Donkey Kong
May. 9th, 2004 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77Legend has it that when asked “Do you belong to any organized political party?”, Will Rogers replied: “No, I’m a Democrat.”
I participated in a practical demonstration of this principle on Saturday, while serving as a delegate at the 2004 King County Democratic Party convention. It was a loooonnnnng day ...
The purpose of the convention was to hammer out the County Democratic Party’s 2004 platform--basically, a statement of what we think the party should stand for.
Predictably, the morning was consumed by speeches: Senators Patty Murray & Maria Cantwell, Representatives Jim McDermott & Jay Insley gave us their pep talks, as did a number of lesser office-holders & -seekers.
Once the actual work of the convention started, discussion rapidly bogged down: with ten planks to cover by 5:00, we spent two hours on the first one. Frustratingly, much of this time was lost to fights over language among people who were basically in agreement about the underlying issues.
By the time that we got to the second plank, discussion had to be limited to one speaker for & one against every proposal, with a minute apiece. So, while our discussions of social issues including abortion and gay marriage were exhaustive, our discussions of the economy, education, the environment, foreign policy (“Hello! IRAQ?”, as someone said), health care, labor, law enforcement, campaign finance, & public services were pretty truncated.
Ironically, I think that the convention ultimately devoted more time to issues on which delegates broadly agreed than to ones where there were substantive disagreements: exhaustive discussions of gay marriage & abortion were followed by lopsided votes, while a two-minute pro-&-con about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ended in a razor-thin decision.
Still, we did somehow manage to at least touch on each issue area by 5:00, & so were able to pass a complete County platform on to the state level ...
I participated in a practical demonstration of this principle on Saturday, while serving as a delegate at the 2004 King County Democratic Party convention. It was a loooonnnnng day ...
The purpose of the convention was to hammer out the County Democratic Party’s 2004 platform--basically, a statement of what we think the party should stand for.
Predictably, the morning was consumed by speeches: Senators Patty Murray & Maria Cantwell, Representatives Jim McDermott & Jay Insley gave us their pep talks, as did a number of lesser office-holders & -seekers.
Once the actual work of the convention started, discussion rapidly bogged down: with ten planks to cover by 5:00, we spent two hours on the first one. Frustratingly, much of this time was lost to fights over language among people who were basically in agreement about the underlying issues.
By the time that we got to the second plank, discussion had to be limited to one speaker for & one against every proposal, with a minute apiece. So, while our discussions of social issues including abortion and gay marriage were exhaustive, our discussions of the economy, education, the environment, foreign policy (“Hello! IRAQ?”, as someone said), health care, labor, law enforcement, campaign finance, & public services were pretty truncated.
Ironically, I think that the convention ultimately devoted more time to issues on which delegates broadly agreed than to ones where there were substantive disagreements: exhaustive discussions of gay marriage & abortion were followed by lopsided votes, while a two-minute pro-&-con about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ended in a razor-thin decision.
Still, we did somehow manage to at least touch on each issue area by 5:00, & so were able to pass a complete County platform on to the state level ...
no subject
Date: 2004-06-14 01:22 pm (UTC)