Thursday evening Dean meeting summary

My partner wrote a summary of the meeting he attended Thursday night, and I’ll post it here.<hr>Hi everyone. Get ready for a long message! Ann was at the meeting this evening, but was not going to have time to report to the group. She asked that I send out a message about the Dean supporter meeting with representatives of the other campaigns.The news from the meeting is that we recommend that Dean supporters use the presidential preference ballot at the caucus to SUPPORT JOHN EDWARDS. This was far from a unanimous (or even consensus) decision, but it was the very clear majority recommendation. More about this below. Also, it was suggested by an aide to R.T. Rybak that we modify the subcaucus title (the “code” for Dean) so that it is “Uncommitted / Dean says Stand up to Special Interest”. The logic behind this was that getting Dean’s name into the title of the subcaucus will help those who don’t know the “code”and will also help Dean supporters find each other in district and state conventions and in later databases of caucus topics.I got to the meeting twenty minutes late and missed all the introductions and presentations by the surrogates present. (Maybe Matt or Ann can fill in a bit about who these folks were and what they said. I apparently missed a good deal of grovelling. It sounded like Edwards himself had called in to address the group.) I arrived when the floor was opened for Q & A.The Q & A was amazing, very informed, quite tough, and heartfelt. Maybe I should say the questions were, some of the answers were less inspired. The questions about support for same-sex marriages got the wildest (must have been almost a full minute) applause of the evening. Kerry’s camp waffled on that one a bit (muddy support for civil unions). Edwards clearly supported civil unions, his surrogate was more enthusiastic about marriage. Kucinich has run a full page ad headlined “Massachusetts Is Right!” No new ground covered really, so if you want to know candidate positions you can check out their web sites. Some hard feelings in the Dean camp about debate shenanigans (why did no one but Dean raise their hands when asked whether Dean was electable) and Iow tactics (what was that deal between Kucinich and Edwards about, really) were expressed. On some of these heartfelt issues, the Kucinich camp sounded most honestly contrite. After the Q & A the surrogates were dismissed and the Dean supporters spent 90 minutes taking turns and addressing the question of what we should recommend our fellow Dean supporters around the state vote on thepresidential preference ballot at the beginning of the caucuses on March 2nd. Many opinions shared, but the three main camps were: Vote Edwards, Vote Dean, and Don’t Make Any Recommendation. The “Don’t Make Any Recommendation” point was essentially: we can’t really reach consensus, so we should leave each Dean supporter to their own devices in reaching an individual decision. The “Vote Dean” point was that we love the man, we can (maybe) get a few delegates, it will be our only chance to vote for him, let’s do it. The “Vote Edwards” plea was that there is a clear distinction between Edwards and Kerry, our support could push Edwards ahead in Minnesota, let’s get past our grief and make a difference by casting votes that matter.The heart of the debate was whether it would really make a difference to support Edwards and what kind of position it left the Dean “operation” in the state in if they took a position of supporting Edwards. It was generally agreed, though, that supporting Edwards was the highest risk, but also highest reward, position we could take. Very few thought Dean could actually pull in 15% support, even if we worked for Dean. Very few even thought Uncommitted would pull in 15% support. Almost everyone believed that Kerry could win without our support. Almost everyone believed that Edwards could win ONLY with our strong support. We were also reminded not to support Edwards without being willing to work for him. One statement that stuck with me was someone who pointed out that we were all being a bit blinded by our grief over Howard Dean’s fallen campaign. He noted that there really is a distinction between Edwards and Kerry: Edwards regrets his votes with Bush, Kerry stands by them; Edwards has run a positive campaign, Kerry has been dirty as all get out, especially with Dean; Edwards has promised to take no “special interest” or “Washington lobbyist” money in this campaign, Kerry has taken more special interest money than any other Senator in the past 15 years. Edward is clearly no Howard Dean, but he is also no John Kerry. Edwards is our last chance to stop a media coronation of Kerry.We voted using an Instant Run Off method (ranking our top three choices).These are rough numbers, expect more detail from the Minnesota for Dean newsletter: 105 ballots total, 67 1st place for Edwards, 18 1st place for Dean, 12 1st place for “No Recommendation”, 5 1st place for Uncommitted, 21st place for Kucinich, 1 1st place for Kerry. Edwards was also the second place choice of 8 Dean ballots, 6 “No Recommendation” ballots, 3 Uncommitted ballots, both Kucinich ballots, and the Kerry ballot. That adds up to a very strong “support Edwards” majority.Ann and Matt and I gathered afterwards to discuss what we, as District 64 precinct captains, could do to follow through on this decision. We decided that we should, at a minimum, inform the Dean supporters on our phone lists that the Dean supporters who had met with the other campaigns recommend that we all vote for Edwards on the presidential preference ballot on March 2nd. We should also still work to get out the vote at the caucuses, and change our script to ask that folks “please consider supporting John Edwards” when they go to the caucuses. If we have time, we should also get out there and campaign (canvass) for Edwards.It is pretty clear that Edwards has little to no grassroots operation in the state. We are it. Ann tried to get lists from them, no dice. They just don’t have them. We will become the grassroots for Edwards in the next four days.The biggest bang we can make is if we help Edwards to take Minnesota. If hedoes this he will clearly have to credit the Dean operation, all of us, with getting the job done. It breaks all of our hearts to not be able to carry Dean into the caucuses, but we have to stay focused on taking back our country, the White House, and the Democratic Party. We can make a difference by supporting John Edwards between now and March 2nd.All that said and done, the room was also very clear that the priority would be to support the Democratic nominee, likely to be John Kerry (Ted Mondale presented some very compelling math on this point) in November. One person even put a positive spin on this eventuality: she wanted the dirtiest dog we could get out there to beat the even dirtier Bush bunch. The other clear priority is to take back the DFL! Every one of us should run for State Central Committee member in our caucuses, for example. Get ready to work on moving the DFL in the direction Dean outlined for us. There is a lot of work ahead.Whew! That’s as much as I can type tonight! Below are a few attachments. [Note: I put these in this entry earlier.].Good night!
…Eric