You can draw your own conclusions from what went down this weekend in Anaheim.  But I have to call attention to what is being put out there as a growing meme, that DiFi somehow worked with Chris Dodd to “kill” telecom immunity in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and anyone pushing this line is delivering blatant misinformation.

Sen. Feinstein voted AGAINST stripping immunity out of the Title II provisions of the bill.  The eventual vote to report out a bill without immunity was simply a chance to buy time.  As I noted the other day, James Risen’s article in the New York Times nailed this:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who also opposed Mr. Feingold’s measure, pleaded with Mr. Leahy to defer the immunity issue because she wants more time to consider several compromise proposals.

What happened in the Judiciary Committee was a punt.  There’s going to be a floor fight, and NOTHING is resolved.  DiFi wants to sign on to a bipartisan centrist compromise that probably won’t be a compromise at all.  If and when she does so, we can assess her position on the merits; for now, we can continue to tell her how we feel on the issue (And I hope Chairman Torres along with anyone else concerned about granting legal amnesty to companies who break the law and violate our privacy will continue to do so).  But suggesting that she “led the fight” to kill telecom immunity is an insult to my intelligence.  How can you kill something that’s not dead, and where the so-called leader is actually looking for ways to return it to the bill on the floor?  Try that logic on somebody else.

(Incidentally, the way certain progressive organizations whooped and hollered and jumped in to take credit for DiFi’s vote, which was nothing more than a vote to take pressure off of her, didn’t help matters.)

DNC CHair Howard Dean knows exactly what’s up with the so-called “Presidential Electoral Reform Act”, it’s just one more way to keep GOP in office by gaming the system. It’s just one more dirty trick from the gang of villains that brought you Abu Ghraib, the Katrina botched handling, and the rise of the Taliban in Afganistan.  They are both corrupt to the core and unfit to lead.  More Video over the flip.

More Howard Dean:

And Some Gavin Newsom:

Let me just say that I think this resolutions thing is a much ado about nothing.  More than anything it is instructive for how the party responds to its rank-and-file.  Nevertheless, I’m here, and so your intrepid blogger will follow it for you.

But first of all, let me make a couple remarks about Art Torres’ comments in the general session.  I’m disappointed and annoyed that he resorted to blaming “the blogs” for criticism that the Party received after the last convention, as part of some comments that he made justifying the CDP’s efforts to compete statewide.  It’s an unfair and deliberately vague characterization.  What blogs?  Which bloggers?  Is there anything specific?  And can you say with a straight face that the ONLY or even the main people to take issue with various matters that happened at the convention are bloggers?  The rank-and-file grassroots wrote those resolutions.  The rank-and-file grassroots had the problems with how they were handled in the resolutions committee.  They had the issues with the quorum call.  They led the fight to create an Audit Committee and the resultant fallout.

We REPORTED it.  And I stand behind my belief that reporting the facts and making opinions on policies and events are NOT personal attacks.  It’s a convenient excuse to blame “mean dirty hippie bloggers” for every criticism ever leveled at the Party.  People have substantive questions, and blogs are one way, and really one of the smaller ways, for people to express those questions.  I think that, at least on this site, there was an extremely healthy debate about the convention fallout, and it’s simply unfair for Torres to lash out in that way.

I will add that the fact that Torres felt the need to defend himself, and defend the Party’s goal of electing Democrats statewide and implementing a 58-county strategy, is a win in itself.  I think we all want to work to that end; it’s certainly a major part of what we do here at Calitics.  You can quote me on that, Art.  By name.

I’ll toss some notes about the Resolutions Committee in the extended entry.

So far, not much has really happened.  The Iraq resolution (the real sticking point at last year’s convention) is being worked on through Karen Bernal on the sidelines.  Still waiting on the only resolutions that interest me, one on parole and sentencing reform, and the merged net neutrality resolution.

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.

Reps. John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis and Gary Miller, all are under some sort of federal investigation, yet the dirty three are still planning on running for re-election in ’08 (as long as they don’t get indicted by then).  Each one has taken their turn under the corruption spotlight.  Right now it is Miller time, as the investigation into his tax evasion heats up.

Roll Call, the insider rag in DC says today (sub req):

The speculation that there might be something substantial to the investigation into Miller’s connection to a land deal has yet to trickle down to the level of rank-and-file voters. But talk among Republican activists is beginning to percolate about who might be a suitable candidate to replace him in 2008 – or before that.

“There’s no rush to replace [Miller]. But there is a growing concern that ultimately he can’t survive this,” said one California Republican with knowledge of the district.

A list of possible candidates does not yet exist, but state Assemblyman Bob Huff (R) is mentioned by most when they are asked who would be among the leading contenders to replace Miller, whenever he decides to leave Congress and under whatever circumstances.

Toussaint said Miller is unconcerned about the speculation because, he emphasized, there is absolutely nothing to the investigation into his boss. California Republicans will not be blindsided by Miller the way they were by Cunningham, Toussaint insisted.

Republicans will not be blindsided this time because as dday pointed out last week, he briefed them on his legal troubles.  They will not be blindsided because they are already planning his replacement.  It is encouraging to see, at least from a potential indictment standpoint, the Republicans freaking out.

Then there is the matter of Doolittle.

Despite the strong Republican composition of the district and Brown’s failure to oust Doolittle amid a wave election, the Democrats smell blood. California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said Brown might have won last year’s race if the party had given him more help and said Democrats don’t want to make that mistake again.

“I was out on the campaign trail with him and his wife, and he really resonates with that district,” Torres said. “Did we do enough? Probably not; we should have done more.”

(emphasis mine)

This agitates me to no end.  How many millions were sitting in the CDP’s bank account in December?  There were at least  4: the ones sent over to Nunez for his caucus activities.  That can’t have been all of it.  At a time when the national committees were going into debt, the CDP was sitting on piles of cash.  Cash that could have paid for a new round of ads, gotten more walkers into the district, sent more mail…the list goes on.

What I want to know is why?  Did they not pay for or get a hold of polling showing how tight this race was?  I know Charlie didn’t have the cash to pay for it himself.  He knew he was close, but didn’t put the money into seeing just how tight.  It all went into other activities.  The DCCC must have had something, but even they held off of putting resources into the district.

How did they not see the people powered movement Charlie Brown was building up in that district?  The amount of infrastructure he built up, where there was none is amazing.  We are talking about long term party building type of activities, not just winning an election.  Frankly, the stuff that the CDP should have been really excited about.

The CDP and the DCCC must make up for their serious mistakes in 2006 by supporting Charlie in his next run.

Torres said ousting Doolittle in the 4th and protecting freshman Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) in the 11th district are among the state party’s top priorities in 2008. Torres compared the 4th to the 11th, explaining he is confident of Democrats’ chances there because Democratic voters have been moving into the district from the liberal San Francisco Bay area in increasing numbers.

Robinson, Doolittle’s spokesman, sounded skeptical that California Democrats would follow through on their plans to heavily target his boss, saying he believes they will find richer political targets than a GOP Congressman representing a district with 73,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats – a 17.6 point advantage.

The fact of the matter is that Charlie got within 3 points and 7,285 votes of Doolittle.  Doolittle is beatable and everybody knows it.  We can both protect McNerney and go after Doolittle.  This fight can be won, but we will need help from everyone.

You can start by donating to Charlie Brown on the Calitics ActBlue page.  I hope that the CDP follows the lead of the netroots and gets behind Charlie.  They should have last time and have plenty to make up for failing him last cycle.

Dena Bunis at The OC Register spoke with CDP chair Art Torres in DC during the DNC winter meeting and shared a few nuggets.

The most notable, although perhaps not terribly surprising, revelation, is that Rep. Gary Miller (CA-42) is on the CDP’s hit list in 2008 (h/t CMR.)

I asked Torres if he thought the party had any chance to get Sanchez any Democratic company in the Orange County congressional delegation.

The chairman does have one possibility.

He mentioned the recent FBI probe of Rep. Gary Miller’s land deals, and said that depending on the outcome, it could make the Diamond Bar Republican vulnerable in the 42nd District.

We already knew this race is on the DCCC’s radar. Good to know they’re on the same page.

And who does Torres cite as his dream challenger to Miller? Joe Dunn.

More on what Torres had to say over the flip…

On the importance of the latino vote:

Torres said the main problem is registration; he said Latinos who are registered vote as often as non-Latinos. The trouble is, so many Hispanics are not registered and so many of the new Latinos living in California are not yet citizens and therefore ineligible to vote.

But voter registration is on the top of his list, he says.

On moving up the primary:

He believes moving the presidential primary to Feb. 3 will sail through the state Legislature and that it will make the presidential hopefuls pay more attention to the Golden State.

Torres pointed out that about $182 million in contributions went out of the state in the last presidential election and not a penny of it came back to be spent there.

On recent scandalous events:

In a nutshell he said Newsom apologized and we should move on and that he’d like to get Sanchez and Baca in a room together and make them iron out their differences.

Calling all Bay Area Deaniacs! Howard Dean is coming to San Francisco to join Phil Angelides, Gavin Newson, Art Torres and mark Leno for a good old fashioned “Take Back California” Rally!

TAKE BACK
CALIFORNIA
RALLY

FOR THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA
Phil Angelides
With special guests:
DNC Chair Governor Howard Dean
CDP Chair Art Torres
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom
Assemblymember Mark Leno

Friday, August 11
9:30am – 11:00am

Plumbers and Pipefitters Hall, Local 38
1621 Market Street
San Francisco, CA
Refreshments Served

Please RSVP with Kandice Richardson at 916-448-1998 ext. 163 or [email protected]

Over the past week or so, I’ve grown increasingly optimistic that the California Republicans played their hand too early and that Schwarzenegger may have peaked too early with his triangulation. Furthering my optimism is our candidates’ showing in much redder states. If our odds are good in places like Arkansas Missouri, how can we possibly count out Blue California?