“I am not a member of an organized political party,” Will Rogers famously said, “I’m a Democrat.”

Boy was he right.

There were more than 750 delegates present for the Democratic County Convention in Lubbock County, Texas today. By the time they handed the (new) gavel over to the incoming county party chair at 8 p.m., maybe 250 remained in the building.

We voted and discussed and misunderstood and argued. We faced down bullies from both candidacy camps, on different issues at different times. It was passionate; it was energetic; it was noisome and fulminant — it was, in short, just about what you’d expect from a bunch of newbies who had no budget to expend and no forethought for things like signage (campaign placards were everywhere, for example, but there was no way to tell which doors among the more than a dozen entrances to the vintage school were locked and which were not, never mind any indicators of where things like bathrooms might be).

We wrestled with seating — literally — finding where your precinct was supposed to be seated, and then getting into the 75-year-old well-worn auditorium seats (this building is a historical landmark; eventually the state will have to grant a waiver to replace these seats because they’re unsafe, but the district hasn’t applied yet).

We wrestled with time. We were supposed to start at 10:30 to pick up credentials; at 8 a.m. the line was around the block, so I decided to go grab breakfast first. I’m thankful, as it was the only food I’ve had today.

We were told the doors would close at noon, the delegates be seated by 1 p.m. and the convention over by 4 p.m.
The doors never actually closed, although the credentials committee had officially adjourned by 2:20.

At 7:00 p.m. it became obvious that only the true die-hards remained. The resolutions from the precincts were adopted as a package for submission to the Texas state party; I hope with all my heart some of them influence the planks of the national platform. But the best resolutions came from the floor (and so did one of the worst) at the convention today.

We wrestled with delegate seating and state party rules that required that all our at-large delegates be Obama supporters (and that any substitutions thereto must also be Obama supporters) as well as any alternate at-large delegates.

We wrestled with wording.

We wrestled with a collapse — I did not see if it were a man or woman who complained of chest pains and fell to the floor about 5:40 p.m., but it certainly brought the acrimony down a couple of orders of magnitude, at least until the ambulance arrived to carry away the fallen attendee.

We wrestled with ideas. I was allowed to speak in debate on two resolutions. I spoke against withdrawing a floor-originated resolution asking the Texas Democratic party to pass and support legislation protecting all immigrant peoples from vigilante violence and discrimination (this resolution came under fire from about six people in debate, and as my daddy used to say, “If I were going out to shoot Democrats, I’d’ve overlooked every one of those so-and-so’s”); and I spoke against a resolution supporting continuing the Texas two-step (primary and caucus) in its current form, because as it was done this time around it discriminated against the very core of the Democratic party’s voters: disabled people, people in blue-collar jobs on shift work who could not leave to attend a four-hour long political event, the elderly, young or single parents whose children could not be left alone, and those dependent on public transportation, as the caucuses were held in school buildings without access to public transportation.

Fix what’s wrong with the caucuses (and apparently even some of our delegates today didn’t realize that today’s event was the county convention, not a caucus) and let’s get on with business; but don’t leave the caucuses as they presently are.

Oh, and local media showed up for the first 10 minutes, took pictures of the Ballet Folklorico entertainment while the delegates were trying to find their seats, then split.
Poof. All three stations, though, had crews at the GOP county convention all day.

More, later, if y’all are interested. Meanwhile … somebody better feed me, pretty soon. Else I’m crashing for the night.