Four years ago, the Democrats held regional hearings in five swing states and took almost two months to draft their platform. This year's Platform Committee doesn't have the luxury of time, but its rapid pace is unlikely to handicap presumptive nominee Barack Obama.
Drawing on its Internet prowess, the Obama campaign hopes to engage his grassroots supporters and other Democrats by having them plan and conduct neighborhood platform meetings in all 50 states before the Democratic National Committee's Platform Drafting Committee meets in Cleveland on August 1-3. These "listening to America" sessions will be registered on the Obama campaign's website, and their feedback will be sent to the site before being distilled for the drafting panel.
The final document will be the work of the full 186-member Platform Committee, which will meet in Pittsburgh on August 9.
"Because of the lateness of the primary season, this extensive outreach to groups using the Internet as a vehicle lets us have even greater outreach than going to [specific] places," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who chairs the drafting panel. Napolitano estimated that there will be "at least 1,000" such meetings across the country.
Although one party operative discounted the sessions as "house parties," the process nevertheless is in keeping with the themes of openness and inclusiveness that Obama has effectively sounded throughout his campaign and now hopes will define the party's national convention in Denver.
As for the platform's content, Napolitano said it will "lay out--in clear and general terms--the direction that the nominee is going to take the country."
In 2004, the Democrats' platform placed an unusual emphasis on foreign-policy and defense issues to counter George W. Bush's advantage as a wartime president. That year, nearly half of the platform was devoted to national security matters. Napolitano wouldn't predict how the platform will tilt this year, but she noted, "We're not in the same economic circumstances that we were in [back] in 2004."
Obama's chief rival for the nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has only four identified supporters among the 15 voting members of the drafting committee, but her sizable share of the convention delegates will be reflected in the membership of the full Platform Committee.
Still, longtime Clinton adviser Harold Ickes said, "I don't foresee any platform fight. It's clear Obama is the nominee. He ought to have very broad latitude" in crafting the document on which he will be running this fall.
This article appeared in the Saturday, August 2, 2008 edition of National Journal.
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