Tyler Cowen in a post entitled Can we learn anything from the Democratic spat?:
Nonetheless constructivist attempts to remake America will, by political debate, be reshaped along traditional fault lines. That means your good idea — be it libertarian, progressive, or whatever — had better be pretty robust to mangling by the stupid, the emotional, the cynical, and the ill-informed.
This morning my wife and I attended the Democratic county convention. The main purposes of the convention are to nominate delegates to the district and state conventions, and to adopt a platform to be submitted for inclusion in the state party platform. It’s also a place for candidates and activists to show up and meet the party faithful. Any elected official or candidate who bothers to show up (or send someone to speak for them) is introduced to the full convention from the podium.
The energy level this year was higher than the last time we attended. Part of that was that the convention was held at a smaller venue, so the people there to campaign had less room to operate. A larger part is that North Carolina’s primary is relevant this year, and Democrats are hopeful of making gains just about everywhere thanks to their success in recent elections. As delegates arrived, they were mobbed by people eager to get them to sign up for things, put stickers on their shirts, and generally submit to campaigning. This is the sort of thing that’s ordinarily frustrating but is actually kind of fun when you’re at an event designed for that purpose.
The Hillary Clinton campaign had a larger official presence at the convention than the Barack Obama campaign, but based on applause and stickers on shirts, I’d say Obama supporters outnumbered Clinton supporters three to one. For the North Carolinians out there, it sure looks like Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue is going to carry Wake County by a large margin over Richard Moore. I’m probably going to vote for Moore in the primary, though. I should also note that my friend who works for the Department of Labor recommends that Democrats vote for Robin Anderson for Labor Commissioner in the primary.
Once all of the politicians have been introduced, the convention gets down to working on the resolutions. The resolutions are a set of political positions that the county feels the state party should adopt. A separate committee writes the list of resolutions, and then they’re presented to the convention for adoption. Every year they put forward a motion to adopt them all in one big batch, and every year there are people who have problems with the resolutions, and want to debate them individually. The catch is that most everyone else just wants to go home. So there’s a series of motions and other parliamentary shenanigans involved with trying to get the resolutions debated and with trying to end debate and move the convention along.
The funny thing is that the resolutions serve very little purpose in actually changing the laws. Wake is just one county in North Carolina and North Carolina is just one state of 50. It’s kind of frustrating to sit through lengthy debates on this issues, but at the same time it’s heartening to see people really engaged on this issues (even if many of them seem to misunderstand them). In the end, all of the resolutions are acted upon and the convention is adjourned.
One of the best takeaways from the county convention is the reminder that even though the party is divided by the Presidential primary, most everyone is working toward a similar set of goals, and there are a lot more elections being contested than just the one for President.
If you sympathize with a political party, I’d strongly encourage you to get involved at the precinct level and maybe make it to a county convention. It’s an entertaining way to be educated.
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White House email: malice or incompetence?
Since it was initially disclosed that the White House had lost millions of emails that were required by law to be archived, I’ve been wondering whether they were lost due to technical ineptitude or “lost” for political expedience. Ars Technica published an article today looking into that question.
It looks like incompetence may have played a big part. The White House replaced Lotus Notes with Microsoft Exchange, and replaced the old archiving system with the “hey dude, make a backup every now and then” system. On the other hand, the habitual use of external email accounts by some White House staffers looks more suspicious:
On that front, however, I suspect that there may be more to the story. I wonder if it’s the case that it was just easier for White House staffers to get Blackberries through the RNC than through official government channels. I have a friend who’s a politician, and his campaign account pays for his Blackberry. If most of the staffers had RNC-provided Blackberries before they got to the White House, it wouldn’t surprise me if they kept them.
Either way, using the external accounts for official correspondence was illegal and in the end will result in the historical record of the Bush years being less well documented than it should be.