How much platform debate should be allowed at the next national convention

[Ken Burch]

The war in Iraq will, in all liklihood, still be a pressing issue by the time of the next convention. There may also be other
issues that groups within the party want to raise because they sincerely believe that a strong stance on a particular issue will
be beneficial to the country and also to the party.

Most of our recent candidates usually end up wanting the party to stand for nothing and try and succeed to make the conventions
a "politics-free zone". We see the spectacular results this produced for the ticket the last two times.

What do DU'ers think? should the Democratic convention be a "democratic convention", or the usual meaningless and boring
rubber-stamp festival?

[HereSince1628]

1. Debate? It's a bloody role out of the NEW CANDIDATE!

Debate interferes with having glitzy video pieces, staying on time, giving the networks schedules to run advertising, and generally giving a dose of Dr. Feelgood to the nation.

[davidinalameda]

2. does anyone actually pay attention to what's in the platform?

do the candidates have to support what the DNC comes up with?

[ticapnews]

3. Ideally, the platform would be discussed, debated and settled

before the convention.

I was a delegate to the Maine Convention in 2004 and the platform was a disaster. Even after numerous public hearings and public debate for months, people still wanted to change a word or two in practically every plank. So we spent several hours on Saturday having lines of people standing at three locations around the arena - pretty much all repeating each other. It continued on Sunday, with endless debate on the Israel-Palestine plank until finally someone asked for a quorum call and we found we had only 600 out of over 2000 delegates still in the building. So after about seven hours of debate spread over two days, we didn't even get through half the damn platform.

For comparison, the GOP approved their platform in 15 minutes.

The platform really should be done before it hits the floor. The delegates can easily communicate concerns about the platform via e-mail or a private web forum on the DNC website for the month or two leading to the convention. But by the time it reaches the floor, it should be in its final form.

[Meldread]

4. Agreed.

The longer we have to debate and talk about what needs to be in the platform then the better chance of getting in the things we want. It also avoids messy public political disputes.

[Ken Burch]

5. the main problem with doing it before the convention

Is that this always means the platform is written by a small unelected group of apparatchiks whose main
qualification for membership on the platform committee is their blind loyalty to the frontrunner or nominee
apparent. This is, for example, why the 2004 platform refused to condemn the Patriot Act(a stance which gained
the party no votes)and was neutral on the Iraq War(which not only did the Kerry/Edwards ticket no good whatsoever but
actually hurt the ticket by giving Nader an excuse to stay in the race).

If there was some way to change the platform process so that rank-and-file activists actually have a vote, rather than the basically
meaningless right to go to the hearings and ask the hacks to listen to them(which always, of course, leads to the hacks
ignoring the activists and creating a bland, meaningless set of platitudes). It is this blandness which has actually made the platform seem irrelevant to people.