Why Political Conventions?

(Second in a series from OpenSourceDem.)

Political conventions give citizens vote and voice. They double the initial power of a non-secret ballot that may not be counted anyway and that, if counted, is usually canceled out by another vote.

It is all very well to take election integrity seriously. But that is by no means the only or even the main source of rot at the very root of our republican democracy.

Even if not tampered with and then tallied correctly, all votes are not equal. For example:

-- A straight-ticket vote is always more powerful than picking through down-ballot and even some up-ballot races on the ballot.

-- Some votes are protected by gerrymandering of election districts.

-- And other votes, arbitrarily attributed to “likely” or “swing” voters, are effectively privileged after the fact by pollsters over those of less likely and more loyal voters.

So, voting is not and never has been the be-all and end-all of republican democracy, necessary to be sure, but not sufficient.

Moreover, your individual voice can be leveraged in convention by participation in like-minded caucuses and amplified from your precinct all the way to the national convention by a thousandfold.

Finally, conventions do more than nominate candidates who if elected may go on to represent those that elected them, but today are more likely to go panhandling to whomever financed their opponent.

Note that two marginal Democrats newly elected from Texas went on to deliver votes for President BUSH and Alberto GONZALES as the state party apparatus channeled the Blue Wave elsewhere. This was probably not what Democratic voters had in mind, but it fills the pockets of candidates’ pimp-consultants and delights the state party establishment.

Conventions, however, are the highest authority in any political party and an opportunity to change that party establishment.

A convention:

-- credentials delegates from previous conventions and selects them for the next one;

-- memorably adds value and meaning to political participation and identity for every participant;

-- writes permanent rules and a campaign platform; and

-- elects party executives and conducts any other lawful business of the party.

Those elected to public office have complex responsibilities, not always or even mostly to the fragile electoral majorities that put them in office. Elected officials can listen to voters but they will hear nothing directly and white noise indirectly from pollsters. Actually most of those pollsters work for pimp-consultants or lobbyists.

So without putting a strong party and practical platform forged in convention behind them, electing Democrats is more than just disappointing and frustrating, it is very nearly futile.

By contrast, the GOP has demonstrated that vigorous conventions make for a disciplined and effective party generally. You can disagree with the extremist GOP platform, and our state party apparatus likes to mock it. But GOP officials take that platform and their conventions very seriously indeed. Their officials are not better than ours. But their convention, and to that extent their party, is more effective than ours. It is a source of political energy for them which they turn into both funds and votes.

Third parties have only conventions, no primary elections. They have very poor prospects in even-year, statewide general elections. But they can dominate elections in well-governed small municipalities, conceivably even large cities.

Texas statutes now prohibit “fusion” ballots and merged conventions in even years. But a strong Democratic Party with durable credentials almost certainly should participate in joint, odd-year conventions, especially with the Green and Libertarian parties, which have some elements of a practical agenda.

For Democrats, the main obstacle to practical conventions are (a) the party establishment’s preference for beauty pageants in which all serious business is methodically suppressed by systematic time-wasting, (b) delegates’ acceptance of unwritten rules and dubious guidelines that perpetuate a professional and racial patronage chain, as well as (c) sheer inexperience with parliamentary procedure and form.

The good news here is that (a) through (c) are easy to fix starting, uh, backwards with (c).

Sunday Funnies (late edition)

Diabetes is just a pain in the ass.

This pretty much describes me:

For some people with diabetes, the burden of adhering to their daily care regimen nearly equals that of their diabetes-related health complications, a U.S. study finds.

University of Chicago researchers conducted interviews with more than 700 adults with type 2 diabetes.

As reported in the October issue of Diabetes Care, some patients said the inconvenience and discomfort of having to take numerous medications each day, carefully monitoring their diet, and getting the required amounts of exercise had a major impact on their quality of life.

I have written about my illness previously, and this is a typical day:

Each day, a typical diabetes patient takes many medications, including two or three different pills to control blood sugar levels, one or two pills to lower cholesterol, two or more pills to reduce blood pressure, and an aspirin to prevent blood clots. As the disease progresses, the number of drugs increases and often includes insulin shots, according to background information in the study.

From 12 percent to 50 percent of patients interviewed said they were willing to give up 8 of 10 years of life in perfect health to avoid a life with diabetes complications, but between 10 percent and 18 percent of patients said they were willing to give up 8 of 10 years of healthy life to avoid life with treatments.

I emphasized that last part because that's precisely how I feel.

The only thing I can eat without remorse or reservation is vegetables. Not fruit -- even watermelon spikes my blood sugar. Forget pineapple or strawberries. Red meat slams my cholesterol, and alcohol sends my trigylcerides into the ozone.

So how would YOU like a nice salad for breakfast this morning?

The decisions you make three to five times a day about what to put in your mouth have, for me, those afore-mentioned "long-term implications" under consideration: shall I have the salmon or the filet? The sandwich or the salad? The mocha Frapp or the tea?

No pasta. No bagels. No soup (too much sodium). Nothing fried. One glass of wine or one beer, period. Walk for twenty minutes, minimum, after dinner every single evening. Don't forget to pack both meds and healthy snacks every time you leave the house, lest you go hypoglycemic. Despite tight control of my blood glucose for the past few years, I still experience one of these episodes about once or twice a month.

Forget about Italian food. Pass on the Chinese takeout. La comida Mexicana is off the menu as well. Can have some sushi (sashimi obviously being the wiser choice). Mashed potatoes? Very funny. Rice? Ha ha. Corn? I don't think so. Whole grains -- complex carbs also including beans, for example -- are better than the bleached, refined ones, but not by much. Bread, chips, crackers, pastry, cake, cookies, ice cream? Pizza? A cheeseburger and fries? Are you nuts?

I didn't have bad eating habits before my diagnosis; I ate only a little red meat even when I was 20-something. I always liked all kinds of fish. I stopped drinking cow's milk (me soy guy) decades ago. As in two decades ago. No sodas for at least as long a period of time. I was also moderately active or more all of my life, playing sports as a kid, climbing and hiking with the Scouts as an adolescent, intramural basketball and softball in college, and so on. Throughout my thirties I took vitamins and supplements and was in the gym four days a week for an hour lifting, followed by another half-hour of aerobic activity. Now, once I tapered off and then stopped altogether about five years ago, I quickly gained 25 pounds. And became diabetic.

There was no history of the disease on either side of my family, and no incidence of heart disease either (sometimes diabetes goes undetected in individuals for years until they experience a cardiac event -- or a stroke, for example). Can't blame it on the genes. Can't find much of anything to blame it on, really; I just got lucky, I guess.

So anyway, it's just a drag when you're out with friends and everybody else is having the fajitas or the fettucine alfredo or the Philly cheese steak and you're having the grilled chicken salad (not the Caesar and no ranch dressing) for the tenth time that week.

Is an occasional guilty pleasure worth the risk of onset of failing kidneys -- or reduced vision or an amputated foot -- a few years earlier than perhaps it would have occurred?

Sometimes it is, yes.

How much of life is really worth living if you have to deny yourself virtually everything that makes it worth living in the first place?

So once in a while -- not very often, and certainly not as often as I would like -- I have the nachos or the pasta or the fried rice, and take extra medicine, and don't fucking worry about it.

Sunday Funnies (early edition)

965 and $123,520

That's as of a few minutes ago.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed, on behalf of Rick Noriega as well as all of us in the Tex-blogosphere who took on this challenge. You exceeded our expectations.

Now let's bring our troops home:

Can a Republican get elected with just the white vote?

They are certainly going to test the theory:

The top four Republican presidential candidates have set off a debate over whether the GOP is paying enough attention to blacks and Hispanics by skipping Thursday night's debate on minority issues.

The four leading Republican candidates — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney — cited scheduling conflicts in saying they could not attend the debate at Morgan State University, a historically black college.

After the GOP pooh-poohed a CNN/YouTube debate, after they stiffed the Hispanic community by failing to make room on their schedules for an Univision face-off, after they criticized their Democratic counterparts for refusing to debate on the Fox Propaganda Channel.

Why, it even confounds Eye of Newt:

"I'm puzzled by their decision. I can't speak for them. I think it's a mistake. I wish they would change their minds — they still have a few days — and I wish they would in fact go to the debate Thursday night," Gingrich, who is considering entering the race for the GOP nomination, said earlier this week.

If it puzzles a man of his towering intellect, just imagine how the African-American community must feel.

So who do you think should be the VP nominee?

I thought my man John Edwards was triumphant in last night's debate, as did most others, and whether Hillary has peaked or not is a conversation for another day.

For today let's speculate idly about who might be on the undercard for various candidates Republican and Democratic.

Hillary could pick Obama or Tom Vilsack or Evan Bayh and be just fine, but I think she takes Bill Richardson, or even better for her, Wesley Clark. He just solves a lot of her negatives by being a white military Southern gentleman.

Obama almost has to pick a white guy with "gravitas" (see Dick Cheney 2000) which likewise suggests Clark, or perhaps Biden or Dodd. Two senators brings up a lot of bad memories from the past two cycles, though, so look for a heavyweight like Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania (no pun intended, Governor). But Barack sort of needs someone from the South or West also, so perhaps Brian Schweitzer of Montana is a possibility.

Edwards could go in any number of directions should he wind up as the Democratic nominee. He could pick a female elected official such as Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas or Janet Napolitano of Arizona. Both of those red states would be in play along with a block of surrounding midwestern or southwestern states. Or he could select Richardson or Obama to break the GOP stranglehold on the South and Southwest.

The Republicans? They're in a quandary because all of their front-runners have some significant negatives, but my belief is that irrespective of who emerges from the conservative scrum, the winner taps Mike Huckabee as his running mate. Mostly because he's a Christian, but also because he isn't a freak.

Unless Eye of Newt can somehow pole-vault past the "pygmies", as he calls them, and then I think he has to pick another outsider, and possibly a Westerner for geographic balance.

Larry "Wide Stance" Craig is just the man he's looking for.

What do you think? Give me a few fer-instances in the comments.

Stale Rice

ThinkProgress reports the deflation of Kinda Sleazy:

Over the past two years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been on the Sunday talk shows 30 times, making her the most second frequent guest after Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE).

But that may be changing. In his Washington Post column, Howard Kurtz reveals that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is no longer a “prize catch” for the Sunday talk shows. She was recently turned down by both CBS and NBC:

The secretary of state has always been considered a prize catch for the Sunday talk shows. But when the White House offered Condoleezza Rice for appearances eight days ago, after a week focused on Iraq, two programs took the unusual step of turning her down.

Executives at CBS and NBC say Rice no longer seems to be a key player on the war and that her cautious style makes her a frustrating guest.

“I expected we’d just get a repetition of the administration’s talking points, which had already been well circulated,” says Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” who questioned two senators instead. “We’d had a whole week of that with General Petraeus and President Bush.”

Television media aren’t the only ones uninterested in Rice. A few months ago, every single major newspaper turned it down an op-ed by Rice on Lebanon. Price Floyd, formerly the State Department’s director of media affairs, recounted that the piece was filled glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership and “read like a campaign document.”

Recent reports indicate that Rice’s influence within the White House is also waning, giving way to the more extreme policies of Cheney and his allies. A Newsweek article in June found that Cheney’s national-security team had “been actively challenging Rice’s Iran strategy in recent months.” In April, Rice advocated that five members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard be freed from captivity, but she was overruled after Cheney “made the firmest case for keeping them.”

These reports contrast when Rice first became Secretary of State. The media gushingly predicted she would succeed because she and Bush “know each other so well they have conversations based on body language” and speculated that she may even run for president in 2008.

This past Sunday, none of the five network talk shows turned down Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox.

Back to academia with you, Madam Secretary.

875 and $87,000+

In just the past week Rick Noriega's campaign has added 75 more donors and fifteen grand to the party.

And we haven't even flogged it much.

Noriega will probably be named later today the winner of Democracy for Texas' online polling, as he has carried a substantial lead throughout. And this is the final week before the end of the fundraising quarter and the results for the exploratory campaign will be made public.

Our little netroots push went national, and also generated substantial organic grassroots momentum (despite what one person thinks).

You can still ride the Noriega Express and be one of the One Thousand Netroots Supporters of this campaign. There's still 125 seats left. But hey, time's running out; you only have until Sunday to get on board.

Considering what a jackass our Junior Senator was this past week (and considering your other option -- a man who believes pregnant women have no choice, but gays do --) it's long been clear to those of us who know the man that Rick Noriega is the only choice for the US Senate.

Won't you join us?

Update (6 p.m.): Noriega 78.4%, Watts 21.6%.

Update (9/25): Via Sharon and RG Ratcliffe, Noriega thanks the netroots:



"Now with this new dimension in American politics, the netroots allows for regular folks like myself, who have devoted their lives to public service to step forward and offer themselves up for higher office.

"No longer do you have to be a celebrity or a self-financed millionaire to offer yourself up for higher office.

"The netroots in large part has leveled the playing field."

"The netroots component is going to be a critical piece of us defeating John Cornyn and getting the state and nation back on track after this administration has so misled us."

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for this week's edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's Blog Round-Up, compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

It's about one thing. TXsharon at Bluedaze tells us why we have to make it about something else.

Bill Howell of StoutDemBlog, a new member of the TPA, takes a look at Kirk England's recent party switch, as well as others in Dallas County, in Rove's Permanent Majority Collapses: Now What Do We Do With All These Defectors?

Boadicea at Texas Kaos wonders if MoveOn doesn't owe John Cornyn a thank you note.

Musings discovers that the leading GOP presidential contenders are too busy for African-American and Latino-sponsored debates, while the Harris County GOP claim they are home to Hispanics because of their annual bike giveaway.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News has word on Mayor John Manlove of Pasadena entering the race to challenge Nick Lampson for Congress and the mayor's race it opens up He also has a short colorful digest of Naomi Klein promoting her book on Disaster Capitalism.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson posts on recent news that Gov. Perry and Speaker Craddick -- whom Mike Krusee excoriated at the end of the legislative session -- will appear at a fundraiser for him in Krusee Throws Reagan Over The Wall And Under The Bus.

Mayor McSleaze at McBlogger takes a look at some of the dumber things to come from the Right this week, like Bill O'Reilly's trip to a Harlem hot spot where he discovered that it was just like a 'real' restaurant. You know, like Olive Garden.

Off the Kuff looks at the causes and effects of Kirk England's party switch.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part For The Left looks at UT football and asks a simple question: UTLonghorns or UT Thugs.

Burnt Orange Report and its diarists are following the Kirk England switchover with enthusiasm. After breaking the story on Wednesday, the entire staff welcomes the newest Democrat to the Texas House.

KT at Stop Cornyn shows how the Junior Senator is wasting time again. Instead of getting funding for CHIP or our troops the armor they need, Cornyn forced a vote condemning MoveOn.org. Yet another example of failed leadership and Junior John being out of touch with the needs of Texans.

Evan at the Caucus Blog covered two major stories this week. First, after months of investigation, discussion, and debate, the Houston GLBT Political Caucus has decided to endorse the HISD bond proposal. Second, Evan has looked into the history of the fight for a federal employment non-discrimination bill in the post "ENDA Deja Vu."

Bradley at North Texas Liberal discusses how Washington, D.C. almost had the vote, but lost it due to greedy Senate Republicans. Only eight Republicans could be bothered to vote for the legendary bill that would have allowed the District a voting member of Congress.

The marriage of the Republican party to theocracy is no accident. Right-wing investors like Richard Mellon Scaife are molding US churches, notes CouldBeTrue in "What does an El Paso Church have to do with the right wing" at South Texas Chisme.

It was quite a week for Senator Box Turtle; he led the Senate charge against free speech, voted against habeas corpus, and against adequate down time for our soldiers. As PDiddie at Brains and Eggs points out, he now owns the war on terror -- in addition to the war on the Constitution and all Americans. But he did unwittingly sponsor a successful fundraiser for MoveOn.org, so he wasn't a complete failure.

WhosPlayin joins a local Republican activist in opposing tax abatements for speculative real estate development in Lewisville.

Vince at Capitol Annex has been keeping tabs on the Texas Conservative Coalition and its town hall meetings across East Texas in which they propose to eliminate property taxes in favor of an expanded sales tax, and points out that at least one new candidate has already started drinking their Kool-Aid.

Hal at Half Empty was at a campaign kickoff fundraiser for Ron Reynolds, who is running for State Rep in HD-27. He took videos and did a series. Links are at his summary posting: Ron E. Reynolds is Running for State Rep in HD 27.

Blue 19th notes that Randy Neugebauer can't hide his contempt for veterans from everyone. So which party was it that supported our troops? Oh yeah, the one that doesn't start with "Republican".

And lastly, No? No! Yes? Yes! Texas Cloverleaf reports on Trinity Vote Trickery. Confusing ballot language and campaign slogans cloud
the upcoming Trinity toll road vote in Dallas.