For the first time ever, the Washington State Democratic Party held its convention virtually

Yes­ter­day, del­e­gates from across Wash­ing­ton state met (vir­tu­al­ly) for the 2020 Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion. The del­e­gates were pri­mar­i­ly meet­ing to decide on the party’s plat­form going into November’s gen­er­al election.

After greet­ings from par­ty offi­cials and trib­al lead­ers, acknowl­edge­ments of the vic­tims of police vio­lence, and praise for the emer­gency work­ers respond­ing to the ongo­ing nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the con­ven­tion got down to business.

Con­duct­ing a Zoom meet­ing with almost 2,000 par­tic­i­pants is a her­culean task, and that is per­haps why no one sought to take on the unen­vi­able role of Per­ma­nent Chair of the con­ven­tion before the deadline.

The lack of inter­est guar­an­teed that Chair Tina Pod­lodows­ki would get the job, which she car­ried out with impres­sive cour­tesy, grace, and professionalism.

After Pod­lodows­ki had gaveled in the meet­ing (or rather, thud­ded her cof­fee cup down in lieu of a gav­el), the del­e­gates began con­sid­er­ing sev­er­al amend­ments to the par­ty’s gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments, which con­sist of a char­ter and bylaws.

These pro­pos­als, a pack­age of house­keep­ing mea­sures to ensure the par­ty could con­tin­ue to oper­ate dur­ing times of emer­gency or make do with­out precinct cau­cus­es (which have tra­di­tion­al­ly been held in past pres­i­den­tial cycles), were devoid of con­tro­ver­sy. After approv­ing all but one of them, the del­e­gates turned to the main mat­ter of the meet­ing: amend­ments to the party’s platform.

Nine pro­posed amend­ments to add planks to the par­ty plat­form were con­sid­ered by the assem­bly. For each amend­ment, del­e­gates pre­sent­ed five-minute argu­ments both for and against adopt­ing the planks.

The nine amend­ments heard were all backed by a minor­i­ty of mem­bers of the Plat­form Com­mit­tee and pre­sent­ed as minor­i­ty reports (where­as the unmod­i­fied plat­form as a whole was pre­sent­ed as the major­i­ty report).

The first minor­i­ty report called for lan­guage to be added that would call for inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions of police killings – the idea being that out­side inves­ti­ga­tors are more objec­tive than the local pros­e­cu­tors who have to rely on the police they are inves­ti­gat­ing in oth­er aspects of their work.

The sec­ond minor­i­ty report called for the par­ty to sup­port the elim­i­na­tion of the “per­son­al belief” exemp­tion for vac­ci­na­tions. The exemp­tion was already elim­i­nat­ed for the measles, mumps, and rubel­la vac­cine by the 2019 Leg­is­la­ture, but the exemp­tion remains in place for oth­er vaccinations.

The third minor­i­ty report called for Democ­rats to get seri­ous about the issue of stu­dent loans: it called for lan­guage sup­port­ing the can­cel­la­tion of stu­dent debt and putting caps on the inter­est rates of stu­dent loans.

This amend­ment was bril­liant­ly pre­sent­ed by Jes­si­ca Ines, who effort­less­ly dis­man­tled the tired argu­ment that stu­dent debt for­give­ness is “wel­fare for the rich,” and called on del­e­gates to imag­ine the mas­sive eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus that would result from mil­lions of Amer­i­cans being lib­er­at­ed from their debt burden.

Four minor­i­ty reports focused on the envi­ron­men­tal plank of the plat­form, and all dealt with nuclear pow­er. In order, these amendments:

• Called for a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of nuclear pow­er against increased invest­ment in renew­able energy
• Called for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to ful­ly fund cleanup of the Han­ford nuclear site (a nuclear weapons facil­i­ty that dates back to the Man­hat­tan Project). The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion has tried to de-fund cleanup efforts, despite the sig­nif­i­cant radioac­tive waste that plagues the area.
• Called for a mora­to­ri­um on new nuclear plants
• Called for an end to gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for the nuclear industry.

These amend­ments to the plat­form were stu­dious­ly opposed by Steve Ver­hey, who uti­lized videos, graphs and even memes to illus­trate his points.

Anoth­er minor­i­ty report pro­posed adding lan­guage to the Labor and Eco­nom­ic Jus­tice plank of the plat­form, advo­cat­ing for a thir­ty-two-hour work­ing week.

Both speak­ers made com­pelling argu­ments for the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the pol­i­cy – odd­ly, both used France (which has a thir­ty-five-hour work­ing week) as an exam­ple to high­light their side of the argument.

The final minor­i­ty report was intend­ed to tack­le envi­ron­men­tal racism. The amend­ment would add lan­guage to the plat­form oppos­ing the restric­tion of low-income hous­ing to areas that suf­fer from pol­lu­tion (such as areas near­by high­ways or indus­tri­al areas). The argu­ments on both sides were nuanced, and the issue is one that Democ­rats should con­tin­ue to exam­ine thoroughly.

All nine amend­ments to the plat­form were approved by the del­e­gates, who then went on to over­whelm­ing­ly approve the plat­form with its amendments.

While del­e­gates vot­ed on each amend­ment (the vot­ing usu­al­ly took between twen­ty and thir­ty min­utes), the con­ven­tion heard from Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and office­hold­ers. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden promised the con­ven­tion that he would restore “real lead­er­ship” to the White House, but remind­ed Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats of the neces­si­ty of hold­ing onto the House and win­ning the Senate.

Many of the speak­ers remarked exten­sive­ly on the twin crises cur­rent­ly fac­ing Amer­i­ca: the anti-racist protests in the after­math of the death of George Floyd, and the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Tom Perez, the chair­man of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee, told lis­ten­ers that “civ­il rights is indeed the unfin­ished busi­ness of Amer­i­ca,” and com­ment­ed on how bad­ly the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion is deal­ing with the pan­dem­ic: “Don­ald Trump and Her­bert Hoover are in a pitched bat­tle to see who can have the worst jobs record!”

Many state lev­el office­hold­ers addressed the con­ven­tion, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, every Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the state’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion except for Den­ny Heck (who is a can­di­date for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor), both of Washington’s U.S. sen­a­tors, and NPI’s own Gael Tar­leton, who is run­ning to replace Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman.

Tar­leton promised to “defend every vote and every vot­er,” remind­ing del­e­gates of the vio­lence the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion has met­ed out to peace­ful protesters.

After the plat­form was vot­ed on, Chair Pod­lodows­ki gaveled/­cof­fee-cupped out the con­ven­tion gen­er­al ses­sion, bring­ing the state par­ty’s 2020 cau­cus and con­ven­tion cycle to an end. (There did­n’t end up being any cau­cus­es due to the pan­dem­ic; del­e­gate selec­tion was con­duct­ed using an online vot­ing sys­tem… the results of which can be audit­ed because the bal­lots cast were not secret.)

Wash­ing­ton Democ­rats are now free to focus on the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, which will take place in about two months, as well as the mon­u­men­tal­ly impor­tant gen­er­al elec­tion in November.