Hey Ish, check this out. Ever wonder why the liberal mainstream media kept making a big point out of the look of the Republican delegates. Saying such things as "well yes, Colin Powell is up there but take a look at the faces of the delegates"? (The inference being the party was actually non-inclusive and a bit racist at its core).
Well...here's one reason. The most "politically correct" convention in the history of the nation is about to be kicked off, and look at the way they've ensured the proper *look of the delegates*.
The phoniness of Democrats never ceases to amaze me!
Article.....
Delegate Designates
by Evan Gahr
spectator.org
He is hardly a household name, but Rick Boylan oversees perhaps the most stringent quota program in the nation. Huddled in his his office just blocks from Congress, the dapper Montana native makes sure that some highly coveted positions are properly divided by race, gender, and sexual orientation. With some 4,000 slots available only once every four years, Boylan reviews elaborate plans to insure everybody from Hispanics in Connecticut to American Indians in California get their fair share.
Boylan is no ordinary quota king. Officially he serves as executive director of party affairs and delegate selection for the Democratic Party.
The Democratic National Committee requires that every state set precise quotas for delegates to the national convention. Homosexual recruitment was quietly added to the DNC's officially sanctioned "outreach" efforts just in time for this year's convention. But the general affirmative action plan -- essentially a vast racial and gender-based spoils system -- has changed little since it was first implemented in 1972. Ever since a young preacher named Jesse Jackson used the new rules to challenge a slate of Illinois delegates because of their unbearable whiteness of being, Democratic delegate selection has been one huge quota-fest.
Whether the party is dominated by far-left McGovernites, the wishy-washy Carter-types, or the Clinton-Gore crowd, the policy is taken for granted and generally immune to fundamental debate or criticism. Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch tells TAS the policy should be rescinded. But a computer search shows no similar sentiments from any prominent Democrat since 1985.
This, clearly, is an affirmative action policy that "works." At the 1996 Chicago convention, the 4,289 delegates were reportedly 18.9 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic, and 1.4 percent American Indian. Expect the 4,369 delegates gathering next week in Los Angeles to represent another "gorgeous mosaic." Just don't expect many explanations on how the diversity was achieved.
The DNC requires that each state's delegates be equally divided by gender. State Democratic parties submit their own plans to implement "affirmative action programs with specific goals and timetables for African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Americans and women." In DNC doublespeak the explicit quota for women is achieved by a goal. State parties do have some leeway with minorities, however, according to the size of each group in a state's Democratic electorate. In other words, these quotas are set locally, not handed down from afar (Call it community empowerment, DNC style.) States can and do go beyond official requirements. This year, for example, Ohio included young people among its affirmative action "goals."
The often Byzantine process for delegate selection varies state by state. Some delegates are actually selected regardless of race or gender; they are elected by popular vote at the district or caucus level. Other slots are set aside for delegates-at-large, selected later to meet overall affirmative action "goals." If voters choose too many white males in the first round, party officials use at-large delegates to redress the imbalance.
In California, where voters have outlawed quotas by government bodies, 239 delegates are elected by a straight vote; 63 "super-delegate" slots are reserved for DNC members and the state's congressional delegation. The remaining 128 were selected at an April 9 state party meeting, with "guidance" from the Gore campaign based on affirmative action needs, says California State Democratic party spokesman Bob Mulholland.
Mulholland denies any quota mongering. But it is certainly possible -- and desirable -- under the scheme he described for a prospective delegate to lose the popular vote but still win the diversity sweepstakes. A similar system exists in New York, where a lucky woman named Janet Sullivan stumbled upon a pot of gold at the end of the Democrats' rainbow coalition.
In New York, primary voters choose among a slate of delegates for each presidential candidate. Sullivan, a Brooklyn writer, finished eighth out of ten among the Gore and Bradley delegates for her 13th congressional district, an amalgam of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Even among Bradley delegates, she finished third out of the five-person slate.
Because of the overall election results, Gore was entitled to three delegates and Bradley two. Normally, that would have meant the top three vote-getters for Gore and top two for Bradley. But that would have created a horrific gender imbalance -- three men and two women. To solve the problem, as reported by the Staten Island Advance, local party officials chose Sullivan instead of a male Bradley supporter, who outpolled her.
Who benefits from these shenanigans? Like most other affirmative action plans, delegate selection is an elaborate bait-and-switch effort. The plight of the disadvantaged becomes a tool to empower whoever speaks loudly enough on their behalf. After all, privileges abound for whichever leaders muster enough clout to have their "people" declared underprivileged. That's been the game from day one.
In 1969, fresh from the election debacle, George McGovern headed a commission to make the party more inclusive. But this was no SDS meeting. Composed of longtime Democratic politicians and even mainstream labor leaders, the commission endeavored to assuage the loudmouthed radicals who claimed they had been excluded from the last convention. Never mind that the most vocal radicals seemed quite content to stay outside the convention and incite the "pigs."
To solve what David Broder has called this "counterfeit" problem, the Democrats concocted an affirmative action plan. Then Senator Birch Bayh (D-Indiana), a machine politician, Broder notes, called for the inclusion of minority groups as delegates "in reasonable relationship to the group's presence in the population of the states."
Sure enough, Jesse Jackson used the new rules to dislodge elected Chicago delegates to the 1972 convention. Mayor Richard Daley and other elected officials from Cook County were replaced by Jackson's hand-picked slate, which included, in addition to the good minister himself, welfare recipients, social workers, teachers, and even a registered Republican. (In that respect he was more qualified than Jackson, who wasn't even registered to vote, according to an account by the late Mike Royko).
Later at their heyday in the late 1970s feminists -- despite reservations by the party's titular head, Jimmy Carter -- won a rigid quota that required delegates be evenly divided between men and women. Around the same time, a homosexual affirmative action plan was rejected. Not until 1998 were gays declared worthy of special outreach efforts. According to the DNC, this minority now deserves special treatment because it has been "historically under-represented" in party affairs.
So it goes in the party of equal opportunity, where everyone is equal but some minorities are more equal than other minorities. The DNC encourages homosexual recruitment, even though gays are still not among the various minority groups for which states must submit specific "goals."
According to Rick Boylan, at least seven states included gays in their affirmative action plans this year. Ohio Democratic chairman David Leland says his state party's 3 percent homosexual goal helps make the delegation "look like Ohio." Does that mean gays look a certain way? "I'm using it in the metaphorical sense. I want the delegation to reflect the needs of Ohio Democrats."
All the same, Leland foreswears quotas for anyone. Same goes for Boylan, who in a telephone interview repeated the party mantra: goals, not quotas. What does he call the gender dictum? "A requirement."
Does that make sense? The party's own "Delegate Selection Rules" straddle the illusory boundary between quotas and goals. For an Alice in Wonderland experience, consider the details.: Rule 6a, subdivision 2, bars "mandatory quotas." Further down, though, rule 6c, subdivision 1, requires an "equal division" between men and women delegates. The same section explains further down that "notwithstanding" the anti-quota provision, the requisite "equal division" between men and women is entirely permissible. Any contradiction is in the eyes of the insensitive.
Lola Simmons, a black gay woman, has no illusions that she was selected as a New York delegate to the 1996 convention solely on the content of her character. In 1995 a male colleague at the gay rights organization where she worked as an administrative assistant encouraged Simmons to become a delegate. Party officials were more than happy to help. But the self-described "triple" does not "feel used."
She was just grateful to attend the Chicago convention. With other openly gay delegates, Simmons met with then Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and lobbied in favor of gay rights.
Still, Simmons yearns for the day when society is sufficiently "inclusive." Then, she says wistfully, affirmative action won't be needed.
That prospect is hard to imagine but not because of the pervasive bigotry which Simmons and other left-liberals suggest. The delegate plan, like any other racial spoils system, feeds on its own success.
First minorities. Then women. Now gays. What's next? The transgendered? So many quotas, so little time.
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Evan Gahr writes often for The American Spectator. He works at the Washington, D.C. office of the Hudson Institute.
(Posted 8/11/00) |
