Delaware Liberal Online Caucus Results Thread & Post Mortem
Three votes. 2 for Bullock and 1 for Hartly-Nagle. Not enough to declare a winner. The caucus is hereby voided.
On the plus side, the caucus turned off the trash talk, but let’s face it…the caucus was a flop.
It was a good idea, perhaps the best idea I’ve ever had. I’ll leave that to future DelawareLiberal histrorians working toward their doctorates to figure out. But today we know that it was a flop. A big flop. So how could it be such a good idea, but such a big stinking flop? Well, was a good idea because the goals of the project were so clear and simple. But I think that those clearly articulated and rational goals also contained the seeds of the caucus’ flopitude.
Let’s take a closer look shall we?
1) The purpose of the caucus was to raise money for the eventual nominee. Brilliant! We are all Democrats right? So we are all going to rally behind the eventual winner of the primary right? Maybe, …I guess.
But in the meantime nobody wants to give money that might end up in the hands of that other candidate. People who have picked a candidate at this point know two things. they know that their candidate is great and the other candidate is horrible. God forbid they end up giving ten bucks to THAT unworthy person. What a clamity. And what a pessimistic mindset. I guess only three people thought that they were making a contribution to their candiate via this process. Oh well.
2) The purpose of the caucus was to allow Delaware Liberal Readers, commenter’s, and lurkers to direct us when it comes to endorsing one of these candidates. There was a little hitch, and I take the blame for this. I want to get to an endorsement and start working on beating Mike Castle so maybe I jumped the gun. It seems that as of today, DelawareLiberal readers have not heard much from any of the candidates so nobody knows enough to make a sound decision.
Then again, maybe it isn’t so early. Maybe the campaigns could have been doing more over the last few months to get the word out TO THE MOST POLITCALLY PLUGGED IN READERSHIP IN THE STATE. I mean sheesh. This was one of my big problems with Dennis Spivack. Get your dang message to the 450 people who regularly read this blog! Get them worked up. A decent percentage of the 450 ARE THE HOTTEST OF HOT PROSPECTS. DelawareLiberal readers are your political EARLY ADOPTERS. Court them. Which brings me to…
3) The purpose of the caucus was to allow the people running to be the Democratic candidate for US Congress to demonstrate their organizational strengths by encouraging supporters to donate. Well they didn’t. So they blew a good opportunity. And if anyone thinks they can run against Castle and pass up some low hanging fruit like this caucus they are either nuts or being poorly advised. Winning this caucus would have been meaningless for the most part. Except for the fact that it would have been a “win.” No big whoop.
Do I want everyone to drop whatever they’re doing and jump because I get off on it?
Give me a break. No.
I am an open book. I want to help get Delaware (a Democratic state by any measure) represented by a Democrat in the US House. And I don’t think it would have been too taxing for any of the campaigns to get 10 supporters to “vote” in this thing. But they could not bother. And so, while I am still someone who plans to work his ass off for the eventual nominee, right now I am agnostic about who I want that person to be. I want to work for someone who wants to win.
We’ll try again in a month or so and see if anyone is awake yet. Maybe the next voting period will be three weeks instead of three days. Maybe each candidate will be able to post to this site at least once during that period to make their case. Who knows.
I do know one thing, there will be no advance notice of when it will take place.
Jason,
It’s the Bush economy. Everyone is scrapping for every dime they can get.
Dana is right! But there is more going on here Jason. March 31st is the end of the quarter and it is looming large. Everyone will be watching for the 1st Quarter Financials. The candidates are out trying to collect the big checks right now. Sorry they got pressed for time and didn’t make it to DelawareLiberal but I’ll bet if you do this again in say late April or early May you will hear from them.
One possibility which you failed to mention, which I mention only so we do not continuously ignore it until November 5th is that.
No one is comfortable with any candidate.
The pessimistic opinion is that there are very few who bother to put work where their mouth is. But this coin, though mostly true, has two sides:
1) its a bitch to get people to actually work on a campaign
2) its also a bitch for the other candidate, so if you can get only 450 behind you, you win.
Thanks for trying, Jason (who is a guy who actually puts up signs, takes down signs, does door knocking, works the polls, etc.). As for the rest of you, quit bitching and start working if you want a better government.
Another possibility – Make it more like a traditional caucus. Have a 24 hour period where people post FOR their candidate (not against another) much like the speeches each district rep makes in the Iowa VFW hall before the voting starts.
Then have a post open for as long as you like (maybe 2 days?) where people can post their support. The trick is, just like a real caucus, they have to use their real names when they post.
So I would post this and only this:
Brian Selander – Chris Bullock.
Without the explanation that I think KHN and Jerry are perfectly great people who have a lot to offer.
Folks who regularly post here that don’t want to use their real names could certainly sit it out. Or,
for example, BaHumbug could post under his or her real name in the caucus post, but would not need to say “BTW – I’m BaHumbug.”
Like a traditional caucus, people can also vote “Undecided” or “Undeclared.”
Good points all. I’m still ticked though. Kavips is probably close to the real answer as I think about it now.
For everyone else, it is never too early to beat up on Mike Castle and it is never too early to collect some low hanging fruit.
Getting big checks is great but Castle just voted with Bush for torture – it seems noteworthy to me that it has passed without comment by any of the four people seeking to replace him.
Hello? Is this thing on?
I’m not saying the candidates should be commenting in these threads – they probably shouldn’t. I’m saying a fucking press release would be nice. So excuse me for thinking. “Here we go again.”
Just another thought, but more informed than most. NO ONE other than a very few of us reads these blogs. They have little or no effect and no one really cares!
In the political ecosystem we are much closer to bacteria than we are to lions.
It’s kind of sad that we hear more from Tyler Nixon, Mike Protack, and Dave Burris more than any Democratic candidate or official.
In the political ecosystem we are much closer to bacteria than we are to lions.
Everyone starts out somewhere, and if you are thinking that we should be higher in the political ecosystem, then we need to get abit more entrepreneurial about this. Not just in how other state blogs learned to thrive, but with the very real challenge that DE politics is way more retail-oriented than many other places and way more insular (at least in comparison to other places I’ve lived) than I think its local practitioners realize. I suspect that candidates know quite precisely who they need to court and talk to IRL for funds, support, votes. Further, I suspect you’ll find that particular playbook written on some stone tablets in some Delaware vault someplace. If we’re crashing the gates, then we need a strategy to do that – one that will provide abit of an incentive for candidates to actively talk to us in an effort to get support.
But there’s a bunch of smart and successful folks here (folks with way more insight into the DE political process than me), so there is likely a great deal of wisdom on what that strategy should be.
Your caucus idea was a really creative one, and I still feel really guilty for not participating. But, I still don’t know enough about these candidates to make a choice (and, frankly, have no idea how I am ever going to find out enough about these candidates to make that decision) and I am old-fashioned enough to want to hear a candidate make a case for him or herself and ask me for my support. Which none of them have. Yet.
Does anyone know if the League of Women Voters are planning any debates? I thought the bloggers debate was a great idea. We can all learn much more with candidates in front of us, answering questions.
Is it possible to find out if the Pal Center in Wilmington or someother place that can seat a crowd, and would be willing to do it for free, (or a small fee to cover their costs). I would like to hear all 4 candidates. I would like to hear Jerry Northington. I remember Mike Miller from his last run.
Del Liberal could come up with the questions? And no candidate is priveleged to the questions before the debate.
What I want to know is how “We’ll try again in a month or so and see if anyone is awake yet” is really that different in substance to Dave Burris saying, “The voters aren’t where I need them to be”?
Seems to be the same statement from two different ideological ends of the spectrum.
After reading all the above comments, I came upon another generalization.
For one, most of us at this point, are unsure who our presidental candidate will be. Americans tend to start a the top of the ticket and work their way down. Next… they will consider there Congressional Representatives, and once that is decided, they will choose their markee State officials, after that drop down to their representatives in General Assembly and finally their local government officials. By the time they hit bottom, they vote party because they feel ill informed. Most still have the News Journal Voter’s Guide tucked under their arms as they walk into their polling place……
All know they have until September to make up their mind. That is three years away….considering most voters are seriously wondering how they will even survive economically come September. Which bills can they afford NOT TO PAY?
And this interesting twist. All politics are local, or so the saying goes…….since the advent of television, local politics, the ones in our own living room, are focused on the presidental race, only.
Everyone listed underneath the presidental line, has not even shown up on voter’s radar screens.
Want proof? Count the number of blogs who re-posted all those negatives surrounding Tom Gordan upon his announcement of trying for his old job back……
Hat’s off to Rick and Brian, who did elicit callers who worked closely with Gordan back then, all who called to warn us of what to expect if we fall asleep at the wheel and allow the unthinkable………………