Pamela Jean Owens off-line

PREFACE:

I grew up in Texas where we always chose our delegates in caucuses — precinct caucuses. I didn’t know exactly what they were, but my dad was precinct chair and I remember going to the caucus with him. They were in the evening. I somehow don’t remember Mother going — maybe my brother was too young to go, or maybe I just don’t remember it all. And then I was an adult in Austin, and we caucused not for candidates but for platform plank issues. Many people don’t realize that the party platform does get presented, argued, and approved at the convention. First the county convention, then the state, then the big D-N-C.

When I was growing up the convention was always in the summer, when school was out, and I spent a lot of time with my Helton grandparents in the summertime. In those days, Walter Cronkite and Huntley-and-Brinkley, and the rest of the guys on TV and radio covered both conventions “gavel to gavel” and were they ever proud of it! That was long before cable, of course, and we only had 3 channels, then we got “educational tv,” and then we got a local station that wasn’t one of the big 3. All 3 covered the conventions and would never have dreamed there would come a day when they wouldn’t — I’d never have dreamed of it either, and I still forget every 4 years that it’s not going to be that way still. I keep wondering if we should get cable but I just can’t imagine paying for tv — that’s just…. wrong ….. that’s unAmerican ….. they pay for tv in England …. we get our tv free, don’t we? That’s what I remember learning. I think pay tv was right up there with socialized medicine and the queen.

TODAY: WOW!!!

Today NEBRASKA held a caucus. Its first caucus. Each County decided how to hold its caucus, how to choose its delegates for the county conventions and from there to the state, within the larger state party rules that were approved by the DNC. In Douglas County we didn’t think we had enough resources to caucus by precinct. That would have meant several hundred locations, with at least a dozen volunteers at each one. We didn’t have a single volunteer name to call in some precincts. That wasn’t feasible. So what is the next political entity past the precinct and before the county? The state legislative district, right? There isn’t anything in between. So, we caucused by legislative district. No problem, right? We had a middle school or something of the sort in every legislative district; the auditorium or the cafeteria or the gym would certainly be big enough. With

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 10:04 pm and is filed under My Story, Political Musings, This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.