This weekend was my second California Democratic Party convention and my first as an elected delegate. It was an enjoyable weekend, catching up with old friends and making new ones. I also had the opportunity to spend some time with some of our elected leaders, such as Barbara Boxer, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, and John Garamendi. <\/p>\n
As I look back on the weekend, I am reminded of what I wrote after last year’s convention<\/a>, including some themes that were clearly in evidence this weekend. From last year:<\/p>\n The Leno-Migden fight certainly reached a dramatic climax today, and the result was stunning. After the vote was finalized Eden James argued that it was a representation of the power of the grassroots within the party, and I think that analysis is absolutely right….Migden’s failed endorsement is also further evidence, along with the rescinded AD-40 endorsement and the split over Prop 93 earlier in the year, to a huge divide between the party grassroots and the Sacramento leadership in particular. Senate Democrats and their staffers had worked hard over the weekend to get a Migden endorsement and the delegates would not go along with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Switch out “Leno-Migden” and “Prop 93” for “Proposition 1A” and you’d have essentially the same story from this weekend in Sacramento. Progressives flexed their muscle yet again at this convention, showing that they are the force to be reckoned with in the party – even if progressives did not always speak with a single voice. The refusal to endorse Propositions 1A, 1D and 1E was a sign that progressive delegates are not going to be dictated to by Democratic leaders, and that they feel empowered to say “No” when it is warranted. That’s a sign of a healthy and mature progressive movement. People power is here in the California Democratic Party – and although it has yet to find sustained expression, it’s only a matter of time before that power revitalizes the party.<\/p>\n There’s a lot else to write about, but for now I’m just going to offer some impressions, written down on the train back from Sacramento (and a note to all Democrats running for a statewide office in 2010: the first one of you to come up with a credible plan to connect Monterey to San Jose via frequent passenger rail service and will swear on the ghost of the Del Monte Express<\/a><\/I> to implement it will get my endorsement).<\/p>\n Add your thoughts in the comments. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Now, time to catch up on sleep…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend was my second California Democratic Party convention and my first as an elected delegate. It was an enjoyable weekend, catching up with old friends and making new ones. I also had the opportunity to spend some time with some of our elected leaders, such as Barbara Boxer, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, and John Garamendi. <\/p>\n As I look back on the weekend, I am reminded of what I wrote after last year’s convention<\/a>, including some themes that were clearly in evidence this weekend. From last year:<\/p>\n The Leno-Migden fight certainly reached a dramatic climax today, and the result was stunning. After the vote was finalized Eden James argued that it was a representation of the power of the grassroots within the party, and I think that analysis is absolutely right….Migden’s failed endorsement is also further evidence, along with the rescinded AD-40 endorsement and the split over Prop 93 earlier in the year, to a huge divide between the party grassroots and the Sacramento leadership in particular. Senate Democrats and their staffers had worked hard over the weekend to get a Migden endorsement and the delegates would not go along with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Switch out “Leno-Migden” and “Prop 93” for “Proposition 1A” and you’d have essentially the same story from this weekend in Sacramento. Progressives flexed their muscle yet again at this convention, showing that they are the force to be reckoned with in the party – even if progressives did not always speak with a single voice. The refusal to endorse Propositions 1A, 1D and 1E was a sign that progressive delegates are not going to be dictated to by Democratic leaders, and that they feel empowered to say “No” when it is warranted. That’s a sign of a healthy and mature progressive movement. People power is here in the California Democratic Party – and although it has yet to find sustained expression, it’s only a matter of time before that power revitalizes the party.<\/p>\n There’s a lot else to write about, but for now I’m just going to offer some impressions, written down on the train back from Sacramento (and a note to all Democrats running for a statewide office in 2010: the first one of you to come up with a credible plan to connect Monterey to San Jose via frequent passenger rail service and will swear on the ghost of the Del Monte Express<\/a><\/I> to implement it will get my endorsement).<\/p>\n Add your thoughts in the comments. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Now, time to catch up on sleep…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[223,7176,215],"class_list":["post-8670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87","tag-223","tag-7176","tag-215"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2fQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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