Some Post-Election Thoughts
[More to come from me, and also Ben, soon.]
1. Student Action should really stop going to the Daily Cal Endorsement Forum. Serisouly, SA: your candidates show up looking and sounding like crap because they have been campaigning non-stop, getting sunburned, and not sleeping. They read speeches that someone else wrote with their hoarse and tired voices, and then you guys almost never get the endorsement (2 of the last 28, right?). Granted, so far you've won by big enough margins that the number of votes you lose from not getting the endorsement didn't cost you any elections this year, but why risk it for next year? As long as SA doesn't participate, no one will take the Daily Cal endorsements seriously. Then you have more time to campaign where you can actually pick up some votes (seeing as how the entire audience at the endorsement forum is just CalSERVE supporters anyway). And you will still get an article about each of your executives in the Daily Cal earlier in the campaign.

2. CalSERVE has a dismal record at electing executives. Someone please chime in with a comment of the exact number of SA executive victories over the last seven years, but all I know is that it's a lot. This year, none of the executive races were particularly close, and when Sharon Han is able to trounce Linda Salinas, CalSERVE has some serious problems. To identify one of those problems: there is clearly the impression on campus that CS is all about minorities, and this dramatically hurts their support among white people. I still remember being a little doe eyed freshman completely ignorant of the ASUC, and when I asked a friend what the parties were about, I was told that SA is for white people and CS is for minorities. And Liz Hall wrote something very interesting and provocative in comments about white privelege and how CalSERVE attempts to deal with that, but the vast majority of Berkeley isn't reading CalStuff's comments, so unless CS finds a way to deal with the assumptions people have about them, they will have difficulty garnering white voters (for whatever that is worth).

3. Machine politics have some advantages and some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that machine politics make it difficult to staff offices with the best possible people. The first reason for that is the high level of parisanship (with the possible lone exception of Brandon Smith) means that members of opposite parties are disinclined to volunteer to work for their enemies, and those who won are just as unlikely to pick their rivals to work for them. Secondly, machine politics requires rewards to keep operating. That means all those people who spent weeks holding up signs and otherwise assisting campaign efforts need to get positions and internships in exchange. So instead of recruiting the best people, loyal Student Action supporters are largely those who get chosen, and it's specifically those SA folks who volunteered with the various campaigns. (I would note Leybovich's glaring exception when he chose his webteam, and the benefit that led to, as one of the few examples of bucking that trend).

4. Expect online voting next year to be good for Student Action, SQUELCH!, other third parties, and then independents, in that order. And bad for CalSERVE.

5. What ever happened with that multicultural center, anyway?Email This Post!