For those who don’t obsessively check the comments, Bart Dame had a thoughtful response to my post this morning. I’m taking the liberty of promoting Bart’s comment to a guest post because I think it is thought provoking and deserves wider circulation.
On seeing his comment here, Bart worried…”Upon re-reading it, I realize I may have used language a bit more intemperate and hostile than I should have.” Please check out his further comment, below.
For now, though, here’s his original contribution.
Aloha Ian!
It’s good you are reminding party members there are intelligent eyeballs monitoring our decisions, though I I have observed a perverse sado-masochistic attitude which colors the thinking of some party activists who feel their decisions are VALIDATED if they are “misunderstood” by the benighted masses. And if they sense any critical feedback from sources like elected officials or the unions, they take this as further evidence the Party must be doing something right.
The Hawaii Reporter story was disturbing on several counts. That a major party activist would feel comfortable using the Sam Slom-Malia Zimmerman organ to promote an attack on Inouye is perverse to me. The resolution demanding elected officials remain neutral in primary battles is a gross overreach of the party’s authority. Party members and candidates have a right to insist top PARTY officers–as distinct from Democratic elected officials–be fair and neutral in their treatment of competing Democratic candidates prior to the primary. But elected officials are POLITICIANS with their own needs and, yes, Linda Takayama is correct, their own RIGHTS to express their opinions.
I am not defending the interference from Washington of the DCCC or the DSCC in our primaries. I believe they SHOULD remain neutral. But both Senator Inouye and Abercrombie have the right to support whomever they want. Dante Carpenter as chair of the state party or Tony Gill as Oahu chair, gave up that right when they took on the responsibility to deliver equal service to all the party’s candidates.
Not only was the resolution an inappropriate effort by the Oahu party to exert excessive political control over elected officials, it was extremely hypocritical. The Oahu convention featured as our luncheon speaker one of the two Democratic candidates for Mayor, Kirk Caldwell. Since it is in the Party’s interest to be seen as neutral in a primary battle, as per the resolution, the convention organizers should have bent over backwards to avoid the perception we were backing Kirk over Cayetano.
But I guess it is easier to tell Inouye and Abercrombie how to behave than to police our own behavior?
There is a temptation within the party to try to accomplish through our control of the formal party apparatus things we cannot accomplish through traditional community organizing. It is much easier to mobile a few neighbors, friends or co-workers to turn out to the local school cafeteria an elect you as a precinct officer, a district chair or a member of the State Central Committee than to get elected to the Legislature or county council.
The Democratic Party was built the old-fashioned way, in the plantation camps, among returned WWII AJA veterans and going door-to-door at a time when Hawaii was unambiguously dominated by a well-defined “ruling class.” The two sides were obvious to all Hawaii residents. The Republican side was easily identifiable: haole, Merchant Street, Punahou, Pacific and Outrigger Club, Big Five and inter-married missionary families. The Democrats were (almost) everybody else, with the unions and AJA vets at the core. (Hawaiians were somewhat on the side).
Today’s society is much more complicated, in ways which do not lend themselves so readily to such a binary, “Which Side Are You On?” division. As the party of governance, the leading Democratic politicians are coopted by longstanding alliances with powerful corporate interests in addition to the unions. Corporations seeking to influence legislation seek out politicians and politicians needing corporate underwriting for their political futures cozy up to corporations.
The generation which built the original Democratic Party has either died off or are almost completely retired from activity. WIth the “demographic collapse” of the party’s traditional base, has come a hollowing out of our understanding of and connection to many of the subgroups and neighborhoods in the state. The newer party activist is much more likely to be a recent arrival, to be rooted in an issue-oriented community rather than a geographical one and to have a weak grasp of Hawaii’s history and social dynamics.
In a sense, we came across a party structure which had largely been abandoned and have taken it over, sometimes mistaking our control of the formal party apparatus for real power or “legitimacy” to make demands “on behalf of the members” or in defense of “Democratic principles.”
This hollowing out of the party’s strength coincides with, and probably not unrelated to, the professionalization of the legislators as political entrepreneurs and careerists, relatively detached from traditional Democratic principles, unless those “principles” can express themselves through Real Politik mechanism, like union political power to offset corporate power. The recent legislative session angered a lot of people for the violence done to legislative due process with their “gut and replace” tactics and the effort to gut environmental review processes.
Many party leaders share the public frustration with the behavior of many Democratic elected officials and are seeking a means to to use our party powers to influence, sometimes punish, the elects. Our ability to either influence or hurt a sitting Democratic elected official is pretty limited. But a provision in our rules created an opportunity to interview anyone who wants to seek office as a Democrat but who missed a little know deadline in our rules of six months membership prior to filing. So, in my view, a lot of legitimate frustration with sitting Democratic legislators has been displaced onto Laura Thielen, the first member unfortunate enough to apply for permission to run under this rule.
As the former chair of the State Democratic Party’s Rules Committee, I can say with great confidence it was never the intention of this rule to block someone like Laura Thielen from running. The rule was written as an attempt to provide us with protection after the high profile party switches of Bev Harbin and Mike Gabbard, two cases which created a lot of interest in giving the party the ability to screen out applicants seen as “hostile to the Democratic Party.”
The rule was, in my opinion, crudely and willfully misapplied under the influence of people who disagreed with the intent behind the rule and determined to change its purpose.
I have gone on too long and, undoubtedly, said some things which will annoy some of my fellow Democrats. There will be an attempt this weekend to forge a compromise on the rule invoked against Thielen. It is not clear whether we will succeed or not. If the compromise fails, delegates will be left with two choices. Either harden the rule along the lines of the proposal narrowly adopted by the Oahu Convention or delete the rule from our constitution and return to the previous practice, which was to leave it to the primary voters to determine who will represent Democrats in the general election. This naturally leads to a discussion of open versus closed primaries.
The Thielen candidacy controversy may result in a court fight. I am hoping there is enough sense within the Party to avoid trying to assert the right of party “insiders” to substitute our judgment for that of the voters. It reinforces the “party bosses” critique which gave rise to the push for primary elections a century ago with the Populist and Progressive reforms of the late 19th and early 20th century.
I believe the Party DOES have a right to block people hostile to our platform from running as Democratic candidates. They can run as independents, Republicans or third party candidates if they do not broadly agree with our platform. But any screening process MUST be transparent, follow obvious standards and have safeguards against bias, conflicts of interest and arbitrariness. Or it will not survive a court challenge.
The current rule was a “beta version” and needs tweaking. If it cannot be fixed, it should be removed. If it is rendered more inflexible, it will actually DIS-empower the party by forbidding party activists in a district from supporting their favored candidate if they did not have the foresight to join the party at least 12 months prior. And since there is such a weak correlation between a 12 month rule and a members commitment to the platform, it would be insane to attempt to substitute a 12 month rule for a more deliberative process or for the judgment of the voters in the district.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Where does the Environmental Council of the Democratic Party stand? Are they going to put political cronies like Donovan Dela Cruz, Calvin Say, Sharon Har, Toshioka into the dog house?
I just now returned to read reactions and see you have promoted my comment to a post in its own right. I suppose my royalty check will help cover the registration fee for this weekend’s convention?
I continue to be embarrassed by my typos. If you can correct just a few? In the 4th paragraph, it says:
“Since it is in the Party’s interest to be seen as neutral in a primary battle, as per the redo, the convention organizers should ….” I meant to type “as per the reso” but my computer auto-corrected from “redo” to “redo.”
Upon re-reading it, I realize I may have used language a bit more intemperate and hostile than I should have. But I am not asking for a “redo.”
The title you used does not really reflect my feelings accurately. I believe the party officers DO have a right to “speak for most Democrats.” The party is, in the main, internally democratic and does allow for relatively full and fair debate over our platform, resolutions and rule changes, unlike the other political party which routinely shuts down internal debate with a heavy-handed application of Roberts’ Rules of Order.
What I am cautioning my fellow Demcoratic activists is to not claim too much ownership of the Party name. We are “stewards” of the Party, not its owners. And the value of the Democratic “brand” is less the result of resolutions of platform planks we have adopted but the real life accomplishments of past Democratic elected officials. So we need to maintain a bit of humility when we get tempted to make pronouncements about what a “True Democrat” believes. And when we get tempted to use our Rules as a cudgel against a Democratic elected official, we better be damn sure we are not angering the broader base of Democratic voters in the community at large.
BUT the concerns among active party activists about the gap between the behavior of many Democratic elected officials and the Party’s professed principles is real and painful. It is not a figment of the imagination of “overly ideological” party members. Striking the right balance is the challenge.
(It must be more than a little ironic for ME, of all people, to be posing as a “humble” guy. Oh, well.)
If only there were others who agonize over principles as much as you do, Bart. But I fear that you’re unique in Hawaii.
When I lived in New York I was somewhat familiar with Democratic Party politics and Tammany Hall corruption and all that. Going back further, when I was a wee kid, I knew that the union (ILGWU) helped take care of my grandmother when she was sick, and that both the union and the Democratic Party actually did things for people. That developed a loyalty and a sense of one-ness with the party.
Skip ahead many years, and I find that in Hawaii the Dems do things to their constituents here, not for them. Now, it’s undoubtedly the same elsewhere, but still, here I am. Also, the party monopoly seems to be unique. So I’m not sure that the same thinking about party politics and influence works the same here as in New York then or now. It’s a totally different animal.
So I attended several meetings. They resembled precinct meetings back in Brooklyn. Which is to say, petty squabbles demonstrating inexperience, and a quest for power that amounted to quite a stench. Especially since power in the party appeared to be no power at all, except within the confines of that meeting room.
There was a legislative platform distributed on a green sheet of paper. No indication where it came from or whether it was the product of one (grammar/spelling challenged) mind or many. It also turned out to be almost completely disconnected from what transpired during the session. That was several years ago. I haven’t attended any recent meeting so I don’t know if anything has changed.
Now, far from a criticism, this is an opportunity.
Given the depth of the monopoly, there are factions–again, the quest for power. If this banana republic power-quest can be overcome, the Democratic Party of Hawaii has a chance to re-invent politics, but not according to party lines. The Democratic Party of Hawaii is just not a Democratic Party. Its members cover a wide spectrum of beliefs that could put them in another party in a different state. Adding Laura Thielen in to it would not be a negative. It would make no difference except possibly to the person she would run against or who would run were she not there. Heck, enticing her mom to somehow share governance would be a big plus for the state.
As long as we don’t have the same Republican/Democrat divide that other states have, I suggest that the Democratic Party begin to reinvent itself, a fairly long but I suggest worthwhile process. It’s appropriate to an island state. Who knows what will happen.
Whatever improvement can be made out of the current squabble has the potential to be a step forward.
Oh, in order to be of any use, I believe that a party will have to start producing something of value for its constituents. Right now, either good or bad comes out of the Legislature, not out of the party. The lege gives mental health services or the lege takes away. The Democratic Party gives us nothing I can put my finger on.
In Afghanistan, I read on the web, the Taliban provide electricity, medical care and organize social services. So they win hearts and minds.
When my grandmother was ill with stomach cancer, both the union and the Dems were there to provide what help they could (including, I believe, financial). That was then. What have Democrats done for me lately?
As I say, there’s lots of potential for Hawaii.
By the way, I have no position on whether Laura Thielen should be admitted or not. I would trust a decision either way if it were made based on her merits. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening.
This is junk and 18th Century claptrap.
The election laws make it nearly impossible to run as an independent. and Republicans don’t have any political clout for their constituents. So the only way to accomplish anything in Hawaii politically is to be a Democrat. Since everyone in politics pretty much be must be a Democrat, being a Democrat is clearly not a choice — it is just a reality. And since there is only one game in town, litmus tests to get in the party turn out to be anti-democratic power grabs. And most reasonable people would agree that the power should be with the voters, not with a party machine.
Bill, the success of the Democrats in winning elections does not mean we are obliged to allow everybody who wants to run on our banner. Your approach is contemptuous of our constitutional right to associate with like-minded people for political purposes. The “right to associate” has been upheld by the US Supreme Court as a “fundamental” constitutional right. And, if you think about it, it is extremely difficult to exercise one’s right to political speech, right to assemble or to seek redress from the government if one is forced to allow into one’s organization people hostile to your views.
Just as a church cannot be compelled to admit people of contrary religious beliefs, nor can a political party be forced to admit people who disagree fundamentally with their political views.
The question is how to devise a fair process for excluding political adversaries, not whether that basic right exists. That is settled law. What remains unsettled is how arbitrary or secretive a party can be in making the determination.
You are free to associate all you want. This is much bigger than association. This is the writing of election laws and structuring public institutions around your so-called private association. Because it is historical, doesn’t elevate above the sham that it is.
When I wrote, ” I … used language a bit more intemperate and hostile than I should have,” I was thinking of this statement:
“The rule was, in my opinion, crudely and willfully misapplied under the influence of people who disagreed with the intent behind the rule and determined to change its purpose.”
That was not a fair statement. The committee was asked to apply a rule which suffered serious defects, as we are well aware as we wrestle with the task of fixing the rule. The rule set up a process for evaluating the fitness of a new member seeking to be a candidate running on the Democratic ballot line. But the rule required the process be done in secret (“executive session”), provided no guidelines for assessing the applicant’s qualifications and the rule was written in a manner which allowed the mistaken impression any such applicant was asking the rules be “bent” for their benefit.
So many of the most offensive aspects of how Ms. Thielen was treated were built into the rule, especially the “star chamber” quality of the proceedings.
We now have a chance to fix the rule by making it transparent, establishing criteria and creating an opportunity for a fair appeal. At an earlier stage, some members appeared determined to “double down” when faced with the challenge created by the rule. The Oahu Convention proposal to make the rule a hard requirement of 12 months and threatening with expulsion any member who willfully ignores the party’s determination, is, to my mind, an understandable reaction, but ill-considered. It ultimately rests upon a claim that a 12 month formal membership in the party correlates with a higher degree of support for the Party’s platform than a 5 month membership. And that we should put so much value in the significance of that “bright line test” that we would surrender our right to actually interview the applicant instead.
I think we have processed the matter more fully, through dialogue and debate and a consensus has emerged to refine the rule. But it is sometimes hard to anticipate the rhythms and passions of a convention. Will those folks who have not had an opportunity to participate in this dialogue remain hardened in their positions? After all, “things fall apart, the center cannot hold.”
And some are definitely “full of passionate intensity.”
Bill makes two excellent points. With few exceptions Republicans are a joke and have almost no chance. WhenI was in y 20s and 20s, I was almost always theyoungest persona in attendance at their county comvetons.In middle age, I was still youngest. Last tieI attended in 1990s, the size had shrun and hair was decidely gray or absent. The GOP I met has simply died off. Now County Conventions are not even publicly announced and not covered by today’s reporters.
Running as an independent is an act of foolishness by naive folks with little knowledge of rules.
I find it hard for today’s Democrats to be everything because other options have ceased to eist. I would let Thielen run as a Democrat and let voters determine who she is. I am confused as I have watched her toil for Linda both in fruitless public education reform and run the DLNR as Lingle’s hand-chosen appointee. I was not impressed. Her mom is another case, more reliable and better informed but she is one of those on the dwindling list of elected Republicans.
Personally I feel that party discipline is a myth.
Just look at Inouye backing Joseph Lieberman after he bolted the party with his right-wing views. And Senator Dan’s support of the late Alaska Senate Republican Stevens. “The club” clearly was more important to him than his party. Don’t tell me either Lieberman or Stevens were better than young Thielen.
Hugh,
Not to detract from your main point, but you are in error about Senator Inouye’s support for Lieberman after he lost the Democratic primary to Lamont. Inouye at first indicated he would support Lieberman’s independent bid. But upon hearing of discontent from Hawaii Democrats, he publicly expressed his support for Lamont. Ed Case was asked for a similar public withdrawal of his support for Lieberman. But, to the best of my knowledge, never withdrew his support.
Lieberman was, as you probably know, a powerful role model for Ed Case and Ed was one of the few members of congress to endorse Lieberman when he ran for President.
I would like to see state elections emulate the counties and become non-partisan.
Bart Dame has an interesting narrative of how politics in Hawaii in the past generation has been ‘professionalized’, resulting in greater corporate influence of the local political system due to politicians who need corporate funding to run their campaigns. In contrast, in the past, the Democratic Party was dominated by founders who believed in core values.
Ian, how true would you say this is? I would guess that you were uniquely situated as a journalist who was both insider and outsider to the political system.
I think that there might be a simultaneous development in Hawaii’s political system during this period of ‘professionalization’ that Dame talks about: increased ‘institutionalism’.
In the early stages of democratization, institutions are often weak and political factions or parties are based more on personal relationships, or affiliations such as which university a politician went to (or which high school, in Hawaii) or based or regional loyalties. In fact, key players in the political system are often neither party leaders nor politicians, but rather relatively invisible citizens (sometimes wealthy, sometimes not) who simply have a mix of a network of personal connections, personal charisma and enormous moral credibility rooted in sacrifices made in the early struggle for power. Non-Western democracies seem to be more prone to maintaining this character of being less institutionalized, for better or worse, although the trend is toward greater institutionalization.
In fact, as societies modernize in general, personal relationships are eclipsed by formal institutions. There is a shift from ‘community’ to ‘society’. Everything gets bureaucratized, and credentials replace personal contacts. Perhaps the epitome of this modernization is the United States. Perhaps only in such a society could someone like Barack Obama — someone in his origins far from outside the mainstream racially and geographically, and with no real family other than his mother, but who did ascend brilliantly through the elite educational system — rise to the very top.
(Notably, Obama as a person has a personality that is cool and distant, not charismatic or personable like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. This is to Obama’s advantage in some ways. In the making of “Queen Christina”, the director told Garbo in the movie’s final scene to empty her mind of any emotion or thought, so the audience could project their own emotions onto her. It is Obama’s absence of emotion, his impersonal character, that enables people to project their hopes and fears onto him.)
So the issue here is not so much a breakdown in core values in the local Democratic Party so much as it is a fragmentation of relationships.
One example might be the legalization of abortion in Hawaii. Hawaii was the first place to do so, and under an Irish Catholic Governor (Burns) who attended Mass every day. There was no progressive groundswell to do this. Rather, the order came from the top, from a Governor who personally abhorred abortion but who felt that it was a personal matter. Out of enormous respect to this political figure, the local Democratic Party went along with his opinion.
There were other examples of this Governor’s huge power that seemed to go against the grain of the society. If someone ran for office as a Republican, members of their family would be fired from State government jobs. When Burns finally retired from office, this ruthless practice came to an end. I tend to think that the ethos in Hawaii is one of live-and-let-live, and that there is a tolerance or even apathy toward political affiliation, along with a big respect for family, so attacking family members because they have relatives who are Republicans is idiosyncratic in Hawaii. But the personal loyalty to Burns made it possible for quite a while.
So while Bart Dame defends the very real need — sanctified in law — to protect the core ideology of the local Democratic Party by vetting the belief system of politicians who are running for office under its banner, there is a problem with this view. This is because no such ideological purity ever existed in Hawaii. In fact, one could argue that it is the inner core or elite of the Democratic Party in Hawaii — the remaining so-called ‘Burns faction’ — that has a certain ultra-conservative flavor in its hardball politics. (This ruthlessness includes Senator Inouye welcoming the Gabbards into the Party.)
Again, what’s disintegrated may not be the progressive values of an earlier generation, but old-school Party discipline based on strong emotions.
(This might be expected. In a radically multi-ethnic society, fragmentation and tolerance are to be expected, or at least hoped for. In an isolated “small-town” island environment, a desire for political consensus manifested in a one-party state might be expected. What makes Hawaii unique is that both conditions exist simultaneously.)
In the last paragraph, the first sentence reads, “This might be expected.”
I meant to write, “This eventual disintegration of centralization within the local Democratic Party might be expected particularly in Hawaii.”
JUSTICE KENNEDY, JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE STEVENS, dissent in BURDICK v. TAKUSHI, 504 U.S. 428 (1992) provides a nice description of how Independents are shut out of Hawaii’s election system …
” … Hawaii’s ballot access laws, taken as a whole, impose a significant impediment to third-party or independent candidacies. The majority suggests that it is easy for new parties to petition for a place on the primary ballot because they must obtain the signatures of only one percent of the State’s registered voters. This ignores the difficulty presented by the early deadline for gathering these signatures: 150 days (5 months) before the primary election. Meeting this deadline requires considerable organization at an early stage in the election, a condition difficult for many small parties to meet. See Brief for Socialist Workers Party as Amicus Curie 10-11, n. 4.
If the party petition is unsuccessful or not completed in time, or if a candidate does not wish to be affiliated with a party, he may run as an independent. While the requirements to get on the nonpartisan ballot are not onerous (15 to 25 signatures, 60 days before the primary), the nonpartisan ballot presents voters with a difficult choice. This is because each primary voter can choose only a single ballot [504 U.S. 428, 444] for all offices. Hence, a voter who wishes to vote for an independent candidate for one office must forgo the opportunity to vote in an established party primary in every other race. Since there might be no independent candidates for most of the other offices, in practical terms, the voter who wants to vote for one independent candidate forfeits the right to participate in the selection of candidates for all other offices. This rule, the very ballot access rule that the Court finds to be curative, in fact presents a substantial disincentive for voters to select the nonpartisan ballot. A voter who wishes to vote for a third-party candidate for only one particular office faces a similar disincentive to select the third party’s ballot.
I defer to Bart on the Inouye recanting support for Lieberman,I never saw that but could have been raveling.
Uncle Dan rarely admits he is wrong, My lone recall is when he said he said he had blood on his hands because of support of Vietnam war.
His vanity seems to have overwhelmed him since then.
Certainly, he followed Stevens to his grave.
At the opening banquet of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Unit, an old friend and fellow soldier recalled that forty-nine years earlier Inouye had removed a silver ring from the body of a dead French woman after a battle near the French town of Bruyères. Many of the more than twenty-six hundred guests, including veterans and their wives, military officials, and a delegation of French nationals from Bruyères, were shocked by the grizzly inclusion in what some described as a “rambling introduction” (Kakesako 1993: A-8). Some listeners remembered the speaker saying that “Inouye used a trench knife to cut a diamond ring from the finger of a dead French woman” (Kakesako 1993: A-8). The speaker, Teruo Ihara, denied saying that Inouye had cut off the finger to get the ring. The Senator explained the incident as part of wartime horror (he wore the ring “just as a reminder of how beauty can be destroy by war”) and wartime irony (“I take the ring off of the woman’s finger and then a doctor has snip off my finger [of his amputated right arm] to get the ring off”) (in Kakesako 1993: A-8). Inouye, himself stunned at the unexpected public remark, referred indirectly to the advancing age of the speaker: “It reminded me that all of us were getting older” (in Kakesako 1993: A-8).
— Oh, Say, Can You See: The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai’i (Barrows Lectures)
By Kathy E. Ferguson (Author), Phyllis Turnbull (Contributor)
Publisher: University Of Minnesota Press; December 1, 1998
ISBN-10: 081662979X
ISBN-13: 978-0816629794