Wampum

This just dropped into my mailbox. It is about as #@$%! dumb as I ever hope to see.

3. In answer to your questions about why I didn't support former Senator John Edwards on the second ballot in Iowa: I have serious concerns about his connections to a Wall Street hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group. While attacking others for accepting campaign money from Washington lobbyists, he is up to his ears in money from Wall Street special interests.

He made half a million dollars in a single year for attending a few meetings for Fortress and has invested a substantial part of his own personal wealth in the hedge fund whose portfolios are responsible for sub-prime predatory lending practices, Medicare privatization, and an entire range of corporate sharp dealings that are driving the middle class into poverty.

I sent the following back to info@kucinich.us:

I want you to know that I'm not satisfied with this statement.

First, there is the choice between uncommitted and other-committed for caucus attendees who chose to stand for Dennis during the first division, and who failed to obtain 15% in that caucus. It can't be a surprise to this cycle's staff that the 15% threshold would be achieved in very few of Iowa's nearly 2,000 caucuses, and so the 2nd choice plan has to have been thought through, and "uncommitted" evaluated and rejected for "other-committed", independent of determining the best "other" to instruct KuDem caucus leaders.

It appears that Dennis, and/or the campaign PD, and/or the Iowa CM, just grasped at a straw hours before the doors closed and the actual caucus contests began.

Second, Dennis has had the better part of a year to figure out how to advise his delegates, at the Convention next August, at the State Conventions over the next several months, and on the caucus floor on January whenever (now the 3rd and 19th), how to move for best effect when their pledge to Dennis is vacated, either by the respective processes of the events I just mentioned, or by Dennis himself. This is a core policy issue for the Campaign, just like the last cycle. There is no way we're going to accumulate enough delegates to win, let alone determine the winner in a brokered convention, and in most places (unlike Maine), even pick up state-level delegates. We shouldn't even be doing this if we don't know how we're going to lose to best effect.

It appears that Dennis, and/or the campaign PD, or who ever wrote this unfortunate piece of trash, was unaware that no later than August, if not a lot sooner, a delegates-to-other message would be needed, and therefore a to-other evaluation made.

Further, this isn't a Dennis-and-Dog-in-a-confessional issue, this is the presidential preference of thousands of progressives, in Iowa, Nevada, Washington, Maine, and the rest of the caucus contests, and at each following state party convention, where the presence and coherence of KuDems has a disproportionate consequence in the drafting of each state's Party Platform. In '04 we got important stuff into the MDP's platform, something we couldn't have done if we hadn't worked with a plan, if we just had a mercurial and remote candidate.

Finally, I personally don't share Dennis' evaluation of John Edwards' choices -- perhaps because of my spouse, but probably not.

What can the Campaign senior staff do, what can the candidate do, to correct the error made the afternoon of the 3rd?

Nevada is the next contest where the to-other moment is on calendar in the second round of a caucus. It is January 19th. You all have 10 days to recover the trust and the confidence of your Nevada caucus supporters, and your later caucus supporters and those who support the campaign and don't live in caucus states. Either make your case that John Edwards is the poorer choice for progressive policy and Democratic Party primary politics, or recant. What you've got so far is cum hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense that makes Dennis look like an idiot. I advise recanting. I advise recanting and doing so in a way that shows that Dennis listened to his supporters and considered the near-term and long-term policy and political issues and came to a better conclusion than the error of January 3rd.

My spouse and I organized the largest metro area caucus in Northern New England. We know how important it is to work correctly in real time during the stand-and-divide process, to barter with other sub-15's and identify undecideds who would stand with us if they got to be delegates or alternates to the subsequent County or State conventions, and we know that there is no tactical advantage for candidates like Dennis not to make the strategy of their alternate choice known generally in advance, though not necessarily the edge conditions where the proper tactical choices can affect the outcome of an individual caucus room. So I'm not advising utter bottomless transparency. I'm advising we don't experience profound surprise and dismay when an operational moment occurs in our campaigns -- as your supporters live with being KuDems and caucus-working and convention-working progressive Democratic Party activists long after Dennis goes back to commuting between Cleveland between Washington.

In solidarity, and in principled difference on the policy and politics of the "to-other" pledge issue,
Eric