There is iced tea and wine on the table — alongside a plate of brownies, each one bearing the distinctive O-shaped, sunrise logo of Barack Obama’s campaign, stenciled in powdered sugar.
Most of the 10 people who have gathered in the living room of Stacey Crease’s house near City Park don’t know each other, but after two hours of discussion, they have agreed on an education plank for the Democratic Party’s platform, the guiding document that stakes out the party’s stance on issues.
The gathering at Crease’s house last week was just one of nearly 1,400 such informal get-togethers around the country in what is a first-of-its-kind experiment to open up the Democratic Party’s platform-writing process to ordinary Americans. Dozens of similar events have been held in Colorado, organized through Obama’s website.
Historically, platforms have been crafted solely by party loyalists and insiders and constituencies within the party.
“This is the first time this has ever been done,” said Michael Yaki, national platform director for the Democratic Party. “It’s like taking a new ship out without a shakedown cruise. We know we’re inventing things on the fly, but the fact that thousands of Americans are participating in the platform process makes all of the nervousness and hair-pulling worthwhile.”
The citizen groups had until Sunday to submit their platform suggestions via the campaign website. The party’s platform staff, in turn, will distill the suggestions and pass them on to the national platform drafting committee, headed by Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, which meets in Cleveland starting Friday.
A week later in Pittsburgh, the party’s full platform committee is expected to recommend a final version of the platform.
The Democratic platform initiative followed an announcement by the Republican National Committee that it was creating a website where any voter can offer an idea for John McCain’s platform. So far, there have been hundreds of written suggestions and videos submitted.
“We are seeking the most input through this historic opportunity to use a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Internet town hall,” U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican Party’s platform committee chairman, said in a statement. “We know Washington is not a place for solutions, so we are reaching out across the nation to create a forward- looking platform rooted in our core values with solutions that create prosperity today and for the next generation.”
Yaki said he has been reading through hundreds of Democratic platform suggestions that he has put into an Excel spreadsheet. He said the party is relying on dozens of volunteers, many of whom are legislative staffers with policy expertise, to wade through the suggestions and cull notable ideas and language for the national platform.
As an example, Yaki said, he was reading through a suggestion on the party’s Middle East platform where a writer used the term “persistent” to describe how the U.S. should be involved in the region.
“I just keyed in on that and shared it with some of our national security folks,” he said.
The biggest issues seem to be the economy and health care, but Yaki said he noticed another theme emerging from the platform confabs.
“There is this very personal feeling of, I don’t want to call it shame, but I would say embarrassment, that our country, the greatest democracy in the world, has engaged in these activities” that have alienated other countries in recent years, Yaki said.
Crease, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom, said she learned of the platform events from the Obama campaign’s e-mail list. She followed a link and signed up to host one.
“I was thrilled when he (Obama) announced that he wanted citizens around the country to help write his platform,” Crease said. “This is a pretty small thing I can do for the campaign.”
Crease stood in front of a list of issues hanging on an easel as her living room. The issues included Iraq, energy, the environment, education and more. People put checkmarks next to issues they were most interested in.
The group settled on two key issues: Iraq and education.
“How many people want to address education?” Crease asked.
A majority in the room chose education, and the next two hours were spent just on that topic.
The group never got to Iraq or any other issues. Crease said she wasn’t surprised.
“Going into it, I thought we were only going to get to one issue,” she said.
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
Tackling education
The Barack Obama campaign invited people to get together and offer suggestions for the Democratic Party’s platform. The gathering at Stacey Crease’s house in Denver last week produced four sentences on education, which she submitted:
“We recognize that each individual has the right to an outstanding education.
“We need curriculum reform that recognizes the needs of the individual whether they be vocational or academic.
“We must use national public relations campaigns to promote community and individual commitments to increase attendance and graduation rates.
“The role of the federal government is to set national goals, inspire its citizens to value education, and fully fund these initiatives or return the funding power to the state level.”
