History, politics, people of Oly WA
I just posted two posters to advertise the Oly Democratic Party meetup, one with the slogan “Get your democracy on,” and another “Exercise Your Democracy Muscles.”
I know, kind of cutesie, but it is what came to mind. If you have another slogan you like, just shoot it over to me, and I’ll put together a poster. The little tabs on the bottom are meant to be cut so they can be torn off, like a “room for rent” poster.
Reed Davis, the former chair of the King County GOP, writes a very interesting piece on the Top Two primary and the nature of parties in the Northwest Progressive Institute blog this morning:
…a real party is not a national or even a state committee. Those are professional organizations whose primary function is fundraising; whatever else they may be, they are most certainly not volunteer organizations whose primary function is to mobilize voters on behalf of candidates.
When I speak of the importance of parties, then, the parties I have in mind are the grassroots organizations that exist for the sake of, well, real people, and not political professionals.
Throughout the piece, he seems to be contradicting himself, saying that what parties are now (grassroots apparently) is what is being defended when the parties decided to sue to overturn the Top Two primary. But, what is actually being defended is the system of professional parties, fund raising entities that don’t put much focus on grassroots.
The Top Two at least has forced the parties in King County to accept candidates that couldn’t race money, but could organize people:
Interestingly enough, in order to avoid the possibility of members of the same party running against one another in the general election, both the King County Republicans and the King County Democrats (as well as county organizations for both parties statewide) have met in order to nominate just one candidate for the general election.
That not only preserves voter choice for the general election, it strengthens local parties: now a good candidate is someone who is capable of mobilizing, organizing and appealing to the greatest number of real live people, not someone who is simply capable of raising the most amount of money.
We have designed a system that is today exactly backwards: we tend to place our parties at the disposal of the candidate who can raise the most money rather than giving our money to the candidate who proves that he or she can mobilize the most people.
On the other hand, the GOP candidate that had the money, essentially representing the professional political class, is thinking about bucking the party and running anyway.
I agree with Andrew at NPI that parties do a lot of good, and that politics would be dismal without them. What I don’t agree with necessarily is that chucking the Top Two is a way to build the parties.
Simply put:
It isn’t enough to vote. It isn’t enough to give money even. You have to be part of the Party. And the Party should be so damn open that you want to be involved.
In June, we started an interesting discussion on the writings of George Lakoff and how to frame progressive values. In July, we will practice our new skills by framing the issue of Healthcare from a progressive point of view. The specific issues brought up by initiatives 336 and 330 will guide our discussion.
Don’t forget to bring a friend!
Tuesday, July 12 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Olympia Center
222 Columbia St NW
Olympia, WA
Room 101 (first floor)
Yes on 336
Yes on 330
General discussion on framing healthcare
This is a meeting for Democrats in Thurston County who want a “low impact” informative meeting to discuss topics of the day and to get more involved in the Democratic Party.
Also, just a short update on the progress we’ve been making with moving away from meetup.com. I’ve been talking with Christi McGinley, the county party’s webmaster, and she has begun work on a new webpage. Eventually, we will use an email list hosted by the county party and post meetup information there.
For the second time in a year, the Yelm City Council has said that they don’t want to hear from the public their opinion on the most pressing issues affecting the city. I’m not really sure about Wal-Mart in Yelm, but for Pete’s sake, not wanting to hear from your constituents? Wow:
“It’s the council’s meeting. They can decide what they want to hear and what they’re tired of hearing,” the attorney said. “It’s maybe not good political practice to hush people.”
Rivas said it’s optional to even have a public comment period. Yelm’s council meetings include 15 minutes for public comment.
“You can understand if you’re barraged for two months at meetings — the same people saying the same thing,” Dille said. “The other issue is talking about Wal-Mart now that the application has been submitted.”
Blocking discussion of Wal-Mart in general is a way to keep the council members from appearing prejudiced against the store, since an appeal of the project could come before the council, Dille said.
“They should not be speaking at all about it,” Dille said.
From a “I’m getting really bored at this meeting” point of view, I can understand the city council’s feelings on this. When I was a reporter, I used to get bored out of my mind at the same three guys that used to show up to this one city’s council meeting. Always talking about the same stuff, YAAAAAAAAAWWN. Just wait for it to get over.
While its easy to overlook the crazies, its a bad thing not to notice that these guys are doing what we should all be doing. We should all, from time to time, get up in front of our city, county, whatever and give them a piece of our mind. And, if it just happens to be about something that they have heard a lot about, well tough cookies, you’re going to listen to me.
This is why I have a soft place in my heart for the city of Olympia, that apparently takes this so seriously, we have regular town hall meetings, which are essentially very long public comment periods. Yeah Olympia!
We’re talking about Lakoff and framing.
They saying showing up is 90 percent of life. For a long time, for my entire life actually, people haven’t been showing up in politics. Voting has gone down, money in politics has gone way up (from corporate or recycled political money though) and we have continually been separated from the people that make decisions for us.
As political parties and the entire process has become more commercialized and less personal, we have become distanced from them. Less people vote and give money, but even fewer actually participate in party politics.
Here’s a great data set that actually illustrates this trend. Also, read Bowling Alone, or at least chapter 2 on participation in political parties.
The fewer people that actually work for candidates, attend local political meetings, and PARTICIPATE in politics, the worse off we are. Watching Crossfire, writing a check and voting on election day (while all good things) aren’t good enough.
Dean’s candidacy and his DNC chairmanship, especially the 50 state campaign, is a great start to countering this trend. I got into politics because of Howard Dean. I was always interested in politics, and thought I was an above average consumer of the process, but before Dean, I didn’t realize how insignificant just being a consumer of politics was.
Its great to vote, its even better to write a letter to the editor or read news a lot. But, to really make a difference, you have to show up. Since then, I’ve helped out on a campaign, door-belled and started organizing a Dem meetup in my town. I also worked the Demo-burger booth yesterday. Hmmmm… yummy.
Anyway, People Powered Howard is the first national figure that I’ve seen talk about and address the problem of lack of civic and political participation in America. That the media titters about every time he says something like a party where 80 percent of the self identified members are Christians and white is a “mostly white Christian party” is pretty pointless to me.
The KC GOP has their conventions yesterday, and I don’t know how, but it was in “defiance” of the Top Two primary, according to the Seattle Times.
It shouldn’t be in defiance though, because the Top Two was never intended to be a way for the parties to nominate a candidate, just as a primary election before a general election. It is the parties that took the primaries and turned them into publicly funded nominating conventions.
Prior to the KC GOP convention, it looked like the GOPsters were going to have some party unity behind their only contested race, that the guy that didn’t get it would kindly step aside. It doesn’t look like that’s going to work out:
In the weeks before the convention, both Hammond and Dunn said they intended to abide by its outcome. But after yesterday’s vote, Dunn said he would file anyway, although he didn’t know whether he would do so as a Republican.
“I can’t abandon this campaign because of 24 votes in June,” he said, referring to Hammond’s victory margin (and getting his math slightly wrong).
This is going to be awesome. Either the son of Jennifer Dunn, Washington GOP god, and namesake of modern GOP god, will either run against a Republican as a libertarian or independent OR he’ll stand up to his own party’s asinine position that only they get to say who a Republican is.
Personally, I hope he does the later. Political parties shouldn’t be private clubs were only the members (or short of some level of participation, the leaders) get to say who belongs. If a nomination actually mattered, if who the party supported actually mattered, they wouldn’t care if I moved to King County and ran as a Republican. They would know that their resources, their money and volunteer base would be enough to a nominee. But they know that a big name like Reagan Dunn could pull in more money and get more volunteers than another lesser known candidate that just so happens to be the nominee of a party.
The solution isn’t to kick out the candidate that can out organize an entire county political party, but to actually build a better party, one that can raise money, raise volunteers and actually mean something to a nominee aside from a court-ordered “R” or “D” next to their name.
God, I hope not.
That big paper from back east is finishing up a series on big-c Class this week, and yesterday’s piece on “relos” or people that relocate from town to town for work and career was excellent. At first, I read with I’m watching a horror movie sort of detachment, but it eventually came to me that yes, people actually do live like this.
This passage near the beginning is true to the entire piece:
“It’s as if they’re being molded by their companies,” said Tina Davis, a top Alpharetta relo agent for the Coldwell Banker real estate firm. “Most of the people will tell you how long they’ll be here. It’s usually two to four years.”
These are people that seem to have a few major commitments. First of all, their family. I can’t fault them for that, the main subject of the story was obviously dedicated to her husband and the enrichment of her kids. Second, what I said above leads us into money, which obviously plays a roll in their decisions to move around so much.
But, at some point, I have wonder how far these folks commitment to other people not directly in their immediate circle goes. If their kids are safe, if their kids schools are good, who cares about kids on the other side of town? If her husband’s job is safe, who cares if some other guy loses his?
I don’t know, but their frequent abandonment of towns and communities doesn’t speak to a deep connection to people around them. If the roads are so bad getting around suburban Georgia, who really cares about fixing the problem of poor planning, if you are going to leave in a few years anyway?
Anyway, much was made about George Bush’s ability to win the so called exurbs last fall, which was one of the things that put him over the top. If these are the people that populate the fastest growing counties in the country, do I care?
As Joel Kotkin put it:
The new voters in the fast-growth land of McMansions, Target stores and office parks outweighed the energized legions of young hipsters, labor unionists and African-Americans who rallied to Kerry’s cause.
I suspect that much of the exurbians political tendencies come from their personal choices of being rootless, not feeling connected to a particular place or holding your ground for a community. These are things that I expect the Democratic Party to stand for, and so I would assume that we would lose among with the relos.
Maybe Greg Stephens should call Dino Rossi, cause Dino has this crazy idea that anyone can join any political party they want! And, apparently, when he said that, he meant that when they join they can do things that other people sometimes do while members of just any old party. You know, like run for some office.
The Sitting Duck in Olympia doesn’t have a website, so I’m going to have to type this. But, trust me, Dino said it:
(Good ol’Dino) disputes the notion that the Republican Party has been hijacked by the far right. “Anyone can join any party they want,” he shrugged, adding one could just as easily argue that the Democratic Party has been hijacked by radicals on the left.
This entire people joining any party they want thing is some pretty heavy stuff. Someone should call Chris Vance to reel in Dino’s way out there rhetoric.
The Seattle Times has an interesting story about Greg Stephens, who is trying to challenge Jeff Sax at the Snohomish County GOP convention for a council seat. The problem is that if the county party doesn’t think he’s a Republican, so no dice.
The Stephens story illustrates the wrong logic that is going around our county and state parties, that is leading us to sue to overturn the Top Two primary. Our parties, the only way regular people can become active in politics, should not become closed groups, paranoid of people that take up their banner. They should be a lot more open than this.
Apparently, they can stop Stephens from speaking at the convention (the only way to get the party nomination is this crazy post Top Two world) if they think he’s not “a real Republican.”
But, just saying you’re a member of this or that party ain’t enough for these guys, which just shows how crazy the opposition to the Top Two and the state of the parties really is. They’re so paranoid that he’s a Democrat interloper, that they want to close the party to him. Look, if you don’t like the guy, and you think most active Republicans won’t, what’s the harm in letting him speak?
Says the SnohoGOP chairman Steve Neighbors, using his extra stong powers of logic:
“[Stephens] knows that we can’t just let anyone say they’re Republican,” Neighbors said. “We can’t have a Democrat speaking at the Republican convention; he wouldn’t win anyway.”
I wonder why most people in Washington don’t want to be registered by party? If someone isn’t pure enough for the leadership, they don’t get in.
In a way, I’m glad to see the Snohomish GOP acting like this, at least its not us. But, I know that given the chance, we might send a not so pure Democrat packing.
As Democrats, we should let everyone who wants to call themselves a Democrat speak. Let them live and die politically by their ideas, not by who they have supported in the past. Party labels are not that important that they should rule our politics.
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