On Saturday, April 24th I attended the 4th District Convention of the Iowa Democratic Party as an alternate delegate for Franklin County. I’ve always been interested in participating more in the political process, and since a regular delegate had to back out, I got called up for this and decided to go. I figured that I couldn’t very well make commentary about it if I hadn’t experienced it.

I arrived in the morning feeling very lost and very late, of which only the latter was debunked upon entering and seeing the very long line for registration. I was, at least, happy that of all the things I show up late for in life, this wouldn’t be one of them.

The day proceeded pretty much thusly; registration, milling about, pre-convention business, a whole bunch of speeches by political candidates, official business, some more speeches, and voting on the platform of the party. This all took from about 9am until 3-4pm and I left around 3ish because we were past most of the interesting parts.

I left? Yes, I did, mostly because the entire day ended up being a complete waste of my time. It’s not that there weren’t points at which it was interesting — indeed, some of the political speeches were quite good and the heated debate over the controversial portions of the platform was most entertaining. But these sparse moments of interesting were bordered on all sides by long stretches of extremely boring.

And it’s not that the content was all that boring, it’s that the organization was pure crap. The folks running the whole thing were running around or standing about looking very confused while trying to figure out what was next, what the format of the next section was, etc. And despite purporting to adhere to the standards of Order, once it extended beyond simply courtesies to the chair (in particular, one point of procedure that was challenged and discussed and argued ad nauseum), it all fell apart.

In whole, I spent the day muttering, “Get ON with it, already.” I eventually gave up and slipped out to spend the balance of the day doing something — anything — more interesting.

Good Points:

• Getting to meet and talk to Bill Maske, candidate for Congress (against Tom Latham(R)), who came up to me as I was sitting alone and feeling fairly out of place, shook my hand, and talked some small-talk to me. Nice guy, good speech, and I think he’s got a shot at the seat, I hope.
• Kurt Meyer’s more-than-passionate intro for Bill Maske. Im-pressive.
• Hearing a very rational speech in favor of a provision to support the removal of “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, in which the speaker basically said, “I don’t care what you believe in as long as you stand beside me to defend America together.” Brilliant. (The provision passed.)
• Seeing the cute little blonde-haired kid, complete with backpack and Omaba button, on his dad’s shoulders. Start ‘em early!
• Hearing cheers and jeers from the crowd depending on what bills or political names were said. Yes, it was a bit, “sports centre”ish, but on the whole, it’s nice to turn to the person next to you and say, “You know, I can’t STAND Chuck Grassley” and they completely agree.

Conclusion

I won’t attend a Convention again, I think; once was enough of a Saturday blown trying to keep awake while things proceeded around me. To be honest, I thought the business end of it would whiz by and the bulk of the time would be spent hearing from candidates or other citizens who had an axe to grind and wanted to make it known. While there was a good whack of that, too, it was difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, and that’s very unfortunate.

1.5 out of 5 stars.