I did go to my last Caucus. I was elected to the Rules Committee. The DFL never posted the meeting times and the committee never contacted me. I know, I know — if I were a REAL Democrat I would have known the process well enough to suss out the meeting places and times.

But you can’t escape the math of your process. Even among those who choose to participate the odds of becoming a delegate to the next level are daunting. The odds of getting from the next level to the state endorsement convention are even more daunting. DFL endorsements are voted on by people who have survived three winnowing processes, and who have invested at least ten hours in a process that in no way speaks to general voter education or anything even vaguely resembling a get out the vote process.

Yes, even a janitor can become a DFL delegate, but that just speaks to how the DFL enables janitors to become elites. Instead of empowering janitors maybe the DFL should focus on the primary and how to empower regular Minnesotans so that they feel like they’re a part of the DFL, instead of just sheep waiting for the DFL elites to tell them who to vote for.

Only in Minnesota do Democrats think it’s appropriate to have Stalinist endorsement conventions where the old hands clear the field before the crops have had a chance to grow.

A contested primary race between Clark, Reed and Tinklenberg would have helped the eventual winner to defeat Bachmann in November 2010. Instead we’ll have the usual one-tenth of one percent of district DFLers anoint a candidate in June so that person can hide from the voters the rest of the summer only to emerge in all their glory at the State Fair where they’ll do their damnedest to remind voters that there is in fact a Democrat running in that race.