Convention Wrap Up;

Thoughts for 08

By Sam Garchik

We need to elect Joyce Schulte. Thanks to the Johnson County Republican Blog, we get this from Steve King at the Republican State Convention:

"There are probably not 72 virgins in the hell Al-Zarqawi is in. If there are, the probably all look like Helen Thomas."

What the heck is that? I'd hate for someone to say that about your mother, Steve.

Oh yeah. He also prayed that "Justice Ginsberg and Justice Kennedy fall madly in love with each other and elope to Cuba, giving President Bush two more appointments to the Supreme Court."

Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Steve King has GOT TO GO!

Now time to organize.

Holly Berkowitz, bless her soul, taped the convention. She says she can burn a DVD for me, and I can post the Fallon speech on this blog sometime in the next few days. Also, if anyone has a report from the meeting after the convention, email to me here and I'll post it.

I talked to Polk County activist Christina Butts, who runs the Yahoo group, Democracy for Iowa. Look forward to possibly more collaborative efforts between us and them.

And check this out! Alta Price has created the Quad Cities Democratic Gun Club. Their motto should be, "Peace By Any Means Necessary!"

Lastly and most importantly, the third amendment on the agenda, the addition of a Progressive Caucus (page 39 Convention Book) was written by a woman named Cathy Ferguson (sp?) who I tried to reach in the afternoon. Unfortunately, she had already left, so if anyone knows Cathy, please let her know I am interested in contacting her. 

So, the amendment went down 294 - 194, but NO ONE IN JOHNSON COUNTY VOTED because we were all somewhere else (talking to Harkin, I think, or not yet seated?. More details on this are found at Political Forecast, who bless his heart, blogged the whole convention.

So, here's a plan to get this passed.

1. Work together to come up with an amendment which we think might pass.

2. We can win if we pay attention to what's going on, look for our amendment, contact county chairs and the folks who voted against it, hit delegates with a cheap direct mail piece and an add in the convention book (as the two winning DNC electors did), and get 50 of the nay votes. No problem.

3. Only 740 or so of the possible 1500 delegates showed up. In 2004, I understand, about 3,000 delegates were eligible to be seated. If progressives descend on the convention with enough votes, fill in vacant seats and alternate seats, we can win the amendment by a landslide. No problem.

4. There's no Labor caucus. We can write an ammendment that ads both a Labor and a Progressive Caucus, and work with Labor to get the backing for the whole deal. Everyone wins. No problem.

So I'm totally interested in pursuing this. We have the tools, the outreach, and the passion. Let's get to work.