Adventures in Politics

I decided that since I am so disappointed and distressed over our sad choices in this next elections, that I would become more knowledgable and more active in politics in my area. So after the primary I went to the precinct meeting. There I met a few others who were similarly curious and we all became delegates to the senatorial convention.

Today I went to that convention, learning many things. First of all delegates select the nominees, not the voters. Not yet anyway. And since none of the delegates at my precinct and precious few from others in the area have Trump delegates in spite of fairly large numbers of votes, we know that either Trump voters are interested in the full range of politics OR that Trump voters are not by and large Republicans. The agenda included approving a slate of supplementary rules as well as a slate of delegates to the State Convention in May. Everything was hunky dory until Rule 16.

Rule 16 says that in order to be a delegate to a State convention, you have to file an application and turn it in. The applications were online and even mailed to the homes of senatorial delegates weeks before the convention. There was plenty of time to turn in these one page applications. But, like their children, these alleged adults fiddled around and lost the papers, ultimately didn't turn them in on time. So instead of asking for time to do it today, they wanted all applications eliminated as a deciding factor in who gets to go to State.

But that's not the whole story. Early on I had been reading how Trump supporters were going to try to get enough delegates just to get the Rules changed for the national convention so that he could be named the nominee with a plurality of the delegates rather than the majority of the delegates. That being the goal, Trump delegates wanted to pack delegations at every level to get their planks in the platform passed. I reasoned this out on my own, but at lunch I asked my precinct chair-a lady who's been around party politics since Reagan-if I was truly seeing that kind of attempted takeover. She nodded solemnly and said not only that, but the same tactics were being used in senatorial districts across the state. If they can get Trump delegates at the senatorial level, they can push their platform and delegates at state and end up having rules shaped to confirm The Donald's nominations without so much as a whimper.

More such shenanigans went on as various precincts tried to remove some delegates in order to replaced them with alternates that held more Trumptastic views than the rest of the crowd. This event-although at times tedious-was an education in itself. I wish I could go to State, but I have to give an AP exam that day.