The bottom of my thread is getting to be a bit confusing.  I know that I have spooked the party with what I wrote.  This is what I know to be accurate:

1. Resolutions are routinely killed.  One of those methods is to refer them to other committees.  That is what was done to net neutrality.
2. Any google search will show you that the Vice Chair and the head of the Labor Caucus are from CWA.  It is widely known that CWA has issues with net neutrality.
3. The party did not intend to have the convention end the way that it did.  There was no plot by Torres to call for a quorum.  They had already gotten what they wanted.

This is what I have been able to piece together and I attempted unsuccessfully as it turns out to confirm, hence the language.

1. I heard a rumor (along with a bunch of other rumors like Torres plotted the quorum call) about a phone call where the Party leaders sort through the resolutions and create a plan of action.  This makes logical sense.  There are a lot of vested interests at stake and I believe this occurs each year.  Nobody thus far has told me that is inaccurate, but I cannot say without a shadow of a doubt that it occurs.  To do that would require staff confirmation.  That I did not get, unsurprisingly.  I was not dissuaded that the rumor was inaccurate though and that is important.
2. There was a plot by the establishment to call for a quorum if the debate and amendments started heading off in a direction that they did not like.  At first I heard that it was Torres, but that was inaccurate.  It appears that it was staff from state or federal electeds, or a combination there of.  This doesn’t seem to be an isolated plot though its not clear if it was coordinated.  The Party has several staffers who are delegates and could have been asked to do the same, but it does not appear to have been a plan this year.

   Honestly, Torres actually having a staffer do that does not make sense.  They would have to do it publicly and it would be obvious the leadership was behind it.  It makes more sense to have a degree of separation, but it does not appear that the Party had planned to do that either.

I talked to supporters from the San Onofre resolution and got a lot of background on how that resolution almost died because of opposition from the Building Trades.  The resolution was effectively killed in December and the organizers ended up accepting a very watered down resolution that they were not totally happy with, but at least it established the Party as being opposed to a toll road going through a state park.  The path they followed should be a model for us if we hope to get something passed.  It has a very similar dynamic with labor opposition, and the party starting out with a vested interest and opposition.  They managed to overcome that, but it took a lot of resources.

As I have said before, I am more than happy to issue any and all corrections to what I have written. I want this to be something we learn from, rather than burn bridges.  I apologize for running something as completely confirmed when it was not.  That was my fault in my rush to publish something.

[UPDATE 11:15 pm] More people are emerging both in the comments here and in personal correrespondence with me to say that the quorum call went all the way up the food chain.  If that is true, Torres is quite the actor.  That would be a most discouraging development.  It would mean they would have exerted total control over the entire process.

I was feeling pretty tired, so instead of thinking and writing, I made a collage! How fun! So, these are just some pictures from the weekend. Clockwise from top left, 1)Bill Richardson talking to hekebelos, dday, and blogswarm, 2) Charlie Brown blogging at Blue House at the Brew House, 3) Former Sen. Mike Gravel giving a speech Friday night, 4) Chris Dodd with dday, 5) Charlie Brown holding court at Karl Strauss Brewery, 6) Fabian Nunez with Hillary Clinton. In the center, Sen. Carole Migden is talking with a staffer before her energetic speech at the CYD caucus meeting.

So, I meant to include a picture of Jerry McNerney, but as I was playing with the thumbnails I accidentally grabbed a second Brown photo. Woops! Next time, Jerry.  Any comments about the photos? Comment away!

I know there was a lot of bad blood coming out of how the CDP Convention wrapped up, but consider this: that controversy was over how we passed one resolution on Iraq and not another.  It’s not like it was about something like this:

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order – and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said. […]

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans….”

No matter what the intra-party squabbles are, let’s understand that the real whackadoos are in that other party.  We can resolve differences between ourselves as reasonable people.  We don’t think Satan is an undocumented immigrant.

Another thing to consider: one of the resolutions that the CDP passed yesterday was in support of high-speed rail, which we learned yesterday that the governor may be trying to defund and effectively stop.  One of the resolutions we DIDN’T pass was in support of Clean Money, which actually is moving through the legislative process, with a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.  So resolutions pale in comparison to what’s really happening in Sacramento.  Just a little perspective.

(The only speech that I and a good chunk of the Calitics staff missed was the Edwards speech, so I thought I’d promote this. This was also the feeling I got in the hall. – promoted by dday)

I wrote this for today’s Beyond Chron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily

This weekend, all the major Democratic presidential candidates attended the California Democratic Convention in San Diego to solicit support from the party faithful.  Although getting out of Iraq was top on the mind of party delegates, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a surprising show of support – but she lost most of the crowd by refusing to apologize for initially supporting the War.  Barack Obama was treated like a rock star and gave a powerful speech, but despite being the only major candidate who opposed the War from the start failed to do what he should have done: hit a home run the way Howard Dean did in 2003.  John Edwards did not have much of a campaign presence at the convention until he spoke on Sunday morning, when many of the delegates had already left.  But for those who stuck around to hear Edwards speak, his concrete progressive proposals coupled with a passionate and eloquent message won many converts on the Convention floor – including possibly myself.

The political context behind this year’s convention was similar to the convention four years ago, which was held on the weekend before George Bush invaded Iraq.  Back then, delegates were angry at an imminent War based on lies, and furious at their party for rolling over without a fight.  John Kerry, the choice of the party establishment, was booed for having voted for the War – and John Edwards was likewise heckled.  Meanwhile, Howard Dean came out of nowhere to give a feisty and eloquent speech against the War that electrified delegates and catapulted him into the “movement” candidate of 2004. 

This year, the Convention was held immediately after Congress voted to withdraw from Iraq, and right before President Bush’s expected veto this week.  Party activists were nervous about whether their leaders in Congress will succumb to the President’s blackmail – and still angry at many Democrats for having supported the War in the first place.  A sizable number called for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, meaning they did not have the patience for a party leadership that is nervous to take bold initiatives.

But Hillary did not get the John Kerry treatment at this convention, and her campaign had a surprising number of supporters.  For example, the LGBT caucus on Friday night felt like a Clinton campaign rally, despite her husband’s betrayal on gays in the military and same-sex marriage.  State Senator Christine Kehoe announced her support for Hillary at the caucus, because she has “supported the LGBT community throughout her whole public life,” and as President has promised to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  I asked if Hillary would also work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act that her husband signed – but Kehoe could only tell me that she would ask her that question the next day.

Clinton’s speech on the Convention floor was surprisingly well received, as female delegates wearing “Impeach Bush” stickers enthusiastically waved Hillary campaign signs.  She vowed to be “ready to lead” a country that is “ready for change,” and spoke passionately about universal health care – while acknowledging her prior failure to get it done.  She spoke about immigration reform, vowed to fix “everything wrong” with No Child Left Behind, and to follow California’s lead on energy independence.

But when the speech shifted to Iraq, Clinton lost most of the delegates and began to get scattered boos.  Hillary has said repeatedly that she would not have voted for the War if she knew what she knows today, but unlike John Edwards has refused to apologize or take any responsibility for her failure.  She criticized the Iraq War for being “one of the darkest blots of our history” and said that Bush had ignored military advisers, all the while saying nothing about her complicity in the matter.

While Hillary had a strong organized base at the Convention, Obama’s campaign had a more grassroots feel and his supporters were more enthusiastic.  He got a true rock-star welcome as he walked up to the Convention podium, as throngs of young people ran up behind him and stayed in the aisles during his speech.  “We have a cynicism where politics is a business and not a mission,” said Obama, as he criticized a “foreign policy based on bluster and bombast has led us to a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.”

Obama vowed to “turn the page” on this era of cynicism – providing an interesting contrast with Clinton, who seemed to promise a return to the good old days of her husband’s administration.  Obama said he was proud to have opposed the Iraq War back when it was not popular, and he also credited the party activists for having opposed it then as well.  “We knew back then that this War was a mistake,” he said.

Referring to Congress’ passage of withdrawal legislation, Obama reminded the crowd that we were now “one signature away from ending the War.”  But while Hillary Clinton said that Bush will veto the legislation and so she would end the War on her first day as President, Obama said “if the President refuses to sign it, we will find the 16 votes that we need to end it without him.  We will get this done.  We will bring our troops home.”

Barack Obama is a passionate and charismatic speaker, and delegates who had never heard him before were impressed and enthusiastic.  But as someone who has heard him speak twice in the last two months, I did not feel that he offered much different this time.  His speech undoubtedly fired up the crowd and gained new converts to his campaign, but it did not serve as a catalyst for his campaign the way that Howard Dean’s speech did at the 2003 Convention.  While it helped his campaign, he’s still the insurgent candidate trying to take on the front-runner.

In fact, the largest criticism I heard from delegates afterwards was that Obama’s speech was big on inspiring rhetoric but small on substance.  While many were frustrated with Hillary Clinton and her refusal to apologize for Iraq, they argued that she provided more policy detail on other issues than Obama did.

By the end of Saturday, delegates had also heard speeches from various presidential candidates who have absolutely no chance of winning.  Mike Gravel said with a straight face that he was going to be a “most unusual President,” and lauded the California initiative process as a model for his national initiative process.  Chris Dodd gave a decent speech with substantive policy goals, but came off as too stiff and did not pick up traction.  And while Dennis Kucinich had some ideas that could steer the debate in a positive direction, his New Age talk was so over-the-top (“America is waiting for a President who is a healer”) that I felt high on marijuana just by listening to him.

John Edwards did not address the delegates until Sunday, because he was at the South Carolina Democratic Convention on Saturday – the only presidential candidate to attend both conventions on the same weekend.  With a campaign that has focused on poverty and workers’ rights, Edwards has picked up substantial support among labor unions.  But his campaign was invisible at the Convention until he showed up on Sunday, when many of the delegates had already left San Diego.

But those who heard him speak were impressed because he was more passionate and progressive than Hillary, and far more substantive than Obama.  Edwards was the only candidate besides Bill Richardson (who spoke later) to mention the genocide in Darfur, the only candidate to focus on the gap between rich and poor, the only to acknowledge the problem of race in America, and while everyone else talked about universal health care, Edwards was the only serious candidate to talk about single-payer.

“I voted for this War,” said Edwards, “and I was wrong.  I am speaking with every fiber of my being to get out of Iraq.”  Edwards spoke forcefully about the President’s threatened veto of the withdrawal legislation from Iraq, and urged Congress to not back down.  “If the President vetoes that bill,” he said, “it is George Bush who is not supporting the troops.  Congress needs to show strength and courage.”

Edwards spoke forcefully about poverty in America, and listed the most comprehensive economic justice agenda of any candidate – starting, he said, with a national living wage. “If you can join the Republican Party by signing a card,” said Edwards, “every worker should be able to join a union by signing a card.  We ought to ban the permanent replacement of scab workers.”

While Clinton and Obama both called for universal health care, said Edwards, “it’s not enough to say you’ll do it without creating a specific plan.”  He suggested requiring every employer to provide health care or else create a fund – and give Americans free choices on what health care system to get.  “And that may end up being single-payer,” he said.  Edwards said his plan will cost $90-120 billion a year, “and I can pay for it by getting rid of George Bush’s tax cut.”

As the front-runner, Hillary Clinton needed to not bleed support – and her mistakes at the Convention caused her to lose ground.  Barack Obama is her main challenger, and he needed to do another Howard Dean speech to catapult him into front-runner status and thus change the dynamics.  He may have inspired more people, but it did not shift the momentum for his campaign.  But John Edwards did a better job converting new supporters to his side, which is why he was the “winner” of this year’s California Democratic Convention.

As someone who has always opposed the War and want “Anybody But Hillary” to win the nomination, I came into this Convention about 90% for Obama and 10% for Edwards.  While I have not made a firm decision and my opinions may change between now and February 2008, I am now more likely to support John Edwards because he was both passionate and substantive.  Delegates who were still at the Convention felt the same way, as the Edwards campaign table ran out of stickers within minutes after his speech.

Send feedback to [email protected]

(Good, positive stuff. Thanks, Carl. Also at dKos – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Two and a half days, six presidential candidates, 2,264 delegates.  Fiery rhetoric, sloppy speechifying, backslapping.  Cheerleading.  Words and words and words.  Out of Iraq universal health care choice Darfur education impeachment toll road Katrina.  The best Democratic state party anywhere; the best primary slate ever; the great Chairman Art Torres.

Elections have consequences.  Not another nickle; not another dime.  Not another soldier; not this time.  Turn the page.

I signed up to be a delegate to make a difference.  I could watch the candidates give their speeches on teevee and I could read about their positions on the internets.  It’s not the same, certainly doesn’t entail anywhere near as much shouting and applause – doesn’t energize the base the way an event like this does – but it might make for more objectivism, might result in better choices.  The rah-rah doesn’t tell me who will be the better president, doesn’t tell me how we’re going to win the office, doesn’t tell me how to make a difference.

Politics is a selective force for people who want attention.  Not just at the top of the ticket, but all up and down the line people want to be heard, want thousands of people to attend to their words, want the spotlight.  Not everyone, of course – but most of the ones we see.  And it’s a way to reward people who value that, all the praise and applause and recognition – and there are a lot of people working very hard with very little or nothing in the way of thanks beyond their moment in the spotlight.  So maybe I shouldn’t complain; this is how it must be.

But I do complain.  I wanted something – a lot – of substance to emerge from this event, although I could not say in advance and cannot now say what that could have been.  I wanted to be an active participant in changing things – changing the party so it is more responsive to its liberal members, changing the state so it embraces more liberal principals, and change the nation to flush out the sewer that Republicans have made of our federal government.  I want not only for that to happen, but for me, myself, to participate in making that happen, and I had hoped that serving as a delegate to the CDP would give me a chance to do that.

Instead, I sat and listened and applauded and sometimes cheered as egomaniacs (any one of whom would of course be a far, far better president than the current occupant of the White House) said things I agreed with and sat on my hands as they said things I didn’t.  Sat on my hands, too, when they failed to say the things I thought they should have (like “I was wrong to vote for the War Powers Act and the PATRIOT Act and I apologize for those errors”; like “Single Payer”).  I talked some to fellow delegates.  Had a great time at the Blue House at the Brew House blograiser for Jerry McNerney and Charlie Brown on Friday and a great visit with fellow Kossacks and Caliticians at dinner on Saturday night.

Then came the resolutions.  My chance to participate, to contribute to defining our party’s values, to help steer it.  13 of them made it out of committee and onto the floor where we mere delegates could amend and vote on them.  We quickly worked our way through most of them – including one calling for full investigations of the administration and for “appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment”. 

The final resolution, supporting immediate safe and orderly withdrawal of troops, was the occasion of what felt like some very dirty gameplaying.  The resolution itself, submitted by Chairman Art Torres and Senator Don Perata, did not include language to cut funding.  Of four proposed amendments, one was to add such language.  The person at the podium (Chair of Rules or Resolutions, I think) “suspended the rules” to separate the amendments from the resolution itself.  He tried to explain what this meant, although this new delegate certainly didn’t understand it and I had the impression that the room as a whole was confused by it, but the suspension was granted assent.  We then voted on the resolution and prepared to vote on the amendments – which the guy behind the lectern re-explained now stood alone – and someone called as a point of order that we be counted to determine whether a quorum was present.  A quorum was not present, and the meeting was over.

So out of roughly 16 business hours at the Convention, about two were given to participation – and that was cut short by what felt like a very devious, carefully choreographed trick to deprive us of the opportunity to say something that many of us thought was very important to say.  Color me disappointed.  The one thing it says to me is that these resolutions are important to someone – important enough to be devious about getting the wording they want into them – and I had wondered whether the resolutions actually mattered at all.  I guess I still wonder – but they clearly matter to some people.

I see two ways forward here, and I think I know which one I’m likely to follow.  One is to say – if I want it to be better, I have to get more involved; study up on parliamentary procedure, join a Committee, grab some of that power for myself and my causes.  The other is to throw up my hands, call bullshit on it, and redirect my energies to places where I feel like what I’m doing matters.  I got that feeling with MoveOn last year, making calls; I got that feeling raising money on my ActBlue page; I get that feeling knocking on my neighbors’ doors and registering voters and collecting impeachment letters and delivering them to my Congressional representative.

These are all things I can do with a minimum of organizational involvement, a minimum of pomp, a minimum of bullshit.  Things with concrete, tangible, direct results.  Real, retail activism.  Far more satisfying things, for me.

I want to give a big shout-out to the Calitics community and everybody who contributed to this tremendous coverage of this year’s convention.  Juls, Brian, blogswarm, hekebolos, Lucas, atdleft, Todd, jra, da, midvalley, and I hope I’m not missing anybody else did an unbelievable job.  I’ve never seen a convention covered so thoroughly by a state blog since… the invention of state blogs.  We ran circles around traditional media at this event.  So we all should be very proud of ourselves.

Now we need to expand that role.  Obviously getting information out about the convention is vital, and I’ve had plenty of people say they were looking to Calitics for the latest news and perspective.  But if we want to help be a lever for change, we need to also  understand that there are things we can do as activists on the floor that can help bring that change about.  That means connecting with the grassroots progressives, preparing and planning for contingencies, and most important electing more officers and candidates and delegates who want to join us in this program for party reform and growth.

And let’s take up the gracious offer by Garry Shay to offer input into how the resolutions proecdure can be reviewed.  And by all means let’s those of us who are elected delegates try to get on standing committees.  Our ball has just inched off the top of the hill.  Let’s keep it rolling downward.

Senator Chris Dodd sat down with several California bloggers to talk about the issues. In an extended interview he talked about the attention gap between the “first tier” and others. The media’s limited focus seems to be ignoring the impressive Democratic Senator from Connecticut, but Sen. Dodd seems to be taking it in stride and working to get his name out there.

The interview then continues on to Iraq, where he believes that we cannot send any bill to W that does not have restrictions on time. His bill to restore habeus corpus seems to be meeting tough resistance in the Senate despite its strong support from citizen co-sponsors.

Later, Senator Dodd discusses why people are falling behind. He notes the decreasing number of union households and the failure of health care system to properly treat everybody in the country. He also addressed something that is important to me, the predatory lending and usury fees of check-cashers and payday loan operations.

You know, Senator Dodd gave a solid speech in the general assembly floor. Nothing spectacular, but good. He says the right things and understands the issues. He would be a very good president. You want experience? This man has it. You want good positions on the issues? Look up and down Dodd’s issue checklist and tell me there are candidates that you agree with more. Heck, Tom Friedman aside, this man has proposed a carbon tax and has addressed the great challenges of our time. He would be a solid workaday president.  That the media persists in its praying to the idol of celebrity while ignoring the actual issues. Listed David Geffen has no nukes, isn’t a major source of carbon, and does not imprison people without telling them why.  So why does the media report the garbage about that?  Hey media, check this guy out.

Oh, and yeah, he addressed the whole Senator (CfL-CT) Lieberman thing.

I’m certainly not the greatest cameraman in the world, so this is basically just a shot of the Senator mug-shot style.  This is the raw feed of the video, but the quality on Google Video is quite good. So, feel free to click through to see a larger version.

I thought I’d give a little bit more detail about what happened at the end of the convention, which ended with a quorum call and an abrupt close to business.

Let me first say that I do not have this inflated sense about the importance of CDP resolutions.  They reflect the spirit and the passion of the activist community of delegates, but they are not pieces of legislation that can be enforced.  They are a nice endorsement for certain issues, and the delegates can feel like they have done something.  But they are not binding.  It has to amuse me, in a cynical way, that this entire brouhaha is over a nonbinding resolution on Iraq, brought to you by many of the same people who decried the Congress’ nonbinding resolution on Iraq.

That said, I do think it’s a serious issue from the standpoint of small-d democracy and the ability for the will of the delegation to be expressed, as well as what it bodes for the real structural reforms that are needed in the party.

On the flip…

The facts of the situation are this.  There were 13 resolutions voted on at the convention on the final day.  This was the very last business done on the floor, and this is fairly typical in an off-year (endorsements, I believe, sometimes come after the resolutions).  We’ve gone over how the resolutions committee did a lot of the work on resolutions before anyone ever got to the convention, making rulings on the 104 resolutions submitted, and in some cases tabling, referring, or directing resolutions as out of order.  Eventually the 104 were whittled down to the 13 that went to the floor, the result of many meetings and compromises.

Now, the progressive grassroots, led by PDA (Progressive Democrats of America), really focused their attention on an impeachment resolution.  They would maybe say otherwise, but it is undeniable.  They worked their tails off and mobilized dozens of supporters to carry banners, flyers, signs, to sit in every committee meeting.  They whipped their people up into a frenzy over it.  Added to this outside strategy was an inside strategy, using former members of the Resolutions Committee as a liaison to hammer out compromise language that could get the resolution to the floor.  They succeeded on their main goal; an “investigations toward impeachment” resolution passed.  This was really something of a small miracle, and the result of hard work and serious grassroots action.

But there was a price.  All of the energy put into the impeachment resolution took away from many of the other priorities of the Progressive Slate, priorities on which I ran – single-payer health care, clean money, election protection, net neutrality.  None of these made it out of committee.  Privately, some high-profile PDA members were very angry about this series of events.  They considered it wrong to ditch these other important proposals to put all the eggs in the impeachment basket.  I would add the 58-county strategy and the Audit Committee proposals to that, which were remanded to a task force for study, despite the fact that a significant number of signatures were collected to bring it to the floor (it couldn’t because of that new rule about resolutions which are referred or tabled not allowed to go through that process).  Chairman Torres appointed some of the main leaders in creating the Audit Committee proposal to the task force, and seemed sincere in his vow to abide by the wish to look at how the CDP funds races.  Stay tuned on that.

Resolutions on Iraq fell somewhere in the middle.  The Chairman of the Party and Senate leader Perata had a vested interest in getting the delegates to endorse their language on the Out of Iraq initiative, scheduled to move through the legislative process and onto the February ballot.  Here’s the key text:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party wholeheartedly supports the following statement: “The people of California, in support of the men and women serving in the Armed Forces of the United States, urge President Bush to end the US occupation of Iraq and immediately begin the safe and orderly withdrawal of all United States combat forces; and further urge President Bush and the United States Congress to provide the necessary diplomatic and non-military assistance to promote peace and stability in Iraq and the Middle East; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the California Democratic Party urges other states to follow suit unifying our country in its absolute desire to see an immediate end to the Iraq War and sending the strongest possible message to President Bush and the Republican presidential candidates.

Perata wants to take the resolution to other states as well.  And certainly there’s a benefit in forcing state Republicans and the Governor to have to take a position on Iraq before 2008 (if the state party uses those votes).  But the point is that the party leaders had a vested interest in keeping the Perata resolution clean, without amendments.

But four amendments were offered on the floor.  Any delegate can pull the resolution and move to amend, and those amendments are then voted on in turn.  It happened with a few of the other resolutions (all the amendments failed, I believe).  On this one, two amendments added more specific language; one to cut off funding totally for the occupation of Iraq, and another to de-authorize the legislation that took the country to war.  A third amendment changed “Republican presidential candidates” to “all Presidential candidates,” and a fourth tried to insert language abut Iran.  The fourth one was immediately ruled out of order and not germane.

On the others, the progressive grassroots and the Party leaders forged a compromise that, if it had succeeded, would have had everyone going home with a smile on their face.  The Perata bill would go forward without amendment; but then the two substantive amendments, on cutting funding and de-authorization, would become separate resolutions that could be debated and voted on immediately thereafter.  Chairman Torres had to suspend the normal rules regarding resolutions to make this happen, and it showed an effort to offer the best of both worlds.  Sen. Perata gets his bill endorsed by the Party, and the progressives get their resolutions the full force of passage.  A cheer went up in the crowd when this happened.  A lot of goodwill was gained in that moment.  PDA and their allies would have gone home meeting their goals on Iraq and impeachment, which would not have been expected.

And then, in a moment, it was gone.

Karen Wingard, a regional director from Southern California, in association with Ted Smith, a member of the Resolutions Committee, called for quorum.  The rest here:

Someone called for a quorum on the presumption that there wouldn’t be a quorum, so no more debate could be conducted and business would be over.  When the quorum call was made, they immediately started counting–I barely had time to run from the blogger table back to my region–much less anyone from the hallway.

A lot of people are upset about this–there are people who are saying they expect parliamentary crap like this to be pulled by the Republican party, not by Democrats.

A quorum is 1155, and there are only 623 delegates.  No more business can be conducted.  The convention is over and we can only hear reports.

All of the goodwill of the previous several minutes was lost.  People predisposed to believe the worst about the Party leadership was given the excuse they needed to believe it.

But this didn’t appear to be an inside job.  Chairman Torres and the leadership wouldn’t have negotiated such a compromise in the first place knowing that it would be sabotaged, would he?  It made things so much worse, I cannot imagine why he would think to do that.  And people we talked to afterwards said that the Chairman was genuinely shocked by the turn of events.  Once quorum is called, counting must go on; he cannot overturn a bylaw, only a rule.  So the die was cast.

Anyone can make a quorum call.  The reasons for it can only be speculative on my part.  Calitics calls on those who pursued this divisive strategy to subvert small-d democracy and silence the will of the remaining delegates to come forward and explain exactly why they felt the need to do so.

The other thing that must be discussed here is that the underlying structure of the convention lends itself for this kind of thing to happen.  Resolutions are done last, and in this example, this was the last resolution discussed.  There were less reasons for delegates to stay as the day wore on.  If the resolutions are supposed to reflect the spirit of all the delegates, it seems to me that the Party could make a good-faith effort to not make them an afterthought by putting them dead last.

Like I said, resolutions aren’t bound with the force of law.  But they mean something on at least a spiritual level to a great many activists and people who bring so much energy and effort to the Party.  Furthermore, the suspicion that there isn’t enough transparency in how the Party does business is already there.  This “sour taste” allowed many progressives to believe everything they already wanted to believe.  We have an opportune moment in America, where new activists are interested and excited by the prospect of real progressive change, and are getting involved for the very first time.  The CDP needs to respect and honor that.

Our next steps in the progressive movement are to continue to work within the system, PRIORITIZE AND UNIFY, connect and communicate and grow, polish up on our Roberts Rules of Order, win more AD elections and County Committee slots, elect candidates that will appoint progressives, sit on the task force that can ensure a 58-county strategy and financial transparency, and make sure that those who would rather stifle debate than lead are held accountable.