Dear Friends,
Today I attended the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party Senate District 61 Convention, as a Delegate, elected at my precinct caucus on March 1. Minnesota has many Senate Districts. District 61 includes the western part of downtown Minneapolis as well as the southwest part of the city. There are about 82,000 people, 90% white and fairly affluent. It consistently wins the largest voter turnout among Senate Districts in Minnesota which consistently is among the top turnout states in the country. It is heavily DFL (we are not just Democrats, we are the Democratic Farmer Labor Party).
DFL caucuses and conventions are always interesting affairs. Since we always use proportionate voting we often have walking sub caucuses. In the years before we had a vote for Presidential candidate preference, these walking sub caucuses were really important to the campaign to maximize the number of delegates for your Presidential choice. The preference vote has eliminated some of the significance of the walking sub caucuses because ultimately the delegates to the Democratic National Convention from Minnesota must be proportionate to the results of the Presidential preference vote, excluding super delegates, of course.
There were over 400 delegates at the convention over half of whom had never been to a Senate District Convention. Since walking sub caucuses are not needed at most precinct caucuses virtually none of those delegates had any experience with walking sub caucuses. I will not try to fully explain walking sub caucuses, but I will give you a little flavor for what happens. Our Senate District gets to send 31 delegates to the Minnesota State Convention where the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are chosen. Viable sub caucuses get to elect delegates. Simplistically, to be viable you would need to have 400/31= 13 delegates in your sub caucus to be viable. It is not that simple since the number of delegates changes (usually dropping) as the day goes on, but forget about that. To those of us that have been through this process many times, it is obvious that you need a fairly broad based sub caucus if you want to be viable. Newcomers to the system need to learn this lesson through experience.
Any delegate can nominate a sub caucus. The name must include a Presidential candidate (or uncommitted) and may also contain other items. There were several very broad sub caucuses - "Sanders", "Clinton" and "Uncommitted" without any other issue. There were also others. The sub caucus that I joined was a combination of several smaller sub caucuses, all of which started with Sanders and then more issues - "Racial and Social Justice", "Black Lives Matter", "Restore the Vote to Felons", "End the War on Drugs", and several others. Our sub caucus ended up with the name "Sanders: Racial and Social Justice #BLM".
There were about 35 sub caucuses nominated for Sanders, about an equal number nominated for Clinton and 6 nominated for uncommitted. Since a sub caucus has to be able to elect at least one delegate to the state convention and since our convention is only allowed to send 31 delegates to the state convention, the maximum number of viable sub caucuses is 31. So we had way more than double the number of sub caucuses nominated than could be viable. The process involves walking among the sub caucuses to get into one that is viable. In addition, you can get quite sophisticated about maximizing the number of delegates for your candidate. If 12 is the number to be viable, and you have 36 delegates who are for your Presidential candidate, you want them to get 3 delegates. If one sub caucus has 20 and one has 16, you will only get 2 delegates but if you can move 4 from the 16 sub caucus to the 20 sub caucus you will get 3 delegates. As I said before this strategy is not as important now that the delegates to the national convention must be in the proportion of the preference vote. Nevertheless it is important to send delegates that are really committed to your candidate as the actual people at the convention, if it is contested, are important.
We had 49 delegates in our sub caucus and were awarded 4 delegates and 4 alternates. The gender balance rules required that we have 2 delegates who identified as male and 2 who identified as female. We also had to have the same number of alternates with the same gender balance. We also had to rank the alternates by gender identification. The rules get even more complex if you have a uneven number of delegates. In that case the number of female and male delegates and alternates has to be equal. So if you get 3 delegates and 2 identify as women you need to have the other delegate identifying as male and 2 of the three alternates identifying as male and one as female. You also must rank the alternates by gender. In addition the entire convention (the combination of all the sub caucuses) must be gender balanced. As we are reminded from time to time during the convention, when we are voting we are also supposed to consider increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups.
As you can see, it takes a kind of a nerd to enjoy this process, and I do. The caucus system itself is not democratic at all and should be changed but the current process is fascinating.
I was considering running as a delegate, but when I saw the group of people in this sub caucus, it was clear that they were the future of the DFL, the Democratic Party and our country. Our sub caucus was not at all gender balanced. We had way more females than males. Despite our plea to the parliamentarian that our delegates should reflect the ratio of female to male in our sub caucus, we had to elect equal numbers of males and females. Each sub caucus determines its own election rules except that the results need to meet the DFL gender balance rules. We determined to eschew a secret ballot and go by raising hands. It was the only realistic way given the number of people that wanted to be delegates, but it does make it very difficult on the people who want to be delegates to see what the vote count is. It is intimidating to put yourself forward and have people vote about you right in front of your face. I am very proud of all the young people who because of their passion were willing to face that prospect.
Our group of 8 delegates/alternates was for our district quite diverse - 3 black women, 1 latino male, 1 transgender and virtually all of whom were under 50 and at least 6 of whom were probably under 30. Their stories and pitches were passionate, enthusiastic and very diverse. It made me proud to be a DFLer and gave me great hope for the future. Their passion must not be squashed or in any way subdued. It must be encouraged and supported. If the future of our world is in their hands, all will be great.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Friday, March 25, 2016
Who is more electable??
Dear Friends,
One of the arguments I hear all the time about why I should support Secretary Clinton instead of Senator Sanders is that she can win the general election and he cannot. I disagree with that argument. In fact I think a very strong case can be made that Senator Sanders can win and that Secretary Clinton cannot win.
While the polls are not the best way to analyze who is more electable, they do provide some insights. Real Clear Politics provides a very helpful service in compiling all the major polls. I strongly recommend that you visit their website (here) because the information is very interesting and available in lots of formats. In the average of the polls they follow for March through the 22nd, here are some interesting averages,
Clinton beats Trump on average by 11.2 percentage points
Sanders beats Trump on average by 17.5 percentage points
In both cases, the spread increased in March.
But it is also important to consider what happens if the stop Trump movement is successful.
Clinton beats Cruz on average by 2.9 percentage points (well within the margin of error)
Sanders beats Cruz on average by 8.4 percentage points
Whereas Clinton's lead over Cruz has dropped during 2016, Sanders' lead over Cruz has widened considerably.
With respect to the Democratic nomination, the average of the polls in March so far give Clinton a 9 percentage point lead over Sanders but that is down from 24 percentage points at the beginning of 2016.
The truth is that the more people find out about Senator Sanders, and the more they hear and understand his message, the more popular he is and the better he does against all other candidates, Democratic and Republican. In addition, Senator Sanders is the only candidate with a positive favorability rating. According to the averages on Real Clear Politics for March, here are the results:
Sanders Favorable 48.7% Unfavorable 41.3% +7.4
Clinton Favorable 40.7% Unfavorable 53.9% -13.2
Cruz Favorable 33.4% Unfavorable 51.0% -17.6
Trump Favorable 30.4% Unfavorable 63.2% -32.8
The latest polls indicate that perhaps Donald Trump is beginning to lose ground, but we have heard that before, so who knows. Also the latest Democratic nomination poll shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 1 percentage point. The daily and weekly variations among polls should not receive too much weight but the overall direction is important. Also so far in this election cycle, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tend to out perform the polls.
So if you believe in polls, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is more electable than Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has won 14 states by more than 1 percentage point and 4 by 1 percentage point or less. Nine of the 14 states are very red states. Trump has won 12 of those states as well, and all but 3 of those states are very red states. The only two states that Trump has not won that Clinton won were Texas (home of Cruz) and Ohio (home of Kasich). So the states where Clinton performs well are states that have been won by Trump and are overwhelmingly red states. So it is impossible to say that Clinton has demonstrated that she can win against Trump based on her current performance.
Sanders has won 11 states. Of those states, the Republicans have not yet had a primary/caucus in 2 of them. In the nine states that have voted, Cruz has won 5, Trump has won 3 and Rubio won 1. Six of the 11 states that Sanders won went for Obama in 2012, 2 of which are on the list of the closest races in 2012. The results so far suggest that Sanders would win the traditionally blue states and be apt to win the close states that went for Obama last time. If anything, this analysis says that Sanders has a better chance of winning the general election than Clinton does, but the analysis is far from certain.
There is a lot of talk about Sanders supporters who say they will vote for Trump rather than Clinton if Clinton is the Democratic nominee. Clinton supporters attribute this position to the privilege of those Sanders supporters. This allegation is yet another example of Clinton supporters and others in the "Establishment" not understanding the anti-establishment sentiment that exists in this country.
For the last 30 years at least, the middle class has lost ground while the rich and powerful have gained incredible wealth and power. Many Sanders supporters are active in the political process today because they are tired of the status quo and are appalled at the inequality, in all respects, in this country. They did not become involved to fight for a Democrat or a Republican. They became involved to get rid of the "Establishment" and make big changes to the status quo.
It is not showing white privilege or any other kind of privilege for these voters to say that the most important thing is to get rid of the status quo. These voters will not vote for Clinton because she represents the Democratic Establishment. They might vote for Trump just to get rid of the "Establishment" or they might just drop out of politics. I disagree with that approach and will most certainly vote for Clinton if she is the nominee, but to tell those voters that they are rejecting Clinton because of their privilege is not only wrong, it is stupid and offensive, particularly if you want their vote.
I believe the reason that Sanders does better against Trump and Cruz than Clinton does is that these voters will stay involved and vote for Sanders rather than either Trump or Cruz. If, however, their choice is Clinton or either terrible Trump or Cruz, they will either vote for the terrible person or they will just drop out. This result will be even more certain if Clinton wins the nomination and then moves to the right during the general election campaign. Certainly her history of positions suggests that she has only moved left because of pressure from the success of the Sanders campaign. If she wins the nomination, moves to the right and continues to denigrate Sanders supporters by calling them uninformed, sexist, naive and now privileged, she will surely lose their support and votes.
Neither Trump nor Cruz is actually crazy. They are fighting for the Republican nomination now. They will run a different race once they get the nomination. Cruz is an ideologue who will have trouble changing his positions but can probably change his demeanor. Trump has no scruples so he will change to whatever he thinks will win. He will certainly try to become less awful as a general election candidate and who knows what positions he will take. He might even try to make himself look normal, as difficult as that is to believe right now. If he does that, Clinton will have an even more difficult time defeating him because she will sound like the pot calling the kettle black if she criticizes Trump for changing positions. Sanders, on the other hand, has not changed his positions and will be able to call Trump on his change in positions without fear of hearing the same back.
The nomination of the Democratic candidate for President is a long way off and much can change. While it is true that Senator Sanders has an uphill battle, that has always been the case. The Democratic Establishment, the media, the elites and the general establishment are all against him, but together we can overcome all of that and have a Presidential nominee and a President that will change this country and who will make us proud.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
One of the arguments I hear all the time about why I should support Secretary Clinton instead of Senator Sanders is that she can win the general election and he cannot. I disagree with that argument. In fact I think a very strong case can be made that Senator Sanders can win and that Secretary Clinton cannot win.
While the polls are not the best way to analyze who is more electable, they do provide some insights. Real Clear Politics provides a very helpful service in compiling all the major polls. I strongly recommend that you visit their website (here) because the information is very interesting and available in lots of formats. In the average of the polls they follow for March through the 22nd, here are some interesting averages,
Clinton beats Trump on average by 11.2 percentage points
Sanders beats Trump on average by 17.5 percentage points
In both cases, the spread increased in March.
But it is also important to consider what happens if the stop Trump movement is successful.
Clinton beats Cruz on average by 2.9 percentage points (well within the margin of error)
Sanders beats Cruz on average by 8.4 percentage points
Whereas Clinton's lead over Cruz has dropped during 2016, Sanders' lead over Cruz has widened considerably.
With respect to the Democratic nomination, the average of the polls in March so far give Clinton a 9 percentage point lead over Sanders but that is down from 24 percentage points at the beginning of 2016.
The truth is that the more people find out about Senator Sanders, and the more they hear and understand his message, the more popular he is and the better he does against all other candidates, Democratic and Republican. In addition, Senator Sanders is the only candidate with a positive favorability rating. According to the averages on Real Clear Politics for March, here are the results:
Sanders Favorable 48.7% Unfavorable 41.3% +7.4
Clinton Favorable 40.7% Unfavorable 53.9% -13.2
Cruz Favorable 33.4% Unfavorable 51.0% -17.6
Trump Favorable 30.4% Unfavorable 63.2% -32.8
The latest polls indicate that perhaps Donald Trump is beginning to lose ground, but we have heard that before, so who knows. Also the latest Democratic nomination poll shows Sanders ahead of Clinton by 1 percentage point. The daily and weekly variations among polls should not receive too much weight but the overall direction is important. Also so far in this election cycle, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders tend to out perform the polls.
So if you believe in polls, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is more electable than Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has won 14 states by more than 1 percentage point and 4 by 1 percentage point or less. Nine of the 14 states are very red states. Trump has won 12 of those states as well, and all but 3 of those states are very red states. The only two states that Trump has not won that Clinton won were Texas (home of Cruz) and Ohio (home of Kasich). So the states where Clinton performs well are states that have been won by Trump and are overwhelmingly red states. So it is impossible to say that Clinton has demonstrated that she can win against Trump based on her current performance.
Sanders has won 11 states. Of those states, the Republicans have not yet had a primary/caucus in 2 of them. In the nine states that have voted, Cruz has won 5, Trump has won 3 and Rubio won 1. Six of the 11 states that Sanders won went for Obama in 2012, 2 of which are on the list of the closest races in 2012. The results so far suggest that Sanders would win the traditionally blue states and be apt to win the close states that went for Obama last time. If anything, this analysis says that Sanders has a better chance of winning the general election than Clinton does, but the analysis is far from certain.
There is a lot of talk about Sanders supporters who say they will vote for Trump rather than Clinton if Clinton is the Democratic nominee. Clinton supporters attribute this position to the privilege of those Sanders supporters. This allegation is yet another example of Clinton supporters and others in the "Establishment" not understanding the anti-establishment sentiment that exists in this country.
For the last 30 years at least, the middle class has lost ground while the rich and powerful have gained incredible wealth and power. Many Sanders supporters are active in the political process today because they are tired of the status quo and are appalled at the inequality, in all respects, in this country. They did not become involved to fight for a Democrat or a Republican. They became involved to get rid of the "Establishment" and make big changes to the status quo.
It is not showing white privilege or any other kind of privilege for these voters to say that the most important thing is to get rid of the status quo. These voters will not vote for Clinton because she represents the Democratic Establishment. They might vote for Trump just to get rid of the "Establishment" or they might just drop out of politics. I disagree with that approach and will most certainly vote for Clinton if she is the nominee, but to tell those voters that they are rejecting Clinton because of their privilege is not only wrong, it is stupid and offensive, particularly if you want their vote.
I believe the reason that Sanders does better against Trump and Cruz than Clinton does is that these voters will stay involved and vote for Sanders rather than either Trump or Cruz. If, however, their choice is Clinton or either terrible Trump or Cruz, they will either vote for the terrible person or they will just drop out. This result will be even more certain if Clinton wins the nomination and then moves to the right during the general election campaign. Certainly her history of positions suggests that she has only moved left because of pressure from the success of the Sanders campaign. If she wins the nomination, moves to the right and continues to denigrate Sanders supporters by calling them uninformed, sexist, naive and now privileged, she will surely lose their support and votes.
Neither Trump nor Cruz is actually crazy. They are fighting for the Republican nomination now. They will run a different race once they get the nomination. Cruz is an ideologue who will have trouble changing his positions but can probably change his demeanor. Trump has no scruples so he will change to whatever he thinks will win. He will certainly try to become less awful as a general election candidate and who knows what positions he will take. He might even try to make himself look normal, as difficult as that is to believe right now. If he does that, Clinton will have an even more difficult time defeating him because she will sound like the pot calling the kettle black if she criticizes Trump for changing positions. Sanders, on the other hand, has not changed his positions and will be able to call Trump on his change in positions without fear of hearing the same back.
The nomination of the Democratic candidate for President is a long way off and much can change. While it is true that Senator Sanders has an uphill battle, that has always been the case. The Democratic Establishment, the media, the elites and the general establishment are all against him, but together we can overcome all of that and have a Presidential nominee and a President that will change this country and who will make us proud.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Racism
Dear Friends,
We hear a lot about institutional racism in the United States, but it is primarily in connection with the racism against minorities in the United States. Every time there is a terrorist attack somewhere in the world, I am reminded of how deep, broad and insidious racism is in the United States. Of course a terrorist attack in the United States gets our full attention for days on end. A terrorist attack in Europe also gets our full attention for days. But as this cartoon I saw in the Minneapolis StarTribune this morning illustrates, terrorist attacks in other places (read places where the majority of the population is not white) get very little media coverage.
I was struck by this headline on the PRI website today (here), "Since Paris, there have been hundreds of terrorist attacks — many that have gone unnoticed". Even the headline is rather racist, because I am quite sure those attacks were noticed where they occurred. The article shows a map of almost 20 major attacks and specifically lists 11 after the Paris attacks in November but before the Brussels attacks. I am embarrassed to admit that I really did not know anything about these attacks other than the one in San Bernardino.
It is not just the media who demonstrate their racism by the coverage (or lack thereof) of terrorist attacks, it is our own politicians. After the Brussels attacks, President Obama and all of the candidates for President in both parties made statements of solidarity with the people of Belgium. I do not recall seeing any similar statements about the others on this list except for San Bernardino.
Only when we see all people as human, understand our similarities and celebrate our differences will the world be free of racism. For now, a start would be to treat all terrorist attacks the same way we treat those against primarily white populations.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
We hear a lot about institutional racism in the United States, but it is primarily in connection with the racism against minorities in the United States. Every time there is a terrorist attack somewhere in the world, I am reminded of how deep, broad and insidious racism is in the United States. Of course a terrorist attack in the United States gets our full attention for days on end. A terrorist attack in Europe also gets our full attention for days. But as this cartoon I saw in the Minneapolis StarTribune this morning illustrates, terrorist attacks in other places (read places where the majority of the population is not white) get very little media coverage.
I was struck by this headline on the PRI website today (here), "Since Paris, there have been hundreds of terrorist attacks — many that have gone unnoticed". Even the headline is rather racist, because I am quite sure those attacks were noticed where they occurred. The article shows a map of almost 20 major attacks and specifically lists 11 after the Paris attacks in November but before the Brussels attacks. I am embarrassed to admit that I really did not know anything about these attacks other than the one in San Bernardino.
It is not just the media who demonstrate their racism by the coverage (or lack thereof) of terrorist attacks, it is our own politicians. After the Brussels attacks, President Obama and all of the candidates for President in both parties made statements of solidarity with the people of Belgium. I do not recall seeing any similar statements about the others on this list except for San Bernardino.
Only when we see all people as human, understand our similarities and celebrate our differences will the world be free of racism. For now, a start would be to treat all terrorist attacks the same way we treat those against primarily white populations.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
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