Arriving in Denver
Today, the Convention starts. I am part of a 500 strong international delegation of political leaders from 140 countries invited by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) - a sister organisation of NIMD - to gain first hand insight in the Convention proceedings, the electoral process in the run-up to November 4th and meet with US policy makers.
Over 4000 delegates come together to endorse the Democratic candidate for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential election, Senators Barack Obama and Jo Biden, on November 4th, 2008. The delegates are joined by 15.000 journalists and an unknown number of lobbyist in this ‘mile high' city (altitude) at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. A total of 1200 parties are organized by special interest groups.
Internal party democracy
Whereas Obama's key platform is change, the composition of the Convention itself represents a major change in decision making within the Democratic Party. Half of the participants are women and all minority groups will be fairly represented. A total of 36 million Democrats came out to vote in the primaries, an absolute record number, to elect the delegates to the Convention who will elect the Democratic presidential candidate. Hence delegates are elected and business is no longer conducted by party bosses backstage. The world has watched how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battled it out until Obama gained the majority of delegates in the Convention.
Obama's nomination
The fact that Barack Obama will be the nominee, the first black American to become nominated, is itself a momentous occasion. Only 40 years ago, the participants to Democratic Conventions were predominantly white male. Obama's nomination is creating a lot of excitement for a number of reasons. First, there is his message of hope, of new policies to ensure access to health care, better education, jobs for the poor in the inner cities and more energy independent - but also a new approach to politics, less divisionary and more unifying.
Secondly, his masterly use of the internet and social networking technology - BO.com - to connect with his followers and building up an impressive campaign machinery. It has also earbed him already US$ 400 million in contributions, mostly made up of small amounts of money - ‘honest money' - more than anybody fundraised before in US history. For the first time, the Democratic campaign shall have more money available than the Republican campaign to fight the elections. Because of the importance of money in elections in the US, it will give the Obama-Biden ticket a major edge over his Republican rivals.
Questions
What interests me is to find answers on two questions in particular:
1) How genuine and wide-spread is this excitement and what are the perspectives that Obama, when elected, will indeed change the way politics is conducted in this sharply divided nation?
2) Obama has promised to return to a multilateral approach in foreign policy and to restore the US international credibility in the conduct of its foreign policies. How can that commitment be secured and what is expected from the EU to respond positively to this new approach and to take early initiatives to strengthen the multilateral international institutional architecture to deal with the challenges of the globalizing world?
The coming days will hopefully provide some clues. To be continued.
Roel von Meijenfeldt
Must be great to be there, quite a political circus, and indeed a historical moment in history.
I do not believe, however, that this is really a summit in internal party democracy, since decisions are already made. The delegates have practically no room to deviate from the vote they are supposed to give. The composition of delegates is therefore not that important, maybe you could even call it window dressing.
The superdelegates do have liberty of choice, and can elect their most favourite candidate. However, these choises are either part of polical bargaining (during the process), or they just choose the winner.
Taking into the account (1) the regional differences in election procedures, (2) the exclusion of some states and (3) the loss of votes (dus to winner takes it all or small numbers of delegates), one can hardly call this system a truly representative one.
Some argue (see article) that open party primaries would be the way to go for the Netherlands. This would, however, be quite difficult to manage in a multi-party system. Of course every party is free to organise its primaries the way it wants (if it wants to), but obliged open party primaries would overrun the liberties of free party organisation. A pluriform democratic society needs to respect party differences and should leave internal party organisation to the parties.