Thanks Fred, for your forbearance as without it and that of our other forum
members and managent, I'm certain I would not be posting today. And I skimmed
your whole post! Keep up the good work and fighting the good fight.
Back to Dave's point and the thread topic though, I've seen a bit of that as
well in my brief experience of DFL politics but I see it more as an unfortunate
intrusion of the nastier features of the human race on the world envisioned in
all the egalitarian rhetoric of our DFL constitution written to impose goodness
on us. Silly me.
At the senate district convention where Phyllis Kahn sought endorsement last
year, a group of young folks ran a masterful operation and brought such energy
to the process that all of us old fogies stood in awe and admiration. It would
have been the same if there were not so many of us as Rep. Kahn had gotten so
many of us out that the numbers could not work for them, but we would have
loved them win or lose for they were that good and wonderful.
I wish I had been there and understood all the languages spoken by our new
fellow citizen DFLers (I have a tough enough time with English) and knew
whether to stand and cheer, but even if our conventions resemble Altamont more
than Woodstock on the whole, can we accept those too close to the worst of our
experience today?
I guess I have to trust the process, whatever it is, but I don't think this
campaign emerged victorious through free will of delegates rightly elected at
precinct caucuses. There is just too much wrong with the processes leading up
to and perhaps at the 6th Ward convention.
Call me xenophobic if you must, but I still think this is a 'do over'; and if
we don't fix it before the deadline in mid-June, every voter in the ward is
going to be disgusted with the result, win or lose.
Let's get to work and fix this, DFLers. Come forward and convince us this was
closer to Woodstock than to Altamont or do it over. You'll be sorry if you
don't. Religious or not, do you want your angels from Heaven or Hell?
I guess there's not much more for me to add and must wait for others to add
their views on their first hand experiences of this process or their deafening
silence.
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 29, 2013, at 11:47 PM, Dave Garland <<email obscured>> wrote:
> On 4/29/2013 6:01 PM, Bill Kahn wrote:
>
>> That said, from all accounts I've read, I can't help but express
>> something that might be considered more mean spirited: It seems
>> like the only thing missing from some precinct caucuses and the
>> convention of the 6th Ward to make them seem plagued with election
>> and campaign irregularities and abuses in the most democratically
>> challenged of this world's countries, were the AK-47s.
>
> I wasn't there, so the accounts I've read are my only information. But,
unsavory as some of the things were, they don't strike me as different from the
tactics I've seen used in conventions by other politicians. Games with the
vote counting, convention chairs who are determined to have the "right"
candidate win and will issue rulings to ensure it, elected delegates not
getting seated (there's always a "reason", and sometimes it may even be true),
team minders stalking the aisles and signaling how people should vote, people
getting thrown out of the hall, personal threats, goons in the corridors,
manipulation of the rules, the sudden disappearance of enough people so that
there is no longer a quorum, the appearance of new delegates dragged in from
home for reinforcements, whatever. And, of course, gerrymandering with an eye
toward the future (not that the practice is unique to DFL politicians). DFL
conventions aren't always pretty. But it seems to me that the difference this
time was, it was Somalis who were playing that game, and it turns out they're
actually pretty good at it. That, and that the DFL almost always endorses any
incumbent who hasn't gotten caught with their hand in the till. Incumbency is a
very hard thing for an insurgent to overtake.
>
> It seems to me that a decision was made during the redistricting process (by
whom? who knows, "party insiders") that CM Lilligren was expendable.
>
> The attitude is "Winning, it ain't everything, it's the only thing." I don't
like it either, but let's not pretend it was just invented last Saturday.