Yes. I’m a delegate to the national convention. Doesn’t make me special, but I think that for the next couple of months, it makes my opinion a little more interesting to others than it might otherwise be. That also puts some pressure on me to be interesting, so I’ll try to make my observations worth your time. First though, a little diversion to say how I got here, because it’s kind of interesting, for me anyway — and it might say something about how we get our representatives.
A couple of weeks ago, my state held a primary and the candidate for whom I had worked my butt off for over nine months got his butt kicked. The result in my home county was especially disappointing, because I’d seen a great deal of enthusiasm for my candidate over much of the campaign. I won’t say it was a surprise, because the polls prediced a big loss and I could detect that there had been a fall-off in public support over the last two weeks that matched the polls. Primary Day was exceptionally exhilarating for me as I helped direct a voter protection effort here, and I was able to nag and cajole local election officials in a couple of counties to direct more resources to campus polling places where lines were exceeding an hour’s wait and provisional ballot forms were regularly running out. But, the cold reality of the results was pretty discouraging.
That said, the next afternoon one of my fellow local volunteers asked me through Facebook if I’d won. I had not even thought about it — as my thoughts centered on the loss in the Presidential nomination race, and I sought solace in a win for my preferred Congressional candidate, who will be one of the most progressive Congresspersons next year. As you might guess from the diary title, I was a delegate candidate. It was actually a very surreal moment when I sat down to fill in my ballot and saw my own name there. But, 20+ hours later, I hadn’t even looked at the delegate voting. All I had been thinking was that we had lost in every congressional district.
So, long story short, I finally read the rules about how “district level delegates” were chosen and learned that the proportionally awarded delegates were determined by selecting those with the most votes in a descending alternating gender chain. Sanders would get 3 of 8 delegates in my Congressional district — 2 of whichever gender the highest vote-getting delegate belonged to and one of the other. Checking out the returns, I confirmed my expectations that the highest vote-getter among Sanders delegates in my district was a former County councilwoman, who is one of the most widely admired figures in the county. Weirdly, though, I was the highest vote-getter of the male Sanders delegate candidates on the ballot (that’s a mouthful, huh?). Yes, there’s a lot of adjectives there, but the upshot was that I had been elected as the lone male convention delegate for Sanders in my district. Kinda cool.
I attribute my electoral success to a combination of having a simple Anglo-German name, vaguely Jewish in a district where that might be a plus factor and the fact that my name appeared first on the ballot among all delegates (listed alphabetically — though, in at least one district I boticed that a “B” English name candidate lost out to a “C” Irish name, so, go figure...). Apparently, a huge number of voters didn’t bother to turn over the ballot to see the delegates — or few understood the rules. Most voters didn’t rationally vote for the maximum number of delegates for their preferred candidate. I received over 2,000 more votes than any of the other male Sanders delegates. Even at that, I had more than 3,000 fewer votes than Sanders did himself. But, here’s a weird bit — this Congressional district now covers parts of 3 counties, and Sanders finished 2nd in each of those county segments — yet, for some reason, I was the top vote-getter in one of those county segments, ahead of even the highest vote-getting Clinton delegate — and that’s a part of the state I haven’t even driven through in a decade.
So, never underestimate the value of a name on a ballot, or the general confusion that most voters have when the ballot is in front of them. It may be that some voters didn’t understand that they could pick four men and four women. A small number chose an unaffiliated delegate, and still others may have just voted for the names they most liked. As the votes were certified today, I had received over 41,500 votes, and I’d say it’s a strong bet that 41,000 of those voters didn’t know my name from Adam.
Great, I won. Now What? What Do I Want as Sanders Delegate?
While I hope this was an amusing diversion about how down-ballot races are decided, you don’t really care about this part of the story — and you shouldn’t. You want to know if I have anything to say that would be interesting to you. Let me give that a shot.
It’s not as if I see the vote as an honor I’d earned through my hard work for the campaign, but I do take it very seriously. I’m a Sanders supporter and I’m also a confirmed Democrat. Yes — people like me exist. Perhaps my views are colored as a Sanders supporter, but I would say it’s the opposite. It is my views — both on policy and on process that steered me to Sanders.
The Platform
There will be important issues to be decided in the platform. Hillary Clinton has said she would support a public option for health care coverage. I think we should test that out and fight for it to be part of the platform, and I’m guessing most of my fellow Sanders delegates will make that their top priority.
For me, the top priority should be a strong statement on fracking and on new government policies to rapidly accelerate a move to fossil-fuel-free energy sources. Unlike every other issue that’s ever been, for this one. time is of the essence. Even replacing bridges that might soon collapse — time is a concern, but even if the bridge has to be shut down or it falls down, it can be fixed or replaced eventually. Health care? It would be great if that could be accomplished for people who are alive now to benefit from it — and it might extend or improve a lot of lives, but it’s not going to make us immortal. But, this planet will outlive us all and our descendants will have to live with the world we leave them. We are screwing up the climate in terms that can only be reversed over millions of years, so what we do now will have very long-lasting effects, either to the good or the catastrophic.
I am convinced — and I believe the science will soon bear this out — that a dozen years of fracking have not provided us a bridge fuel that is buying time to switch to a carbon-neutral future. To the contrary, we have taken our window of opportunity and likely slammed it shut. I am hoping we’ve left a crack open to still make a positive difference, but I’m afraidd that the fugitive emissions from a dozen years of methane extraction and transportation has done far more damage to the climate than could have been done in centuries, perhaps even a millennium or more, with burning the more carbon-intensive fuels that we’re replacing. If we hope to avoid the worst aspects of a climate-feedback loop, we have to stop adding methane to the atmosphere.
Unless the industry can certify that they’re doing it without any fugitive emissions, then any and all fracking must be suspended for at least a generation — until we get the CO2 issue under control. Otherwise, instead of facilitating that process, fracking may just render moot everything we’re doing to develop cleaner sources, making the whole exercise the greatest failure in history. I have other concerns about fracking that should lead us to simply ban it, but the climate peril demands that we cannot afford the time to debate those other issues. If fracking cannot be 100% certified as a method to give us energy that will buy us time, then we have to rule it as a disastrous wrong turn and turn back.
We don’t have four years to figure that out, either. I know the answer, you know the answer and Hillary Clinton knows the answer. We cannot afford to pretend it’s an unknown. The EPA has finally figured this out after being dragged kicking and screaming to the evidence. Policy hasn’t followed the science yet, and it’s past time that it did. If the platform doesn’t find a way to reflect the urgency of this issue, it will be a colossal failure for me.
Rules Changes
Finally, there will be important process questions to discuss. Should we continue to have super-delegates, and if so what should their role be? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz disingenuously says the super-delegates are there so that they aren’t competing on the ballot for delegate slots. FIne. Let’s take her up on that defense. If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t be weighing in advance and shouldn’t be reflecting a vote that is different than what they would be if they had been chosen as pledged delegates. Moreover, to my way of thinking, if the supers have any justification, it must be that they have already been elected. They’ve been chosen previously by Democratic primary voters or caucusgoers and elected by the voters. Congresspersons, Senators, Governors, maybe the Democratic leader in the state legislature, and maybe some former state leader emeritus. Why do we have lobbyists and other super-delegates who have never stood before the voters or never won any election? They have no standing to have a vote that is any more significant than any of hte people who voted for me or the other delegate candidates on the ballot.
If we’re going to keep super-delegates, there must be considerable reforms that reduce the number of super-delegates, confine the eligibilty to select officeholders only, and limit their role in the process prior to the end of the nomination race. Even if we decide that they’re going to have a continuing role at the convention, it must be respectful of the democratic process. I am inclined to say that they should be bound by the votes of their constituents — at least going into the convention. That would honor DWS’ rationale for having the super-delegates. At the least, the rules should be such that the media cannot start totalling endorsements and putting two big thumbs on the scale from the beginning. I could envision various ways to make this happen. We should have a process that respects the role of the voters in a democratic process, rather than one that gives the middle finger to the supporters of one candidate who might not be the establishment choice. The Republicans don’t have the super-delegates, so their race was decided by the voters...as it should be. Our party should not be less democratic than theirs.
Finally, there is the question of the nature of state contests. In an era where unaffiliated voters are the largest group and may soon be the majority of voters, does it make sense to have ANY closed primaries? I lean toward making them much more democratic — at the very least allowing people to change their registration in the run-up to the primary, rather than months in advance. I have found that people really prize their registration status, be it in a party or unaffiliated. They do not change their registration lightly, even if it means they cannot vote for their preferred candidate (even when I presented them with the opportunity to complete a change of registration where I was campaigning for Sanders). So, why not allow them to vote if they are willing to change their registration on the spot?
Either it’s a meaningful thing to register as Democrat, or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways, saying it’s meaningful for those who have been Democrats in advance of the election, but deny it’s meaningful for those who might want to make the change even on Primary Day. If saying you‘re a Democrat matters in terms of allowing one to participate in the vote, why shouldn’t we encourage those who are willing to make the change even at a very late date, perhaps even Primary Day?
Alternatively, if we think it’s a meaningless gesture to sign up for a party to vote in the Primary, then why are we even requiring that? If it says nothing about the voter’s relationship to the Party, we might as well allow for independents to vote in the Primary.
I admit that I am not happy with Bernie or Busters, including those decided to change their affiliations today (the first day they could do that). For them, it represents a rejection of the Party and/or its process, but for me it represents a bigger defeat because it takes them out of the fight for a better, more progressive Democratic Party. I understand their bitterness, but it also gives me a window on why some Democrats resent their participation in the process. Here’s the thing, though. It’s a democracy, and we should be encouraging their participation. Otherwise, we’re guilty of having the attitudes and serving the undemocratic elitists that they believe the party has come to represent.
The other question must be whether we continue to have caucuses. It may seem really ironic, but the highlight of this campaign for me was not my being chosen as a delegate. It was when I went to Nevada to do election protection there for the Sanders campaign. That was my first time seeing a caucus. As much as I am a believer in secret ballots and also in making it easier for more people to participate, I found the caucus to be pretty energizing, from the raucous events on line outside to the choosing of the delegates to the county convention. My favorite moment of the campaign came as one of the precints at this high school caucus site was deadlocked with one Sanders and one Clinton voter. Most of the precincts had dozens of caucusgoers, but two of them had just two voters, and both were split between the two campaigns. To determine the one delegate from each of those precincts, the two voters became, by default, representatives for their campaign and had to draw cards from a deck — high card wins. I explained the process for the benefit of the NPR radio reporter who recorded the events. Then, I deployed my own phone to record this extraordinary moment — what turned out to be the winning draw by the Sanders caucusgoer.
He shouted “Yes! Change!” Well, that might have been a tad over-optimistic, but I prefer to think it was just a tad premature.
Do I think caucuses are a great way to choose our candidates? No — but they’re a good way for people to get involved in shaping the party as delegates. I’d like to find a way that makes the voting process more open and more democratic — but I would like to find a way to include the energy that caucuses bring to the process, because that’s where change will come from. I am hoping to see this Las Vegas middle school Spanish teacher in Philadelphia. Unlike me, he didn’t ask to be a delegate at any level. I’m hoping he makes it all the way to the national level. We need him and people like him. Change.
There will be important victories for the campaign in coming weeks, and I hope meaningful efforts at the convention that will improve our party’s processes and policy positions. Change? “Yes! Change!”