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Party Politics: I need a shower

by Tracee Sioux on June 16th, 2008

One of the most surprising things to me at the Texas Democratic Convention was the Group Think Mentality between the Hillary and Obama delegates. For some reason most participants had aligned themselves with others, who had voted similar to them in the primary, on issues completely unrelated to Hillary or Barack.

For instance, defending the Primary plus Caucus system of the Texas Democratic Party (Texas is the only state that has both a Primary and Caucus system. The primary gets 75% of delegates and the caucus gets 25%, the caucus was convoluted and required long division. People had to show up to vote twice. Most people didn’t understand it and didn’t participate.)

I felt the issue should have nothing to do with whether you were a Hillary delegate or an Obama delegate. I felt it should have been a matter of simplicity over complexity, efficiency over convolution, access over voter apathy.

Evidently, that wasn’t how Obama supporters saw it. Hillary won the Primary in Texas, but they took the Caucus - which some felt really drew them out of their voter apathy. They had zero sympathy for voters, like myself, who had to go to the newspaper, county building and party building to find out where the Caucus was being held, what it was and what time to be there. Obama got his supporters out in mass via his email machine. They won, it worked for them. They want to keep it.

It struck me as odd that people who had not been involved in the last decade felt the excitement of this extraordinary year should determine policy of the future. Optimistically, they felt they would always be this involved and excited about the political process. Which, I desperately hope is true - I just somehow doubt it.

In the end, I felt many people were a little manipulated into supporting those who were into getting some Democratic Party Power for themselves. I felt they got very excited about Obama that they fell in line with some pretty shady and ugly dealings within the party and adopted those issues as their own for no real compelling reason, except that everyone they were with was doing it.

Same with Hillary supporters. They felt they knew she was the best candidate, and therefore they all agree on all issues and committee decisions. Though those issues had nothing to do with Hillary at all.

One young woman raked me over the coals because I didn’t care enough to fight tooth and nail over these issues. She was so angry that I would excuse myself, and go have dinner with my cousin’s family, before these “very important votes” that she got up and left in an angry huff.

She did not see that I didn’t feel strongly about any of the candidates - whom I knew nothing about - for committees, rules or policies. I didn’t want to engage in a vicious brawl between Obamanites and Hillary-lovers. I didn’t want to associate myself with Hillary-extremists, who were trying to divide the party. Nor did I feel ready to throw myself behind a hostile take-over of the Democratic party by Obamanites.

There were some “coincidences” that I, and many others, felt weren’t really all that coincidental.

Telling people to be there to vote at 11 am on the agenda and then stalling until well after 2 pm with repeat speeches didn’t feel authentic to me. It felt like a strategic tactic to get the non-comittal swing vote to leave. It was effective, as half the delegates left to have lunch or proceed home.

Cutting off the Hillary Concession Speech on the monitors right in the middle felt a little fishy to me. Maybe they accidentally lost the feed. Maybe they didn’t.

A fire drill right as they were about to vote on whether Texas should have both a primary and a caucus or just a primary felt fishy and inauthentic. Again, much of the swing vote didn’t return after the fire drill.

My host, Bill Monroe, said there were 3 types of people at a convention: Statesmen who have convictions and want to work through the process for effective change, Wallflowers, who can be swayed by anyone and anything and Scoundrels who will do anything to get and maintain power.

Myself and several others I spoke to came home with an emotional hangover in need of a shower.

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POSTED IN: Fabulous Politics