Category: Uncategorized (Page 26 of 49)

At one point I thought I’d have to run for president of our local Thurston County YD chapter. But, Hillary stepped in and literally saved it for us.

She was at the convention in Yakima, and with a bunch of other hard working YDs, almost pulled off a charter admendment to get the state party to take the YDs seriously. I was mostly checked out on this one, but if we want the YDs to be a serious part of the party and not just a place where young politicos can hob-nob, why don’t we take them seriously enough to put them up with all the rest of the Dash-Dem organizations?

Either way, read the entire thing, but this is a great passage:

Some woman near me yells at me for asking the question. I firmly, though politely say âIâve asked a very fair question I have every right to ask.â Cheers from the immediate area. The chair comes back and says heâs interpreting my question as a request for a paper ballot.

More cheering.

So they start giving out paper ballots. I go on a made chase to find a ballot and get it turned in. I make Dad track down Paul and Grandma to make sure they vote. I whip the heck out of my LD to get their votes in and vote yes.

People keep coming up to me asking when Iâm going to run for office so they can work on my campaign.

Ballots are in â the counting begins. After a very anxious hour, we get the word from our observers that we are 6 votes down. Four ballots had abstentions, 2 people signed but forgot to vote.

Agony.

We try to figure out what to do next â we just canât believe weâve lost by six votes.

Shaun has a pretty good reaction to what Joe Trippi wrote:

The best place for people with any degree of progressive instinct to be is right where Joe says he’s sticking – inside the Democratic Party until we’re in charge of it.

But, it left me wanting because there are a large group of Americans, already a third party, that don’t consider themselves either Democrats or Republicans. Not independents, because these people participate at a much lower level than do those of us who identify, but rather people for whom politics aren’t that important.

Either for some reason just don’t participate, or more insidiously, they have dropped out of the process because neither party and the entire political system, won’t speak to them.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dual purposes of parties in general: to win elections and be an avenue for people to be involved in the political process. I think we’ve focused to much on the first and forgotten about the second. I’m not ready to really go into that, but here are two passages that have helped me think about this stuff.

The first is from Teddy Roosevelt at the founding of the Progressive Party in 1912, he’s bemoaning the Democratic and Republican parties of his time:

The prime need today is to face the fact that we are now in the midst of a great economic evolution. There is urgent necessity of applying both common sense and the highest ethical standard to this movement for better economic conditions among the mass of our people if we are to make it one of healthy evolution and not one of revolution. It is, from the standpoint of our country, wicked as well as foolish longer to refuse to face the real issues of the day. Only by so facing them can we go forward; and to do this we must break up the old party organizations and obliterate the old cleavage lines on the dead issues inherited from fifty years ago. Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.

And this from a British organization called Involve in a report of Post Party Politics:

The second pillar is to act as the main interface and conduit between people and government. This process goes way beyond MPs surgeries to involve all people who act to support government, giving their spare time to community initiatives or simply behaving as responsible citizens by recycling their waste or reporting crime. The more people who feel that they are part of or support a political ‘project’ or initiative, the better its chance of success. Historically this has been achieved through the wider social movements that both the Conservative and Labour party represented, which spread their reach and connection through a nationwide network of community activists, members and social events hosted and run through their clubs. Then politics was not so much about representation but connection.

We need to worry less about power and more on connection.

Cross posted at printer Democracy

Steve is correct when he reminds us that progressive’s shouldn’t hate the game, they should hate the player. It isn’t the fault of the initiative process that it has been hijacked by right wing money makers like Eyman, it is our fault for giving the process over to them. A lot of good progressive things have come out of initiatives, as Steve points out. Read his post, it is good.

So, now that we’ve pretty much given over the process to guys like Eyman, what do we do? I have an idea that would hopefully encourage more regular citizen involvement in the process, but there are other ideas.

I’m not a big fan of Permanent Defense’s “report right wing signature gathering” (even though I’ve got me some to report). I don’t think it is an effective way to counter the signature gathering step in initiatives, and it boarders on encouraging harrasment.

While I’m talking about Permanent Defense also not a big fan of the name. For one, it is a take off on Eyman’s Permanent Offense, you shouldn’t allow your opponent to define you, even in what you call yourself. Plus it is a negative term, like “we’re always on defense,” or “you’re so defensive.”

The No on I-933 crowd seems to have struck on a great alternative to the “Report” scheme. They’re encouraging people to sign a petition signifying that they aren’t in support of I-933. While it would be interesting if someday a “No On” campaign could compete for signatures to keep an initiative off the ballot, this idea seems to be more powerful now as a campaign/PR tool.

Imagine Eyman getting out of his car at the Secretary of State’s office finding dozens of anti-Whateverhesupto folks with their own petitions.

Plus, there wouldn’t be any weird size requirments to the anti-petitions.

Drinking Liberally minus the drinking:

I firmly believe that more young people should get involved in politics. Unfortunately, Drinking Liberally would seem to discourage aspiring young activists who aren’t 21 from taking part, but you can certainly come and not drink. I do.

But I think Democrats and progressives ought to figure out a strategy for reaching out specifically to young people (individuals of high school or college age) and getting them involved. Maybe that means putting on a regular event like Drinking Liberally, but minus the alcohol, and probably making it less frequent.

For example, a regularly scheduled monthly meeting could be organized at a Seattle area restaurant (not a bar though) where young people could have a bite to eat, discuss political strategy, and enjoy ice water.

One of the great things about Drinking Liberally is certainly the continuity. It goes on every Tuesday night at the Montlake Ale House. If you’re in the mood to talk politics with other activists, you just show up. And you can bring your laptop with you: the Ale House is Wi-Fi equipped so you can surf the blogosphere or just get some work done.

Drinking Liberally is a great idea, but not because it brings together bear, well drinks and progressive politics. Rather, it is an informal, net-based meeting that anyone can come along and join. Like meetups, but more specifically marketed towards liberals/progressives and with no higher motive than to just bring people together.

Of course, when people come together to socialize, they’ll end up talking about and doing more.

Boy, we should have more of those.

My ex-governor is lamer than your ex-governor. Just wanted to point out that Kitzaber is cooler than Locke, always has been.

Anyway, did anyone notice from that article that Locke is also a member of the Safeco board? Was he on the board when McGavick got his $17 Million Golden Parachute?

Unity ’08

Actually, it isn’t strange at all, it is a lot of what I want in politics. Ideas over labels, (though we’re better off as Dems), a conversation over monologue and an online convention to choose a candidate.

Here are a couple of suggestions though:

1. Have a local meeting function, so folks can get together. Online is great, but only as a tool to enhance and bring to the surface what is going on in real, face-to-face world. Don’t sell out to meetup.com, develop your own system.

2. Join the fight for ballot fusion. If you want this to go beyond the ’08 Presidential campaign, there needs to be a way for that to happen. A Unity Party endorsing candidates could be the way to go. By the way, several of the states that ban ballot fusion are also states with the initiative process (hint, hint).

The Centralia Chronicle was so sure they didn’t want to endorse Mike Rechner, that they didn’t even bother talking to him.

Let’s just say that short of Richard DeBolt being convicted of serial dog kicking, he has the endorsement of the Centralia Chronicle pretty much in the bag. Of course, since they endorsed him in May, four months before even the primary election and even before talking to Mike Rechner, it seems to be a sure thing.

Mike’s campaign guy Chase writes about the endorsement here at Thurston Blue, and I write a bit about it over here at Washblog.

We just never noticed. Or, they really aren’t meaning to use it like a blog, but it seems to have been around since last November, just nobody noticed it. It is called Out of the Blue, and it seems to be a basic install of Word Press onto the wa-democrats.org site.

Comments are turned off, but it certainly seems like someone is intending on building some sort of blog.

This is ironic given Ken’s suggestion last month.

I found it by following the link for the site’s RSS feed from the front page. So, they could just be using the WordPress install to produce an RSS feed, which wouldn’t be that bad of an idea. But, if they did want to transition Out of the Blue into a real deal blog, they could.

I don’t remember this happening:

One Democratic precinct officer spoke up on behalf of Sheldon on Monday.

“I was roundly shouted down, which I expected to be,” Barbara Crane, a retiree who moved to Lacey with her husband eight months ago from out of state, recalled Tuesday with a laugh. Crane said the Democratic Party should have a place for someone like Sheldon, describing him as well informed and someone who looks out for his constituents’ interests in the 35th District.

I remember her standing up and speaking in support of Sheldon, something I thought was admirable, but the room was pretty quiet in my memory, and she wasn’t shouted down. At least in the way I define shouting down:

Verb 1. shout down – silence or overwhelm by shouting

There were only a few people in the room that agreed with her, but the mood was solem and polite. Except for one exchange between Sheldon and (crap I can’t remember his name) about whether Sheldon was using his state-paid-for end of session reports for campaigning, no one raised their voice.

Also, I had some trouble figuring out how Sheldon could support George W. Bush, while his wife was an activie member of Women in Black, but then I came across this:

During her husband’s career in the House and Senate as an often-conservative Democrat, his wife has:

• Protested his vote for parental notification for minors seeking abortions by sitting for eight hours in the gallery directly above his seat dressed entirely in black.

  “I’ve been on him about that,” Sheldon said. “I had an abortion when I was 20. I think, with a 19-year-old daughter, he thinks he’s being ‘fatherly’ with this restriction.”

• Filled his suit coat pockets with rifle cartridges each time her husband, a member of the NRA, was fixing to vote with the gun lobby.

  “He’s so locked and loaded down there in the basement you’d think he was all set to fight the next world war!” she said. “We live out on the (Olympic) Peninsula on a tree farm and he claims the guns are so he can shoot cougars, but puh-leeze . . .”

• Sent a toilet paper holder and a roll of toilet paper inscribed with the “Contract on America” to Olympia with her husband so he could mount it on the caucus wall.

  “It was right after Newt (Gingrich) and his boys took over Congress and I was home-schooling (daughter) Alexandra. So we did a whole big lesson on the Salem witch hunts and mass hysteria and I had her make the paper roll as a project. Timmy was so pleased.

  “If you’ve got to live with this guy you might as well laugh about it,” Sheldon said.

State senator Tim Sheldon, who is running in a contested primary against Kyle Taylor Lucas in the 35th LD, failed to get campaign services from the Thurston County Democrats. The party central committee voted to accept the report from the campaign services committee, who suggested that Sheldon not get services. Campaign services are things like using the county campaign office, using our lists… things like that.

But, it is pretty close to a what a county party can do in terms of an endorsement. Even in a contested primary, the party will typically give campaign services to all of the candidates. Not in this case though.

Below are my notes from last night when Sheldon got up to address the Central Committee. The format was a Q&A from the crowd, so if I haven’t pointed out who said what, it was probably Sheldon.

Jerry Muchmore reports that Anne Hirsh gets campaign services. And, that Sen. Tim Sheldon not, on a split vote.

No motion, so Sheldon gets up to talk.

He brought end of session reports.

Sheldon says: One of the reason I brought these, to give you some idea of the 35^th District, because no one on the campaign services committee was from the 35^th, and it is much more conservative than what you think.

Elected seven times to the leg. And served in the leadership. Being supported by the DSCC.

There is a big difference between Thurston County and Mason County.

He says: I’ve always voted to organize with the Democrats… I have a commitment to my district. If they didn’t they wouldn’t send me back. 81 percent as a Dem in the primary.

It is proper to endorse the incumbent. I think it’s important for the party to support incumbents.

Jennifer Speiler: what was with the Democrats for Bush?

Sheldon: There were two defining moments in my political life. JFK assassination and 9/11. In that election I thought President Bush would do a better job, and I encouraged other Democrats.

Did I feel I would turn the tide? No, it was just the way I felt.

I voted for Dino Rossi, I served in the state senate with him for seven years. I think Gregoire is doing a good job as well.

I-933? Sheldon: I’ll probably support it; I think it is a fundamental tenant of especially our state constitution. The negative aspects of it have been overblown.

What is your stance on Tim Eyman’s initiative 65?

Sheldon: I’m not going to say, he voted to bring it to the floor. He didn’t vote for it, because it wasn’t something he thought his constituents would endorse.

SB 1458. Mason County used to have a more aggressive monitoring system. He voted against the on site sewer system measure.

Danielle Westbrooke. I want to give you credit

Sheldon: “I’m feeling a bit filleted.”

Someone: Why did you run as an independent for county commisioiner?

Sheldon: I wanted to keep the job from being political. I wanted to become the first independent, non-partisan county commissioner. I prefer to call myself non-partisan.

Jerry (on the campaign services report): it was not a unanimous decision (4-1), the senator’s record didn’t support Democratic values. His constituency is vastly different than Thurston County. Democrats for Bush, which had something to do with it.

I didn’t vote last night (I’m a proxy, and my PCO was there), but if I had I probably would have voted against giving him services. How one votes in the Senate is one thing, I can’t really argue given his district and how I feel about personal choice. Everyone has to vote their concious in the senate.

But, Democrats for Bush and supporting Dino Rossi would have turned it for me.