Minority Report from the Texas State Democratic Convention

As the remaining activists among 12,000 plus delegates, alternates and guests who attended the Texas State Democratic Convention filed out on the night Saturday, June 7th, everyone had heard the call for party unity, but there wasn't much enthusiasm. Many of the Clinton delegates left with the feeling of having been cheated, and many of the Obama delegates were annoyed and indignant with the Clinton campaign for not having given up earlier. It was not uncommon to hear Obama delegates say, effectively, if Obama looses in November, it will be Clinton's fault: not the most optimistic start of the election season. So while unity was the theme of the day, there is still a big unanswered question: unity over what?

The one point of common agreement was about how bad the Republicans are. For some, that is enough. But what I found in talking to individual delegates, both Obama and Clinton, was the diversity of motives people had for being there. A lot of different passions drove folks from the local Precinct Caucus to the County Convention, to the State Convention. Every person I spoke to had intensely personal motives which represented their aspirations, not their fears. The calls from the podium for unity tended more toward appeals to fear: the consequences of loosing to the Republicans (again), whereas the appeals to the positive stayed vague, to avoid the sharp edges of internal controversy. Of course it is easier to invoke the image of a single fear (McBush) than to speak directly to the hopes and dreams of the participants, which, as it turns out, are not entirely shared.

For many delegates, the possibility of the first African American president was for them, by far, more motivating than the fear of loosing to the Republicans, and while this was a sentiment that was appreciated by everyone there, it was not the defining reason why many people came. The same is true of those who found themselves in Austin, for the first time involved in politics, because of the hopes that a woman might for the first time be president; again an aspiration appreciated by all, but not a defining vision for many of the participants. These are examples of the most obvious reasons why some people were there, and many others had different distinct motivations which were, for them, questions of passionate concern; passions that, while generally appreciated by others, were not shared to the same degree.

The task of leadership is to forge a common vessel into which these distinct passions might come together to form a common cause. When that is not possible, the task of leadership is to find a way to accommodate the majority to the legitimate hopes and dreams of those who still find themselves outside the orbit of the common cause, by forging compromises to build a willingness of people with dissimilar dreams to pull the same harness. In these respects, leadership in Austin was weak, some will say, absent.

The most notable act of leadership in the context of the event was the unambiguous call for reconciliation by Hillary from Washington on Saturday. At that point, the initiative was in the hands of the Obama leadership to address the Obama delegates in a unity speech, to call upon the Obama activists to make the hopes and dreams of the Clinton activists their own, to impress on them that the only possible basis for real unity, was for the Clinton activists to come to see that their aspirations might be realized in the Obama campaign. That would not only have been true, it would also have been smart politics, because it would have handed the initiative back to Clinton delegates, and given them the opportunity to see if they could find their voice in the Obama campaign. Better to have invited them in for an argument, then to leave them out in the rain.

Instead the opposite occurred. Absent the call on the Obama campaign to find room under the tent for the aspirations of the Clinton delegates, the refrain that "our differences are small compared to our differences with the Republicans" had a corrosive effect, quite opposite from the intention of the many speakers who said that. It was in this atmosphere that, during the roll call vote for the election of State Party Chair Saturday night, one of the vote counters designated by the Guadalupe County delegation chair was told to sit down and shut up by the SD25 chair, to stand down from vote counting, for no other reason than because she was a Hillary supporter. This was after hour after hour of unity speeches. It is ironic that the SD25 chair was in take-command mode in response to a text-message from Chicago, ordering the Obama delegation to support Boyd Richie in that election, instead of supporting Roy Lavern Brooks, the Obama candidate for State Party Chair. Many Obama delegates new to politics who were pumped on the "time for change" theme did not appreciate that orders from Chicago should determine the outcome of that Texas race. The incident certainly showed that if the Obama leadership wanted something to happen, they had the organizational discipline to follow through.

Certainly all of us who were there can tell anecdotes from the Convention that reflect the brighter side of what happened at Austin: there was a lot of positive exchange of views as well. I am speaking to those aspects of events where the work was left undone. When I talked about these questions to Obama supporters outside our delegation on the floor Saturday, folks generally listened politely, and asked "When are you going to get over it?" One delegate from Hays County asked me, "Well, if you were up there, what would you say to the Clinton people?" I said, Anything I could say, Clinton already said in the Washington speech. Now is the time for Obama people to talk to the Obama people about what they're willing to do to get more Obama people. Are you willing to do that?" He just shrugged his shoulders.

For those of you who are perhaps feeling angry at the suggestion that there is a failure of leadership by the Obama campaign, consider that there is not much fruit in the question of blame, only a question of what needs to be done in order to achieve the unity required to win in November. A pledge to support the party's nominee does not an activist make: an activist is someone who has their aspirations invested in a campaign. When a Republican or Independent voter tells you that they don't identify their interests with the Obama campaign, are you going to stand there and ask them "Well, when are you going to get over it?"