This is a photo of the aforementioned Handlery Hotel, where I stayed for the state Democratic convention a few weeks back. Want further proof that there’s no truth in advertising? Here it is: The Handlery “Hotel” is a motel.

After missing Senator Gravel (a feat that I and I’m sure the rest of the country will be repeating), I spent my first night at the convention attending the environmental caucus meeting and then various hospitality suites. The meeting room was packed with people. All along the walls rows and rows of elected officials and candidates stood hoping to get just a few minutes to talk. The chairman, Luke Breit, noted the standing-room only crowd and the obvious message: that the environment is a key concern for California Democrats. (And that comports with my own observations; last summer when I got to meet with Howard Dean, while he wanted to talk about campaign finance reform and clean elections, almost every Democrat in the room wanted to talk about the environment.)

When we got to voting on actual resolutions — to, eventually, go into the state Democratic party platform (or not) — here’s how seemingly every vote went:

1. The resolution would be read and the issue explained and discussed;
2. A guy half a row away from me would complain that it didn’t cover some other arcane aspect and the chair would explain that we were voting on the resolution as written and that this guy could offer up his own resolution if he wanted and if he could get enough support;
3. We would vote on the resolution, with everyone voting aye except that one guy;
4. Then we’d move onto the next resolution and he’d do it again.

As an example, he voted against the resolution decrying the attempt to put a toll road straight through the middle of a state park (you just can’t make these things up) because it didn’t provide public transportation for low-income people who needed to get through the park.

He voted against the resolution seeking to ban certain “Gopher-Getter Killing Methods for Gophers and other Rodents” because it didn’t cover some other small animals.

He voted against supporting the insidiously named “California Clean Car Discount Bill” (which would actually raise prices on non “clean” cars, meaning that the “discount” is actually an avoidance of the increase) because it didn’t cover motorcycles.

I think he would have voted against seating because it didn’t cover standing.

You like to think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the one person in the room willing to disagree, but we hope that person is Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men” and not, well, the village idiot.

By the time the caucus meeting ended, I was more than ready to hit the hospitality suites. Although I dropped in on all of them, my first stop was Dennis Kucinich’s “hootenanny” — their word, not mine. Essentially this was a small room of shoeless hippies dance to bad jug music. With tortilla chips as the “food.” Kucinich wasn’t there, and after a moment, neither was I.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Thoughts. 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.