General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere is the list of the Platform Drafting Committee membership...do you have ANY confidence in it?
The Platform Drafting Committee will be chaired by former Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio. Named to serve as members on the committee are former U.S. Representative Tony Coelho, Tino Cuellar, U.S. Representative Barney Frank, Donna Harris-Aikens, Colin Kahl, Nancy Keenan, Heather Kendall Miller, Thea Lee, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, Susan Ness, Mayor Michael Nutter, Carlos Odio, former U.S. Representative Robert Wexler and Christen Young. Serving as ex-officio members are Governor Deval Patrick, DNC Secretary Alice Germond, and Tom Wheeler.
The full Platform Committee will be chaired by Mayor Cory Booker and Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy (Ret.). Andrew Grossman will serve as National Platform Director.
link: http://www.democrats.org/news/press/democratic_national_committee_and_obama_for_america_announce_2012_conventio
So, a committee on which everybody but Barney Frank and Barbara Lee is(as far as I know) a principle-free, bland, passionless, unknown centrist hack. If we haven't heard of them, we can assume they haven't done or said anything that matters.
Do you trust THIS group of people to create a platform that is worth a damn thing?
Do you believe that they'll actually CARE what rank-and-file activists and Democratic voters want?
| 4 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited | |
| Yes. | |
2 (50%) |
|
| No. | |
2 (50%) |
|
| Platforms don't matter...all that matters is how the candidates look on tv. | |
0 (0%) |
|
| I don't WANT our party to have a platform that says anything | |
0 (0%) |
|
| Other | |
0 (0%) |
|
| No Opinion. | |
0 (0%) |
|
| What's so terrible about being bland and opaque? | |
0 (0%) |
|
| 0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided. | |
| Show usernames
Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll |
|
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)and about as relevant as the convention?
Maybe they should be relevant, and you could argue they codify the party philosophy-- but, really, nobody gives a shit about them..
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)what a party stands for. You can't just reduce that to what somebody says on the stump, because nobody says a damn thing on the stump that matters.
Without one, a party is nothing more than a group of people trying to win an election...someting that, by itself, is meaningless. Power without principle is simply power for the personal ego of the officeholder.
Some of us don't want politics to be reduced to who has the best hairstyle and the brightest teeth.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)some of the stuff we really want would scare the crap out of too many people.
Anyway, I didn't say get rid of them, I was basically answering the charge that the platform committee, and hence the platform, is too middle of the road.
Yeah, we have to stand for something, but the sad truth is that these days nobody seems to care..
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)How many times in the last 12 years has anyone said, oh yeah, what that elected official did was/was not in the platform!
Never.
It no longer matters.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That's what we'd be reduced to WITHOUT anything like a platform. It would be reduced to the visuals in the campaign ads-and really, those ads say nothing.
Perhaps the current platform structure is out-of-date, but for God's sake, there has to be something with principles and values...or why the hell even bother?
Take out those things, and you're down to what the candidate looks like on tv.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)The only course of action I recommend is the only one available to you. Acknowledge that no one takes the platform seriously and advocate for the issues that are important to you using whatever it is you did to do that in the four years in between conventions anyway.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)that the platform simply doesn't matter at all anymore.
If we work from THAT assumption, is there any point to even still HAVING a party at all?
A party without a platform is, by definition, a party without values or principles of any kind-and, therefore, a party that a person can't truly work within for positive change.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Do you need a platform to figure out what to believe? If you don't, why do you think anyone else does?
Autumn
(45,107 posts)It's a contract I signed on for and I expect them to honor the contract. I KNOW what I believe, and I want to know that they believe in it too.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But a party MUST have one, or it has no reason to exist. It's useless to reduce it simply to the personal appeal of each individual candidate...because in the natural order of things, most candidates will refuse to tell you what they stand for.
But without a platform, it's meaningless to work to elect somebody just because she or he says she's a Democrat. Without a platform, it goes without saying that electing somebody simply by party level isn't of any value.
You can't have any hope of appealing to anyone in office to do what you want if you don't know what they believe in themselves.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Response to patrice (Reply #3)
Ken Burch This message was self-deleted by its author.
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)Platforms are fine, but actually fulfilling them is more of a concern to me, personally.
patrice
(47,992 posts)I really would like to see what you're referring to.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)have deleted the post you responded to there.
patrice
(47,992 posts)
KaryninMiami
(3,073 posts)He wrote Fire Breathing Liberal - which describes him to a tee. I'm a fan. I was very disappointed when he left Congress- and still wish he was still there. Big time.
And as for Mayor Michael Nutter- mayor of Philadelphia who happens to be African American, here's something about him from today in response to the Romney speech at the NAACP:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke at the NAACP’s annual convention in Houston on Wednesday. Later in the day, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter spoke on behalf of the Democratic National Committee to call the speech “nonsense.” During his address to the NAACP, Romney’s promise to repeal Obamacare was met with boos. This did not surprise Mayor Nutter.
“Black folks are not going to sit there and listen to some of that nonsense,” Nutter said when asked if the boos surprised him. “Clearly Mitt Romney has no real plan for the African American community or frankly for America.”
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/07/11/mayor-nutter-black-folks-sit-listen-mitt-romneys-nonsense/
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Hes good.
FarPoint
(12,409 posts)He has my full support and confidence. No need to process the issue anymore.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That's how he managed to lose to a nothingburger like Kasich.
FarPoint
(12,409 posts)The Democrats didn't come out and vote...they assumed he would win....it's our fault Ted lost. They feel the pain today from their laziness.
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)Heather Kendall Miller is an legal activist for Native Americans, Nancy Keenan is president of N.A.R.A.L.-pro-choice America, and Donna Harris Akins is an executive officer of the N.E.A.
Yeah, I think they care what rank-and-file activists and Democratic voters want, and are certainly not "principle-free, bland....centerist hacks." Is there anyone in particular you object to?
Not that a party platform has meant a damn thing since 1972 when the Democratic platform helped lead the party to a devastating loss.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)Tony Coelho: A Democrat (there are several such on the platform cmte.) with extensive ties to the banking and finance industries. I do like his advocacy for disability rights and his fire in campaigning but why so many banking-insiders that support continued opposition to regulating banks and Wall St and oppose prosecution of banking corruption in the aftermath of the collapse.
Colin Kahl: I don't have a problem with him as long as he sticks with his opposition to war with Iran but I can understand why many Democrats and liberals should object to the inclusion of one the Obama administration's key liaison to the Pentagon and a significant architect and adviser of the administration's defense foreign policy over the past four years.
Susan Ness: Before she went to the FCC she was a banker and a partisan for the banking industry. I have a wild guess on her position on banking reform.
Michael Nutter: The Philly Mayor who supports shuttering libraries, imposing new taxes and fees but only on college students and shutting homeless shelters to balance the city budget at the same time he wants to criminalize homelessness and outreach to homeless people.
Cory Booker: Honestly, I support throwing Cory Booker into the Hudson River and out of the Democratic Party. I think it would be met by great applause if more Democrats knew what an utter quisling shitbrick of a wanker Booker really is. On a more-narrow basis, I don't think a guy who praises and shares Mitt Romney's economic vision and philosophy should be co-chairing the platform cmte. of the Democratic Party. Once again, ties to banking industry and their fiscal-backers and lobbyists.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The co-chairs will have pretty much total control, in the end, of what platform amendments even get considered. They will be enforcing a line...in Booker's case, a line of total subservience to the corporate austerity agenda.
The handful of progressives that have been mentioned on the committee will be silenced and outvoted-with their presence being used as a vindication of whatever the platform says, no matter how bland and useless it becomes.
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)2010, a year when good Democrats were badly beaten all over the country so obviously many of his constituents disagree with you. I agree there are too many ties to the banking/investment community and heartily second your suggestions on what to do with Cory Booker.
In the end, the platform will probably be a bland, unreadable piece of pablum which will be somewhat controversial only if they endorse gay marriage. It won't change many (if any) votes in the long run.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That loss was caused by the deliberate abandonment of the presidential ticket by the regular, institutional wing of the party-combined with the Nixon China trip.
Hubert Humphrey or Scoop Jackson would have lost 49 states if THEY'D been nominated and then treated that way by their own party. McGovern and his platform weren't calling for the earthly triumph of evil-and McGovern COULD have made a respectable showing if the party regulars had done what they were damn well supposed to do and work for their own party's presidential ticket.
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)There were many factors that led to McGovern's destruction and infighting over a platform was only a tiny part. Principal among them was also the vice presidential selection fiasco. We just have to disagree on Hubert Humphrey-I tink he could have given Nixon a decent run and I'm certain Ed Muskie could have. If nothing else the lesson should be that without support from the regular institutional wing of the party the activist wing can't win and vice-versa. In 1972, as in 2012 it will take a unified party to stand a chance to win against an overwhelming Republican advantage. And just as in 1972 in the long run the platform is unimportant compared to our ability to function as a unified party.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(It later turned out, btw, that it had been EAGLETON, of all people, who'd made the devastating anonymous comment about McGovern being the candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion" during the '72 primaries...a comment that pretty much cost McGovern the Catholic Democratic vote(on the abortion thing...I don't think the amnesty part was as big of an issue. This has led me to the conclusion that Eagleton took the place on McGovern's ticket and then leaked HIS OWN mental health history to the press, just to force McGovern to kick him off the ticket and thus guarantee his own defeat in November).
Muskie could have run a decent race. Humphrey was never going to be forgiven for allowing himself to be used as LBJ's instrument of revenge on the Peace Democrats in '68, though.
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)with McGovern finally nominated in the middle of the night when no one was watching. A parade of establishment Dems turned down the vice presidency after Eagleton's disgrace and McGovern was essentially doomed.
1968 was the perfect setup for 1972-in '68 the activists deserted the party, in '72 the establishment deserted. I'm honestly not sure if Humphrey could have won in 1972-you're right it had only been 4 years, but by 1976 after his return to the senate as a leader against the Nixon agenda I think HHH rehabilitated himself-at least in my eyes.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)would have been who was his running mate...I don't know if Humphrey had already been diagnosed with cancer in 1976, but he was dead within two years, so that running mate would have finished out his first term and presumably been the nominee in 1980.
I wonder who he'd have chosen? It would have been a diasaster for the party if he'd followed the "ticket-balancing" tradition and put an old-style Southerner in the slot(somebody more like John Stennis than LBJ).
Rowdyboy
(22,057 posts)possibility, Terry Sanford of North Carolina another, but my money would be on that new face, Georgia governor and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.
And so it goes....
DemocratsForProgress
(545 posts)Apparently you missed all of them. That's the only possible explanation for why you felt it necessary to post this nonsense, unless you can suggest another one.
It has been my experience they don't follow platforms (as someone who has been a delegate and voted at the state level on platforms).
RC
(25,592 posts)They say one thing during the campaign, then once in office, turn out to be Blue Dogs, Corporates and worse.
They tell us what we want to hear, then once in, work with the enemy on their agenda.
Out political system is as corrupt as any elsewhere. And still we still sleep thinking our vote count.
kctim
(3,575 posts)A solid platform is needed to let the majority of Democratic voters know that the Democratic Party represents ALL and not just the activists on the far-left of the Party as Republicans claim.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)My issue is that we're running against a vent-cap vulture who further profits off manipulated derivatives of a deregulated banking industry and the cmte tasked with writing why we're different & what we stand for is more than 50% comprised of people who have close ties to vent. cap. and banking/finance insiders; further is headed by a fanboy of the opponent.
