Democracy isn't for Sissies

It isn't for people with schedules or for clock-watchers either. Put away the Timex and step away from the dayrunner.

The day started off really well. I got up, I voted in my caucus, which despite the fact it was over two miles away and I had never been there before, I did not get lost trying to find. I went to the library and checked my email came home and mowed the lawns, ate lunch. All this before noon! Really, really efficient use of time. I was looking around for the Efficiency Committee to bustle in and give me a Certificate of Appreciation and take my picture or something. I was on a roll.

And then. Then I left for the convention. The Democrats were having a mixer and I had an invitation. I had my little yellow card in hand and my Official Khaki pants of good works on and my little I Am Earnest And Work For The Little Guy And Drive A Ten Year Old Truck blouse and I was good to go.

So into the building I go. I and a couple of guys with signs for candidates enter the building. The Dems have good signage. Go Us.

Go, Go, Go went us. Up and down hallways down stairs and apparently, into the basement. On the way we passed a very nice, very large, very well appointed. Very not for us, room. We kept going.

Finally we heard the sound of guilty laughter. We had found our people! Liberals can feel comfortable laughing at very few things with out at least some one in the group writing to The Nation to let every one else know that this joke is out there and we should start a petition against this joke at once! And we should all get down on our knees and perform some sort of group Mea Culpa because we didn't write the letter ourselves.

But there we were. We all had on our official Khaki pants of Good works as though we had all just driven in, in car pools, in electric cars, from some well digging project.

We were there to be Democrats. So it started late, they ran out of chairs, didn't make enough copies, didn't know who was supposed to be there, didn't know what handouts they had given us. Later on when they wanted us to turn to page 7 of our hand out half the crowd didn't have a page 7 but they did have a page 5 and is that the same? Waaaah.

We started by voting on the minutes from the last convention. This took about an hour. And then we voted on the platform. There were 37 items on the platform. For the record, the democrats in NC officially did not approve of the War in Iraq, and at least one African American woman did approve of Bush's Man/Woman marriage thing, but then an African American man to stood up and said that not all African Americans thought that way.

Every time one item was read some one had to go up and speak on how important that item was. Then there was some one who didn't like the item and wanted it changed. And then we had to have some one speak on how the change was good and then we had to ask permission of the original speaker for the item to change the item. And then we had to vote and then some one had to bitch about the vote, And then we had to vote again and some one else had to stand up and bitch about wither the change, and then we had to stand up and be counted. Lather rinse repeat 35 times. It was supposed to end at five. Some kind soul stood up abruptly at 5:45 and demanded we adjourn. We did. Finally, on item 25, which caused the head of the man frothing at the mouth about item 25 to explode. Democracy also isn't for people afraid of a little gore.