion of the Democratic nomination campaign shows Obama only narrowly ahead of Clinton, and the campaign in a virtual tie. However, now look at the delegate totals for caucuses and for supers who do not currently hold public office:
Supers who do not hold public office: Clinton 150--110 Obama (58%-42%)
Caucus delegate totals: Obama 334--190 Clinton (64%-36%)
While publicly elected officials and primary voters are virtually split between the two candidates, the Democratic Party leadership heavily favors Clinton and the highly engaged activists who keep the party's electoral engine running heavily favor Obama. This divide between the party leadership and the rising, activist base points strongly toward an ongoing battle in the party that online we have deemed "the silent revolution." While the other demographic divides listed above have longstanding cultural legacies that go well beyond a single election or political party, it is truly shocking to see such a huge gap between a party's leadership and that party's most dedicated activists. At least in theory, these are two groups of people who should be on the same page.
No matter how the 2008 election turns our, I expect the next decade will see a huge change in leadership among DNC members. The large gap between caucus results and superdelegates who do not hold public office points to just how wide-ranging and contentious the silent revolution actually is. Importantly, it should be noted that whoever can win caucuses also has the ability the take over the party from the inside. If most DNC members are at such great odds with the most dedicated, highly engaged Democratic activists, before long there is going to be a new generation of DNC members. In fact, after watching this election cycle, I am strongly considering running for a DNC spot myself. If the leadership is out of touch with the activists, then it is time for a new leadership.
Wow. This is really happening. Possibly the most important, and certainly the most epic and dramatic, presidential primary contest of all time will take place in my backyard. The circumstances that led to Pennsylvania becoming decisive were just as unlikely and seemingly random as the circumstances that led to my becoming a long-term resident of Pennsylvania.
On at least three occasions, Clinton had a chance to finish Obama off: Iowa, South Carolina and Super Tuesday. Every time, the voters decided otherwise. On two occasions, Obama had a chance to finish Clinton off: New Hampshire and March 4th. Once again, the voters said "not yet." On every occasion, the frontrunner failed to finish the job, and the nomination campaign lurched forward. By the same token, I only ended up in Pennsylvania when, in January of 1997, a poem I wrote on the back of receipts at the bank where I worked earned me a fellowship at Temple University five weeks later. As an Upstate New Yorker, I had always planned on going to SUNY for graduate school, but the offer from Temple was just so good that I turned down both Stony Brook and my dream school, the University of Buffalo (don't snicker--if you know anything about avant-garde poetry, you know why UB would be the dream school for an avant-garde poetry obsessed, Upstate New Yorker). And for one reason or another, as time went on, I just stayed in Philadelphia.
I point this all out not to be egocentric (although that is probably a charge of which I am frequently guilty), but rather as an example of how this primary has accidentally resulted in a wide range of Americans unexpectedly finding themselves at the center of an epic political maelstrom. For example, the Pennsylvania for Obama campaign was started early last year by Josh Richards, a grassroots progressive from Upper Darby who has been central to many of our local progressive organizing efforts. A few months ago, Josh literally handed over the volunteer campaign he started to the national Obama campaign, and it still serves as the core infrastructure for Obama's efforts in Pennsylvania. As such, it isn't a surprise that Philly for Change, the local chapter of Democracy for America where Josh sits on the steering committee, tonight voted to endorse Barack Obama for President with 74% of the vote.
Philly for Change (once known as Philly for Dean) is an impressive local organization. Back in August of 2003, two weeks before Howard Dean's Sleepless Summer tour, it organized a 4,000-person rally for Howard Dean on Independence Mall. While that may not seem impressive by today's numbers, at the time it was groundbreaking in its enormity--the largest rally for a Democratic candidate in a primary in about three decades. Attending that rally was a turning point in my life, as it convinced me that the new, local, grassroots organizing efforts for Democrats I had read about online were absolutely for real (and so, I have spent the last four and a half years working in politics as a result). The rally was organized by many of my local progressive friends, the same early adopters who have since become leaders--even elected officials--in the local Philadelphia progressive scene. These were the people who helped translate the early energy of the progressive movement to a wider audience, and it is people like them around the country who made the current wave of progressive activism possible. They were the catalyzing energy behind a Malcolm Gladwell type tipping point for progressivism in America.
I have a ward meeting tonight at 7:30, where for the first time we will discuss the Presidential campaign. Living in Philadelphia, most of us are shocked that we might actually have to make an endorsement in a still-contested primary. I've been tasked with presenting the national and general election picture to the rest of the committeepeople on the ward committee (aka, the precinct captains).
Last year, after the mayoral election, I heard a joke from one of the ward leaders that the local media just waits to see who the 27th ward endorses before making their endorsements. As I look over our history of endorsements over the past two years, it is true that local media has pretty much endorsed exactly the same candidates we have, many of them huge underdogs, about a week or two after we endorsed them. This includes current Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who was endorsed by every single local publication, but who was first endorsed by the 27th ward. We were, in fact, the first ward to endorse Nutter.
I plan to make a case at the meeting that our ward is overwhelmingly represented by Barack Obama's coalition. About one-third of our committee people (precinct captains) are students at the University of Pennsylvania, and Obama not only was recently a professor but he has huge youth support. The other two-thirds of the committee tend to be older local residents, with roughly an even split among African-Americans and whites. Again, our diverse community is largely represented by the Obama coalition and by Obama himself. Then again, almost all of the non-student committee persons are women over the age of 35. You know, the "women in sensible shoes" that the New Republic talked about endorsing Ned Lamont two years ago.
It will be interesting to see how this meeting goes. It is one of the first events in the Pennsylvania primary. I feel torn in that I would love for the Pennsylvania primary to be the most meaningful contest since New Hampshire, but also that I'm starting to get antsy to just tackle John McCain head-on and be done with our nomination campaign on March 4th. What do you think? Do you want to see the campaign continue on to Pennsylvania, or do you want to see it end on March 4th? Even if you are an Obama supporters, there is a strong case to be made that it would help out quite a bit to build a powerful local organization, and the five weeks of extra campaigning here might take Pennsylvania out of the swing state column once and for all. The long-term benefit for Democrats would far outweigh any inconvenience of an extra six weeks of the nomination campaign.
Also, if there is any advice you have for me on what to say at tonight's meeting, I would love to hear it. Given our strange local influence, this strikes me as the most important endorsement over which I will have a large say during the entire nomination campaign.
Article Summary The main focus of arguments over superdelegates in the Democratic nomination campaign thus far appears to miss the mark. The issue is not with highly visible public officials like Ted Kennedy who have endorsed different candidates than their constituents. Cumulatively speaking and once one accounts for the difference in size between the New York and Illinois delegations, publicly elected officials are endorsing at about the same pace and with about the same candidate preferences as primary voters and caucus goers. Rather, the main source of the discrepancy between popular vote / pledged delegate totals (no matter how they are counted), and superdelegate endorsements comes from local, low-profile party officials, typically members of the DNC, who will prove far more difficult to persuade and / or hold accountable in the event that they defy the popular vote and / or pledged delegate results. The superdelegate issue is much more about local Democratic activists like Jenny Greenleaf, Carol Campbell or even myself than it is about Ted Kennedy or Leonard Boswell. Predicting or assuming how these superdelegates will decide to act at the convention strikes me as a fool's game. It is probably just as unwise to assume that they will cave to popular pressure as to assume that they will not.
I spent this morning in South Philly conducting a long interview with Anne Dicker that I will post sometime next week (it needs to be heavily edited down from one hour and twelve minutes). Anne is one of the key organizers of the Democrat (capital D) reform movement in Philadelphia, running against indicted State Senator Vince Fumo in the first Senatorial district of Pennsylvania. While I was talking to Anne, I was reminded how only five years ago, when our little movement began by supporting Howard Dean for President, the idea of serving on the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee would never have crossed my mind. However, one of the main pillars of the grassroots reform movement in the party that started with Dean's campaign was, in fact, to run for party office. If progressives really want to reform the Democratic Party, then we need to take over positions of power within the Democratic Party, instead of only applying outside pressure. No matter who we supported, this is why we were all involved in the DNC Chair's campaign three years ago, for example. When it comes to the strategy, message, infrastructure, ideology, nominations, and expenditures of the Democratic Party, it goes without saying that it really matters who controls official party positions. If we want a smarter, more effective, more progressive, and more transparent Democratic Party, then we need to run for elected positions within the Democratic Party.
Let me emphasize one word in that last sentence: elected. Every Democratic Super Delegate was elected to his or her position in some way. Of the 796 Super Delegates, nearly 300 of them are either in Congress, or are Democratic Governors, and all of them won both Democratic primaries and general elections. How are these people not elected officials? Further, almost all of the remaining Super Delegates are DNC members, and all of them were elected to those positions. In fact, now that I am on the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee, to which I was elected, I vote for national DNC members from Pennsylvania. I guess that makes me about 0.3% of a Super Delegate. I am also circulating petitions for a couple of friends who are trying to become Obama delegates to the DNC (all of my local friends who are running for national delegate are Obama supporters, and Obama probably has about 70-80% of Democratic support in my congressional district).
My point is this: every Super Delegate was elected to his or her position by other Democrats, just as every pledged delegate was also elected by other Democrats. So, why, exactly, are the Super Delegates less democratic than the Pledged Delegates? I guess an argument could be made that some of the Super Delegates were elected by State Democratic Committees rather than in Democratic primaries open to all registered Democrats, and that when people elected the Super Delegates to public office, they didn't know who those Super Delegates supported for President. However, rather than ditching the idea of Super Delegates altogether, don't those arguments lead to procedural fixes, like the direct election of DNC members in Democratic primaries (one per congressional district every four years), and performing due diligence to know how someone leans for President during a Democratic primary?
At MyDD, Oreo has a post on Jenny Greenleaf entitled Super Delegates are People, Too. I would add to that by saying that Super Delegates are elected, too. Really, Super Delegates are just as, if not more, democratic as pledged delegates elected from caucuses, or those elected from states that come late in the primary season calendar. Further, a partisan nomination process is not the same as a public general election, and different standards of democracy should apply. Democrats should decide who the Democratic nominee is, not the public at large. And Democrats will decide, via a wide variety of internal elections, who the next Democratic nominee for President will be. I know that some will disagree, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure about this myself. However, I wanted to throw this idea out there, because I'm not sure that Super Delegates are as undemocratic as some people online, including myself, have made them out to be.
I am loathe to ever admit I am wrong about the horserace aspect of my election analysis. Wrong about anything else in my life, such as career choices, lifestyle choices, and relationship choices? Sure, I'll admit that, I've made mistakes in those areas, but not about my horserace analysis of elections. I was wildly wrong about the 2004 primaries, but only wrong about the 2004 elections because I banked on the incumbent rule, which unexpectedly (at least, somewhat unexpectedly) has collapsed in recent years. However, over 300 people personally told me in late 2004 / early 2005 that I had given them false hope for a Kerry win in 2004. And so, imagining the hundreds of thousands who didn't have a chance to tell me that in person (in late 2004, MyDD was the second largest progressive blog in the county, and might have temporarily moved to #1 on Election Day 2004), I resolved to never be wrong about election predictions again, no matter who I pissed off. And so, after spending three years tweaking my methodology, I finally struck gold in 2006-2007. I called the CT-Sen Lamont-Lieberman election within 1%, I surpassed any professional forecaster in terms of accuracy in my 2006 federal elections, and even recently called the exact 51%-45% finish in the MA-05 special election (all of which were to the consternation of many at the time for not being pro-Democratic / progressive enough). I thought I was invincible in terms of forecasting elections, and so I boldly proclaimed that Barack Obama had already lost the 2008 presidential primaries because I believed he had lost the primarily non-Christian, progressive creative class vote that had served as his base early in the campaign.
I didn't think it was possible for Obama to win without that vote, and I still don't think it is possible for him to win without that vote. However, at the time I thought he had basically lost that vote with a series of events that culminated, but did not start, with the gay-bashing McClurkin event in South Carolina. Now, it seems to me that maybe he just pissed them off with that event, but he didn't lose them for good. At this point, with the time to make a final decision looming, and faced with a primary election that, no matter the inaccuracy of the media narrative, is still primarily a choice between Clinton and Obama, the progressive creative class has decided that it still prefers Obama to Clinton no matter what Obama may or may not have done wrong so far. This is the vote that Obama absolutely needs in order to win either Iowa or New Hampshire, and it seems as though he is keeping enough of that vote in order to stay competitive in both states.
Without any question, 2.67% is close enough for Iowa to be considered a statistical tie. Even though Clinton remains the favorite, Obama could quit easily win the state if the election were held tomorrow, much less if it were held in 50 days. In any analysis, 2.67% in a state with as strange a system as Iowa is virtually meaningless. And yes, Edwards clearly isn't done yet, and Richardson is quite finished, either. However, only Obama remains close enough in New Hampshire to be almost certain of a victory there following a win in Iowa, and only Obama is close enough nationally to be pretty much guaranteed of sweeping to the nomination should he defeat Clinton is both Iowa and New Hampshire. Obama is Clinton's main opponent three ways from Thursday, January 3rd
Now, I am never going to endorse either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in these primaries. There is no way I could spend so much time working on the residual force issue, which basically puts me at odds with both candidates, and end up endorsing one of them. If I were to endorse someone who overtly favored residual forces at this point, it would invalidate most of the work I have done in the primaries so far, and I would deservingly become an object of mockery. I also have serious problems with what I perceive to be Obama's insider elitism. However, I can't ignore that one of he two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination is potentially the best identity vessel for my ideal progressive coalition to come around in the history of American politics, bar none. I mean, even though I am a white guy who grew up in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York, I can say without a hint of irony or doubt that Barack Obama is easily the candidate with whom I can most clearly identify. It isn't even close. I am a highly educated dude with a serious academic background who moved to one of the forgotten areas of a major city and became something a community organizer. Even after I left Chicago following Obama's 2004 victory, I saw the potential Obama coalition come together before my eyes as my 50-50 white-black neighborhood that threw out the local machine, was the first to endorse the new African-American mayor of Philly back when he was in fifth place, and as a white guy from the suburbs like myself became the partisan representative for one of the poorest, most Democratic, and most diverse areas on the entire eastern seaboard. I haven't just seen the Obama / long-term progressive coalition of largely creative class non-Christians and largely working class non-whites come together, I have lived it. It is totally doable. The local Philly machine even jokes about what is happening out here, saying that the media waits to see what the 27th ward does before it endorses (aka, the local white liberal establishment waits to hear what its neighborhood affiliates "on the street" say before doing anything). It can be done, and I can't deny a deep desire on my part to eventually see it done. Even before I made the identity politics synthesis back in April 2005, I have been writing about my hopes for this for four years. And I know that other people must be thinking about this too, because you don't get a non-flame war diary with 255 comments in November of 2003 without striking a real nerve.
There is a desperate, progressive desire to see the two most left-wing demographic groups in the entire country, working class non-whites and creative class non-Christians, to from a governing coalition in America. Despite their extreme diversity, their massive growth rate gives them the potential to do just that. Such potential is epitomized, at least identity-wise, in Barack Obama. Now that he is pulling closer in both Iowa and New Hampshire, I have to believe that, despite his repeated fuck-ups, the members of his potential coalition have decided that his fuck-ups are less important than the decision at hand. Given his seeming unwillingness to embrace this coalition, I don't know if that is the right decision to make. Also, I could be quite wrong about what is happening in the early states, or at least about why it is happening. However, after living in pursuit of this dream for so long, I have to think that is what is happening on the ground. Even if Obama wins, I worry it could all horribly backfire and self-destruct if the coalition isn't ready to be embraced by the person leading it, and as I said there is no way I am going to endorse him before Iowa, but I have to admit it is still something I will be watching closely over the next fifty days. It is the promise of a coalition that means a helluva lot to me, and I can't ignore that forever no matter how bad it may make past predictions of mine look.
Two months ago, at the most recent meeting of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee (I hold a seat on the committee), there was a contentious vote on whether or not to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. The resolution was not passed. In fact, it wasn't even voted on. In a move reminiscent of recent happenings in the US House of Representatives, there was, instead, a motion to table the bill, which narrowly passed by about a 55-45% margin (the exact margin is difficult to tell, since it was conducted visually by having people stand up in favor or opposition). Back in June, there had been a successful motion, passed with roughly two-thirds support of the committee, to send the resolution back to the issues committee.
After the motion went down, I started talking with a couple other young, progressive reformer friends of mine who had also won seats on the committee last year (four of us car pool to the meetings). The main business of the meeting was to nominate a candidate for superior court, since a new opening had appeared since the primary election. Apparently, the executive committee had met the night before, and worked out a deal for the new nominee, which the rank and file members of the committee were then expected to ratify. It wasn't the candidate either I or my group of friends wanted, and we were pretty angry that no one was doing anything about this. In between the impeachment vote and the executive committee fueled nomination, I had also been chewed out in the Philadelphia caucus for blogging about the goings on in the Philadelphia caucus, which makes me wonder if I am in jeopardy for re-election, even now with Michael Nutter as mayor. So, needless to say, I wasn't very happy at that meeting, and my friends and I lamented how the Republican state committee had rejected the judicial nominee their executive committee put forth, because s/he was pro-choice or something. Even though our principles were opposed, we admired that they would stick by their principles instead of just doing what their executive committee told them to do. That was a party that stood for something and where the rank and file held the executive accountable, rather than the other way around.
I have been kind of down about my position on the state committee ever since that meeting, since I feel like pretty much everything I have tried while on the committee has failed. From increased transparency (which has basically just resulting in getting yelled at), to holding party office elections every two years instead of every four years (I discovered that was a local matter, not a state one), to freeing up Philly caucus members to vote however they wish in the general sessions (I thought we had won on that one, until this meeting), it hasn't worked as well as I had hoped. Also, even though they did listen to me very closely, the party even went with a different proposal to revamp their Internet outreach than the one I proposed. However, word of a resurgent state party in California today brings a smile to my face. Progressive state committee members in the Golden state are going to introduce a measure censuring California Senator Diane Feinstein at their state committee meeting this weekend:
Whereas Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to support the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as United States Attorney General, thereby elevating to the highest position in law enforcement a man who refused to renounce the right of the President to resort to torture and who refused to recognize waterboarding as a form of torture, and by this action Senator Feinstein failed to oppose President Bush and failed to stand for the ideals of the Democratic Party, which abhors torture and stands firmly against its use by the United States at all times and places; and
Whereas Senator Feinstein voted to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit despite his clear record of racism and gender discrimination, thus failing to stand firmly with the Democratic Party, which supports gender equality and opposes racism in any of its manifestations; and
Whereas these examples are far from the only instances where Senator Feinstein, after seeking and securing the support and endorsement of the California Democratic Party, has failed to support the policies and principles of our party;
Therefore be it resolved that the California Democratic Party expresses its disappointment at, and censure of, Senator Feinstein for ignoring Democratic principles and falling so far below the standard of what we expect of our elected officials.
Good for the state committee members putting forth this resolution. This is one of the strongest moves to hold their leaders accountable that I have seen from a local Democratic Party in a long time. It is the sort of fighting, principled action that gives me renewed faith in my endeavors in Pennsylvania. If Feinstein is going to approve all of Bush's nominations, and also assist in passing things like FISA, it is up to local Democrats to lead the charge in holding her accountable. I am very glad to see that many are willing to do just that, and I hope this resolution passes this weekend.
Let's hear it for fighting, grassroots Democrats. The silent revolution is alive and well.
"This is the new Democratic team and the new Democratic Party in this part of the country! And people better start getting used to it!" - Mitch Kates, aka 'Jason the Terrible' after state Senator Charlie Justice's victory
I met the most wonderful people in Florida yesterday, and though I've become immensely cynical of late, the people-powered revolution quietly sweeping through the party was clearly in evidence. I spoke at the netroots component of the Florida Democratic Convention, in Orlando in the middle of the state. Orlando is a swampy humid area dominated by hospitality workers and vacationing Midwesterners. It's a beautiful area with a natural swampiness, the kind of tropical Everglaes-esque foliage I love.
