Point Austin: Democracy Rocks!

Now things are beginning to get really interesting.

If you survived your precinct convention last night – and Chronicle colleagues have been wandering in or e-mailing one another all day retelling "mine was worse/better than yours" stories – consider it a badge of political honor. I know you couldn't all have been at Precinct 135 (by popular acclaim, of course, the very best precinct in town), but it sure seemed like it. My favorite moments had little to do specifically with Obama or Clinton, or indeed with "politics" as conventionally conceived at all. They were instead moments of camaraderie and newly met friendship, of little kids cheerfully passing candy or potato chips or pizza slices (far too few) down the line, and of calling friends and fellow reporters at other precincts and finding them happily stuck as well in astounding crowds.

"This is history," was a common refrain among clusters of voters, most of whom said they had never caucused for a candidate or the party before. "We're making history."

So we did. And whatever finally happens in the delegate count, Texas Democrats proudly came out to vote, and then to caucus, by the hundreds of thousands (incomplete figures suggest that more Democrats attended the precinct conventions than Republicans voted, altogether, in the statewide primary). If that energy and passion can somehow be bottled and preserved through the summertime, to be duly reactivated in November, it could well provide the grassroots mandate without which no government can be truly legitimate. It's been a weather-beaten refrain of party officials for two decades that if most registered Democrats actually came out to vote, they could not only win more elections but could determine the public agenda, in Texas and nationwide; let's hope that the current wave of enthusiasm finally proves them true.

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Clear as Mud

That said, and celebrated, it would appear that we remain in a familiar Democratic muddle and are likely to remain so for at least a couple more months, perhaps even until the August National Convention. Last night Clinton made a proud resurgence here and in Ohio, but the delegate lead and therefore the strategic advantage still belongs to Obama. (Indeed, when the caucus dust clears, likely as not he will have narrowly bested her in Texas delegates.) They continue to wrestle over "superdelegates," and Pennsylvanians, who vote in late April, can expect an up-close-and-personal campaign that will make Ohio and Texas look like tea parties. The Clinton camp has been floating various proposals to count the premature Florida and Michigan primaries – ruled out of bounds and basically off the ballot by party rules – but the only fair way to include those states, frankly, would be to hold new primaries, and if that's going to happen, the machinery better begin to move soon.

Democrats should be righteously happy to have two such strong and inspiring candidates, although the longer the contest proceeds, the more likely both sides are to resort to the sort of negative campaigning that dampens turnout and poisons the atmosphere – but swings votes. Clinton's "ringing red phone at 3am" ad (reportedly produced by Austinite Roy Spence) is being applauded by pundits as one weapon that must have hit home in the last two weeks – but if so, it's precisely the kind of "national security" fearmongering that has so disfigured the Bush presidency and its politics, and if this is the way Clinton intends to win, she can count on being out-terrorized by John McCain and the GOP.

Thus far, the predictable polarization of any political campaign has been relatively mild, with Obamanites muttering darkly about "old-school" Dem politics and Clintonoids sneering condescendingly about "naive movement liberals." If that's as bad as it gets (I except anonymous blog postings, the cyber-highway waste-bile of the modern era), we might still succeed in moving the public conversation back toward the middle by fall, sufficiently to elect a Democrat and thereby return progressive politics to at least a seat at the White House table – and raise at least the serious possibility of ending the brutal, immoral, and illegal war on Iraq. Those are reasons enough to attempt to keep peace in the Democratic family.

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Work in Progress

Much closer to home, the Travis County races didn't deliver many surprises, and my news colleagues were buzzing about town and on cell phones all evening to bring the juicy details home to you (coverage starts here). Certainly the impassioned turnout was the biggest story. Others included the considerable poundings delivered to their opponents by incumbents Tax Assessor-Collector Nelda Wells Spears (I bet you now know more about that obscure office than you ever thought knowable) and state Rep. Dawnna Dukes (emerging bruised a bit but unbowed, if perhaps a little more Craddick-wary). The Congressional District 10 victory for Larry Joe Doherty must have raised a few eyebrows (especially hereabouts) after all that work Dan Grant did to garner all those Democratic club endorsements in Austin and Houston. "Just remember," one seasoned pol counseled me last night, "endorsements don't vote."

And we're not quite done. While we wait for Pennsylvania, like Godot, Travis Co. district attorney candidates Rosemary Lehmberg and Mindy Montford will be filling the cable channels with their stern, ingratiating faces for another month. Voting for prosecutors is a little like stockpiling weaponry; you'd rather not keep the things around at all, but they come in handy when you need them, and they'd better be in working order. That race will come down to a choice between seasoned experience and youthful energy for change; seems like we'll be brooding over that vexatious debate subject at least for several more months.