Read a Pacific Northwest, liberal perspective on world, national, and local politics. From majestic Redmond, Washington - the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Hurrah for smoke filled rooms with strippers

Aneurin at Democracy for Vancouver has an interesting and savvy take on the news that state Republicans have decided to allocate 51% of their national convention delegates based on the results of the primary:
The state Dems clearly missed an opportunity here in how you play the PR game. The state R’s now get to claim the mantle of direct democratic elections, no matter that the primary date of February 12th will be meaningless given that the national primary day of February 5th will determine both party’s nominees.
Of course, what is seldom reported is how national Democratic Party rules make life so difficult for Democrats in Washington. This is not a new thing, but I finally went and found the language, and it should be obvious how this affects us:
PARTICIPATION

1. Participation in the delegate selection process shall be open to all voters who wish to participate as Democrats.
1. Democratic voters shall be those persons who publicly declare their Party preference and have that preference publicly recorded.
I'm certainly no rules expert, but since we don't have registration by party in this state, voters at some point would have to publicly identify themselves as Democrats, either by signing a declaration or requesting a Democratic ballot, which also tends to cheese a lot of people off.

It's interesting how folks in Washington hold their right not to be identified with any party so dear, and I've come to accept it as a somewhat unique part of our state's political legacy. Those of us who grew up in party registration states may not see it quite the same way, but the end result is that it creates a logistical difficulty in holding a presidential primary, at least on the Democratic side.

All the blather in the press about smoke-filled rooms and such is just stupid. In 2004 I set up in the school kitchen with some whiskey and cigars, but it didn't do much good, because you can't smoke on school property anyhow. I was thinking of bringing strippers but it was kind of spendy.

The silly thing in all this, as Aneurin notes, is that it won't matter, as the nominees will likely have been chosen by the time Washingtonians caucus or vote by mail or send up flares or whatever. The bigger problem is a bizarre and archaic nomination system that still gives smaller, rural and whiter states too much influence, although we'll see what happens this go round with California moving to Feb. 5.

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