Democratic National Commitee Meeting

Im looking for the repeat of the full broadcast on C-Span which has all the candidates. You can watch it as well on the C-Span web site. It looks like a practice session for the upcoming DNC 2008 convention in Denver. All of the democratic candidates get into political fourm. I will try to use some of the key elements of these speeches in the film or the upcoming trailer if I am able to capture the video or at the very least the audio portions that stand out. I think it will be great at this juncture. Im sure alot of what they are saying at this point will change over the course of the next year and a half. Hilary Clinton is making some very strong arguments at this time. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in her popularity

Greetings Wisconsin Democrats!

Doesn’t it feel great to be the party in control of Congress? We are just wrapping up our winter DNC meeting here in Washington, D.C. and I wanted to provide you with a report on that is happening on the national level.

This has been an extremely exciting meeting. First, we took some time to celebrate our wins in November. It felt great to be in our Nation’s capital and know that we control Congress and set the agenda now. It felt great knowing that the morning our meeting started the Democrats had raised the minimum wage in the Senate. It felt great to be looking forward to 2008 when we take back the White House.

I want to touch on just a few of the many things that happened out here this weekend.

Presidential Candidates
General sessions on Friday and Saturday consisted primarily of speeches from all of the Democratic candidates running for President. If you have an opportunity to watch these address on C-SPAN or elsewhere, I would highly recommend you to do so. Each candidate did a phenomenal job. I truly believe this is an amazing field of Democratic candidates.

We heard from Senators Dodd, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Gravel, and Edwards; Congressman Kucinich; Governors Richardson and Vilsack; and General Clark. I had the opportunity to speak with many of these candidates during the weekend on a one-on-one basis, including Senators Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

There were a few major themes between all candidates. They all spoke about the need to end the war in Iraq as quickly as possible. Additionally, many of them highlighted the issue of health care as one of America’s most grievous problems. Each candidate did did a great job. Out of all of them, I found four that I would consider tied for having given the best speech, those being Senators Biden, Obama, Edwards, and Governor Richardson. I encourage you to find their speeches and watch them. They will blow you away!

Watching these candidates over the next few months will be a thrilling experience. Do you have any favorites early out? I’m not going to be making a decision for quite some time, but would love to hear your thoughts on the candidates.

2008 National Convention
As you are probably aware, the 2008 Democratic National Convention has been set for August 25th to 28th in Denver, Colorado. It should prove to be a remarkable convention as we nominate the next President of the United States.

During the meeting, we did adapt the official Call to the Convention. The Call provides for a new system of bonus delegates to be awarded to states who hold their nominating conventions later in the process. This is an attempt to prevent front-loading in the nominating calendar.

DNC Youth Coordinating Council
After over a year of work on drafting by-laws and rules, we formally established the DNC Youth Coordinating Council on Thursday afternoon. The Council consists of all DNC members under the age of 36, as well as 12 at-large non-DNC members yet to be selected. The Council will ensure that the Democratic Party does everything possible to reach out to younger voters, as well as increase opportunities for young members of the party.

Additionally, because the Council is now official, we will soon be electing additional officers. I have submitted my name for consideration as Secretary of the Council. We will likely be voting on that soon on a conference call, so I will keep you posted on that.

DNC Midwest Caucus
The Midwest Caucus of the DNC met on Friday afternoon. The Midwest Region had many spectacular victories in November. Indiana, for example, picked up three new Democratic seats in the US House. Ohio elected a Democratic Governor, Secretary of State, and US Senator. In South Dakota, the Democrats picked up five seats in the State Senate and one in the State House. Those are just a sampling of the wonderful gains made in America’s Heartland.

In addition to celebrating the phenomenal wins, we had two internal caucus elections. The first was to fill a vacancy on the DNC Executive Committee. In a very close race (39 votes to 38 votes), we elected Doug Brooks of Missouri. We also had an election for Rotating Advisory Committee Member. This person is responsible for providing input in the planning of the next DNC meeting. I am proud to say that I was unanimously elected to that position. I am eager to learn more about the DNC and serve the great people of the Midwest.

DNC GLBT Caucus
The DNC schedules many constituency caucuses during our meeting. I try to attend a variety of different caucuses to see what is happening within different communities in our party. During this DNC meeting, I sat in on the GLBT caucus.

Governor Dean came and spoke about the recent gains in openly gay elected officials, but talked about the need to fight against discriminatory amendments. During his remarks, he highlighted the effort in Wisconsin against the amendment and praised the work that Mike Tate and Fair Wisconsin had done. He said that in the future he hopes the DNC will be more pro-active against these measures.

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That provides just a brief snippet of all that took place this weekend in Washington, D.C. I could probably right you a book on all the candidates and the general feeling out here in Washington, but I don’t want to take any more of your time.

If you have any questions or concerns or comments, please do not hesitate to let me know. Additionally, if there is anything I can do for you, your county party, your Congressional District, or any other organization, let me know. I am here to serve you. Also, feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel may enjoy hearing what the DNC is up to.