Democrats in a frenzy

The question posed by one reader -- "If the Democratic Party can't successfully stage a convention in a city that hosts hundreds of conventions a year, how will it fare at something really complicated, like running our country?" -- is not entirely fair. (The letter is published in "LETTERS: County Democrats hit new low" in this edition.)

Local Clark County political conventions, for either major party, have tended in the past to be sparsely attended events, the usual gang of insiders hammering out some platform planks no one will ever read again in an echoing room with balloons on the floor and extra chairs stacked along the walls, and then deciding who can afford the time and expense of traveling on to do essentially the same thing at the state convention a few months hence, before taking the really important vote on where to have lunch.

County Chairman John Hunt and other local party leaders claimed they were expecting more than 7,000 people at their convention at Bally's Saturday. They'd certainly seen an unprecedented 117,000 party members flock to local high schools for their Jan. 19 precinct caucuses.

But after booking a room that held only 5,000 people, turning away thousands of delegates and offering no streamlined procedure for recognizing and seating even those delegates who had registered in advance, the party's local leadership appeared Saturday to be asking, in effect, "Come on, you didn't actually believe a word we said, did you?"

The close-fought nomination battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama brought out thousands more activists than the room could hold. And most showed little patience with the traditional lineup of "me-too" speeches by local political luminaries.

There's a positive aspect to all this. The close-fought Democratic nomination battle has energized participation at precisely the level any party leader dreams of, in an era of dwindling electoral participation.

But by 4 p.m. Saturday -- nine hours after many delegates showed up and started forming their lines -- both the Obama and Clinton organizers had had enough, calling for the convention to be adjourned till sometime in March or April, in hopes of sending a more representative and carefully counted delegate slate to the state convention in Reno on May 17. So now they'll have to do it all over again.

And as though that weren't bad enough news for Democrats, this also turned out to be the weekend that Ralph Nader announced he will again run for president, on a third (or is that now a "fourth"?) party ticket.

The long-in-the-tooth consumer activist doesn't draw many votes at the polls these days. But those he does draw come from the anti-capitalist "green" left -- which is to say, from the Democrats.

Now, a sensible consideration of Americans' already sharply curtailed political choices would greet Mr. Nader -- along with Libertarian and other constitutionalist candidates seen drawing more votes from Republicans -- with open arms: The more the merrier.

But Democrats with their eyes on the White House are likely to remember only that Mr. Nader, running as the nominee of the Green Party, captured 2.8 million popular votes in the year 2000 -- 2.7 percent of the vote, almost certainly enough to have thrown a vital one or two additional states, and the election, to Democrat Al Gore.

The enthusiasm and involvement of rank-and-file Democrats are to be praised -- even if one could wish they would start demanding a little better accounting of just how high taxes would have to be raised, and on whom, to fund even half of their favorite candidate's promised new "programs."

But the suspicion begins to grow, after this weekend's dual events, that happy days may not necessarily be here again.