Yes, There Was A Speech Thursday

The Republican soccer ball trick of picking an unknown for Veep, along with the coming destruction of New Orleans, has tended to obscure the event at Invesco Field on Thursday night. Well, I'm going to step back from that trap this morning and take a close look at Barack Obama's opening argument for the general election.

In many ways it was the intro video that did a lot of heavy lifting, portraying a real American story, all of which are unique. This is a man whose strength of intellect and talent in connecting with his fellow man has brought him to this moment, and whose determination and belief that he could achieve was paramount. The bio showed Obama's highs and lows (the death of his mother, for example) and set the table for his sharing in suffering, middle class concerns and values.

Then there was the speech. You can follow along:



It started with the typical nods to his fellow candidates, his running mate and those who helped him to this point. The theme was the American promise, the ability for us to come together in common effort and establish that equality of opportunity and the chance for everyone to pursue their dreams. And then, he spoke some truth.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land – enough! This moment – this election – is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

That was really the key moment and it went right up front. The target was not John McCain but Republicanism - the rank stew of cronies, anti-government zealots, warmongers and economic royalists who have held the country in contempt and used the treasury for profit-taking over the past eight years. This open of the speech, tougher than anyone expected, had an anger to it, a sadness at the direction of the nation, and a fortitude to take it back.

Even the section on McCain wedded him to Republican failures.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives – on health care and education and the economy – Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this President. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisors – the man who wrote his economic plan – was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

The YOYO society was something Hillary Clinton talked about a lot in her campaign. It's powerful. It's succinct. And it's correct. This was a Democratic speech, one that understands the role of government to improve people's lives, to work for all Americans instead of against them, that honors work over wealth. This section also got out a lot of information about McCain, on taxing health care benefits as income, on seeking to privatize Social Security. This is the stuff of future ads and mailers. And there was a brilliance in tying the economic hardships and struggles to his own personal story, and showing how government brought him and those in his life to where they are today by providing programs to help them realize their goals.

Rather than shying away from specifics, Obama then launched into a long section identifying exactly where he would divert from current policy. His tax plan (cuts for 95% of Americans, tax fairness and balance ), his energy plan (a legitimate all-of-the-above strategy that includes a few elements I don't like - clean coal, nuclear - but seeks to end all importation of oil from the Middle East in 10 years and invests massively in renewables), his education plan (investment in early childhood education, college funding-for-service plans, higher pay for teachers), his health care plan (affordable and accessible care for all, paid family leave and sick days), and many more got a mention. He put a few Republican-friendly ideas in there (streamlining bureaucracy, parental responsibility), but the domestic policy was committed to Democratic ideals of fairness, equality, opportunity, and the common good.

On foreign policy, he sought to distance his judgment from McCain's. Which is very right. The line about how "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won't even go to the cave where he lives" worked very well. I find the "Iraq has $79 billion dollars and we have deficits" talking point to be kind of distasteful - the idea that they have to fund their own occupation and reconstruction when we destroyed the country is myopic. The overall talk is tougher and more Biden-like (his influence shows here) - I think it's a little disconnected from the traditional liberal internationalism that we all expect from Obama. There's a different audience for Presidential acceptance speeches, and that's fine, but I'm disappointed that Democrats seem to have to rhetorically bring the head of the enemy on a platter for all to see to prove their toughness and defense credentials. There was a fleeting reference to "restoring our moral standing" that needed to be bigger.

I thought this was a solid section:

But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

I also appreciated how he took the hot-button issues of abortion, guns, gay marriage and immigration head-on, in a common-sense kind of way, defusing them as issues by finding the space where everyone can agree. America's promise stems from what makes us similar instead of different.

Then, he basically outlined the McCain electoral strategy in a direct and almost dismissive way:

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what – it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.

The speech ended with a long reference to Martin Luther King's march on Washington 45 years ago, a march that was for jobs as much as freedom and justice and equality, a speech that talked about our togetherness, our need to walk as one for the dreams we seek. Obama's speech was a unity speech, a call to unite as Americans and finally restore the promise that has gone so unfulfilled under Republican rule. It was tough but also inspirational. I didn't agree with every word of it, but I understood it to be the words of a leader.

Outsourcing Commentary

I am still in Denver but WiFi is scattershot and I don't have a heck of a lot of time before getting on the plane. So I'll delve into Obama's excellent speech and the choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as John McCain's VP later.

I'll say this, though:

Palin doesn't know what the Vice President does.

She is embroiled in an abuse of power scandal involving trying to fire her former brother-in-law who was involved in a messy divorce with her sister, and then firing the public official who refused to fire the brother-in-law. Very Nixonian. Shades of Archibald Cox and Elliot Richardson and William Ruckleshaus. (Even the REPLACEMENT for the public official has a terrible record of sexual harrassment. Bad judgment all around).

She was clearly a one-day story pick, designed as a desperation pass to keep everyone from talking about Obama's excellent and persuasive speech last night.

On that front, I'll say a lot more later. It was great to be in the room, and experience it live with the other 86,000 folks. The argument made was against not just McCain but conservatism, the yo-yo society (you're on your own) that they've created, their attack-dog, character-based, patriotism-questioning style of electoral politics, and how we've all had ENOUGH of these past eight years of failure. That's quite encouraging.

OK, gotta run.

Day 3 Impressions

So I did my liveblogging at Calitics and at some point I stopped cross-posting over here, so I thought I'd just wrap it up. I thought Clinton delivered the consummate professional speech, and he attacked not just Bush and McCain, but Republicans, and their failures. The line about how everything started going bad once they took control of Congress and the Presidency in 2001 was first-rate. We need more speakers and surrogates to de-value Republicanism and conservatism.

I thought John Kerry delivered the speech of the convention, and Josh Marshall agrees. In one of those "only at the DNC" moments, after the night was over I ran into Chris Hayes of The Nation, and told him that I thought John Kerry gave the best speech of the night, and the guy next to him said "I wrote it."

It really was tremendous, and I was saddened to hear that the cable nets didn't show it. Kerry had the moral authority to call out McCain for his flip-flopping ("using before it before he was against it" was great) and his dirty campaign tactics (specifically saying that lobbyists and Rove acolytes run his campaign), and he delivered that speech about as well as he possibly could. "Next stop, Baghdad" kind of got lost in the room, because he stepped on an applause line to say it, but it was awesome that he brought up McCain's bloodthirsty-ness to invade Iraq right after 9/11. He kicked off the Bush/McCain Freudian slips of the night, too.

Joe Biden delivered his speech well, but I don't think it was all that well-written. The call-and-response of "that's the change we need" or "that's not the change we need" doesn't flow off the tongue. I understand that Biden wanted to define change a little bit, but on domestic policy it didn't quite work. Kerry's "who do you trust" call and response was much better. On foreign policy, I did appreciate that Biden ripped some things that should have been in the headlines and showed the collapse of the Bush foreign policy and McCain's treading down the same path. The personal story of Biden in the speech was gripping, and his son Beau was excellent.

Overall, this was quite a good night for the party. And Barack Obama coming out at the end put everyone over the top. He pre-butted the Republican hissy fit about using Invesco Field for the acceptance speech, not that it'll matter.

more in a bit...

This Incredible Moment

I don't want to rush past this moment too quickly. Today Barack Obama became the first African American nominee of a major party in history. That is a tremendous accomplishment that I honestly wasn't sure I'd see in my lifetime. I talked to some California electeds about the meaning of this moment.

Steve Westly jumped aboard with Obama early. He told me that he decided to support him in 2006 when he saw Obama appear at a rally in 2006 for Phil Angelides. All that year prospective Presidential candidates were coming through the state to campaign. John Kerry got maybe 100 people to events. Hillary Clinton got 300 or 400. Barack Obama had practically the entire USC campus out on the Quad that day. And Westly saw that this was something special, the kind of moment that you saw with the Kennedys.

My seatmate Debra tells me that this whole election cycle has almost been beyond belief. These are things that she never thoght she would see. "I was a girl who wasn't allowed to take a drafting class in high school. The world has changed."

Kamala Harris has her own story. She was the first African-American district attorney in the history of San Francisco. In a speech for the new majority PAC Vote Hope, she spoke on this, and the fact that Obama's nomination represents a hope for every person of color in America.

Let's stop and reflect on this for a second. An African American nominee. Of our party. The party of inclusion. The party of all Americans.

Kerry Speech Liveblogging

He's supposed to rip into McCain, so let's see how it pans out. Debra told me that, when he ran into Kerry along with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, he said to her, "where were you in 2004?"
The Bush/McCain Freudian slip was kind of funny, in a "Kerry can't give a great speech" kind of way.

This is definitely a red meat speech. He said that Bush misled us into war, that Obama and Biden would shut down Gitmo, respect the Constitution, and never, ever torture. He started slow but he's got some passion tonight.

"Every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick... look at candidate McCain and Senator McCain."

This is good. "Talk about being for it before you're against it."

"Before debating Obama, he should debate himself."

Explicitly calls out the Rove-McCain tactics... mentioned how McCain said "next stop, Baghdad" after 9/11.

"Who can we trust to keep America safe? Barack Obama!"

Now he's headed into how the Bush foreign policy is now finally coming around to Obama's position time and again.... this is a magnificent speech. "McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again... they can't win on the issues so they go into the gutter."

Great stuff. I don't know if TV is even showing this, but Kerry just introduced Obama's gerat-uncle, Charlie Payne, the WWII vet who helped liberate Europe. The room is really liking this speech.

"You don't decide who loves this country, you don't decide who's a patriot... that flag doesn't belong to any ideology or party, it belongs to all of us."

Well, that was a SPEECH.

Clinton Speech Liveblogging

I expect him to hit McCain hard. They've given out flags to the whole audience. Debra has eighteen of them.
...he comes out to "Don't Stop." It must be interesting to be personally associated with a pop song.

...Wow, that was a LONG standing ovation. And after he announces his support for Obama, even longer. "I love Joe Biden, and America will too."

..."Last night, Hillary said she'd do everything she can to elect Sen. Obama. That makes two of us. Actually, that makes 18 million of us. Like Hillary said, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November.

...Clinton is making the argument. Why America is in a perilous moment in history, and why we can't afford more of the same. He explicitly says that Barack Obama is the man for this job. But what about his facial expressions?

...This has gone into a direct testimony, and the Obama campaign must be beaming. He is making the national security argument, the economic argument, and the argument that Obama has been tested by the primary wars and is ready to lead America. "He is ready to honor the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

...I like that he specifically cited Obama's desire to fight AIDS/HIV at home.

...FANTASTIC LINE: The world is always more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.

...it would be better if he tied this stuff to Bush and McCain and not Republicans for political purposes. Now he's getting into it, of course after saying that McCain is wrong on the two key issues of the day. It is GOOD for the country for him to paint this as a REPUBLICAN failure, though. Because Republican orthodoxy, the wrecking crew, is the key problem. "Despite all this evidence, their nominee is promising more of the same."

...Good framing: they want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. In this case, the third time is not the charm... they said I was too young and inexperienced. It didn't work in 1992 because we were on the right side of history. And it won't work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.

...Debra Bowen's reaction (she's my seatmate): "He's still awesome."

...The final point: "I still believe in a place called hope." Showing that, as we know, all political themes are timeless and repeated over and over.

Controller Chiang on the Budget

I just chatted a bit with John Chiang about the ongoing budget stalemate. He was unaware that Gov. Schwarzenegger remarked yesterday to the SacBee that he would be fine with a budget in November or December. Chiang's reaction was that it would cost the state hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to wait that long. Basically, there are two types of borrowing systems - one that assumes an imminent budget, with a discount rate, and one that does not, which has the normal rate. If we keep delaying the budget, we will be funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the financial services industry, and in the words of Chiang, "put Wall Street above Main Street."

This is another aspect of the Yacht Party's holding hostage of the budget process - enriching a key constituency.

On the coming lawsuit over the slashing of state employee pay to the minimum wage, the hearing is scheduled for September 12. Chiang has asked for the case to be moved to federal court, which would delay it a couple months, but the main reason is because California would have no immunity if the state upholds the wage cut, and the federal courts overturn it.

About speaking at the convention yesterday, Chiang felt pretty good about it, and he offered a little secret that may explain why a lot of people are speaking over their applause lines. Apparently the speakers get a very strict set of time at the podium. After they go over, they start beeping and flashing lights at the podium speaker to get them to wrap up.

Presidential Nominating Process: It's On

Speaker Pelosi has just hit the floor, and the Presidential nominating process has begun. Dolores Huerta is making the nominating speech for Hillary Clinton right now. People are pretty rapidly taking their seats.

It's important to note that a roll call vote is a completely perfunctory and normal process. Some may have been outraged by the fact of a roll call, but it's wholly unsurprising and will end with Barack Obama as the nominee, just as Bill Clinton became the nominee on the third night of the convention in 1992, and Clinton in '96, and Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. It's a nominating convention. This is how it works.

UPDATE: Hillary released her delegates, making them free to vote for whoever they want. As many feel the obligation to vote the way their constituents asked them to vote, Hillary will still get a lot of votes. Also, Hillary signed her ballot for Barack Obama this morning.

UPDATE: Obama is about to be nominated. The applause for Obama's nomination is defeaning. There will be no fight on this floor. A registered Republican from Tennessee, Michael Wilson, is offering the nomination. He's an Iraq war vet. "I support Barack Obama because America needs a President with the strength, wisdom and courage to talk with our enemies and consult with our allies."

UPDATE: Apparently everyone in the West wears a bolo tie.

UPDATE: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a strong Hillary supporter in the primaries and co-chair of her campaign, is seconding Obama's nomination. "No matter where we stood during the campaign, Democrats stand together today." Seriously, the disunity idiots need to stuff it.


UPDATE: The roll call is beginning, and it will continue until there is a nominee. Alabama is kicking it off, so it looks like they'll go alphabetically.

UPDATE: Alabama - 48-5 for Obama. Alaska - 15-3 for Obama. American Samoa - 9-0 Obama. Arizona - 40-27 Obama. Arkansas - 47-0 for Obama (in a call for unity; Clinton crushed Obama there).

UPDATE: So Barbara Boxer and Art Torres announced that California passed on its roll call vote. There's a very good reason for that. First of all, the floor is being managed so that a certain state puts Obama over the top. Second, if California voted now, less states would be part of the process, because when Obama reaches the threshold for nomination the roll call immediately ends. So don't go reading anything into this.

UPDATE: Actually, Chairman Torres just explained it to me a little differently. A lot of the superdelegates never checked in with their vote with him ahead of time. He's legally required to go to their delegated proxies for a vote, and a lot of them didn't know about the voting either, so he would have had to announce significantly less votes than the 441 California is granted. Anyway, that's what he told me.

UPDATE: I haven't been totally keeping up with the count, but the overwhelming majority of votes are going to Sen. Obama. It's kind of fun to be in the room for this, but calling it a "floor fight" would be kind of absurd. I'm going to try and talk to Sen. Boxer soon.

UPDATE: Right next to me, Bob Mulholland and some CDP staffers are frantically tabulating votes from Representatives and their proxies. So that appears to be the reason for the pass.

UPDATE: Gasbag emeritus David Gregory is chatting with Boxer and Torres right now. I'm sure that, after the explanation, Gregory will claim that the pass was because of disunity and Democrats who hate one another.

UPDATE: Word is that New York will ask for a voice vote and Obama will be put in by acclamation.

UPDATE: They should really have a running total somewhere in the hall. Mistake. I guess Obama was up to 744 by the time they got to Kentucky, but it's hard to keep track.

UPDATE: New Hampshire, Arkansas, and a couple others have gone entirely for Obama out of unity. New Jersey is up now and they just did the same thing. Let's see if that rumor about New York is true.

UPDATE: So New Mexico yielded to Illinois. And Illinois will yield to New York. And there will be a voice vote... and Hillary has come out to call for it. The whole crowd is on their feet.

UPDATE: It's over. Pelosi moved quickly to do the ayes and nays. It was a nice moment. Lest California delegates worry, all votes will be counted.

No Brains At All

The wingnut hissy fit has been found! It's Barack Obama's staging! How dare he use a backdrop looking like the Lincoln Memorial on the 45th anniversary of MLK's I Have A Dream speech! How dare Obama use Greek columns the way Bush did in 2004!

Really, sometimes I hate being alive because of these people.

From The Floor: Day 3

I just got settled in my seat here in the Pepsi Center. State Senator Leticia Van de Putte of Texas is calling the session to order. The room is more crowded than usual this early because there's going to be a roll call vote on the nomination around 3:45MT. The California delegation actually already did their vote back at the hotel, but any delegate who hasn't will be able to cast a ballot on the floor.

I want to thank the DNC for offering this type of access for state bloggers. I know that the national bloggers are stuck in some windowless room, a step backward from 2004. And that's not right. But the state blogger access is really a mirror of politicians going to the local press instead of the national press. They are getting great blogging press in the localities, and I think it's offering a far better perspective of the convention than the traditional media, which came up with their headlines two weeks ago and is now just filling in their words. Maybe it's because I'm here, but this is the most shameful job I've ever seen from the media in terms of a disconnect between their own paranoid fantasies and reality.

As for the local and state blog strategy, it's an extension of the Dean 50-state strategy. I hope they only increase the access in the future.

They're Not Covering The Same Convention

A lot of people have asked me, in media interviews and the like, what bloggers are covering in the convention that's different from what the traditional media is covering. After 2 1/2 days, I figured out the difference. Bloggers are, by and large, COVERING THE CONVENTION, whereas the traditional media is covering a fantasy world of their own making based on a group email written about a week ago signaling the storylines they are going to cover.

Hillary Clinton delivered a strong, gracious, professional speech that made the definitive case that Democrats must unite for the good of the country and support Barack Obama. It was incredibly received in the room and was an EXTENSION of the unity seen here in Denver.

That's the actual story. In the media, we have body language experts claiming that Hillary's heart wasn't in her words. We have deep cover McCain operative Ron Fournier wondering if Clinton meant the words that she said. We have Craig Crawford concern trolling that she wasn't "personal" enough about Obama. We have a great speech from Brian Schweitzer virtually ignored, and an even better speech from Dennis Kucinich completely ignored, except for the one line that the Obama campaign cut (of course, if you hear the speech you know that Dennis held nothing back). We have gasbags talking over all the speeches to the degree that they clearly have no idea what anyone said. There are stories in the media today about Clinton delegates leaving the city, which have no basis in fact.

In essence, we have a media narrative disconnected with reality to maybe the most shocking degree I've ever seen, though that could just be because I'm sitting here seeing the reality. Digby put this best:

I don't know who Dowd has been talking to, but there is likely a bit of Heisenberg principle involved when it comes to the delegates. Sure, I've seen a few examples of both Clinton and Obama diehards being obnoxious. But it has been very, very rare. Unlike Dowd, nobody recognizes me and I don't spend time hanging with professional political operatives with axes to grind. I walked miles in that Pepsi center and around downtown Denver yesterday, eavesdropping on conversations of ordinary attendees and her convention is not the convention of the rank and file.

For instance, I was riding on a tram yesterday with a delegate from the midwest who was festooned with Hillary buttons. I asked her if she was excited about the speech to come and if she expected it to be controversial. She said that she hoped Hillary felt free to bask in the glory a little bit but that she knew she would come through for Obama. I asked her if she was going to vote for her in the roll call and she said she was sent there by people who voted for Clinton and she wanted to cast that vote. But she also said that as soon as he was announced the winner she was going to take off all of her Hillary buttons and put on her new collection of Obama buttons, which she pulled out of her bag to show me. I asked if she would work to get him elected and she chuckled and said, "of course I will, I'm president of the Democratic Club!"

The media see people like her as exotic birds or amusing chimps playing in the trees and consider them decoration for the real event --- the careerist posturings and gossip of the elite insider class, which they present as what these rank and file delegates --- committed Democratic activists and grassroots workers --- think about all this. For them, this is really just one big Georgetown party, displaced from "their town" by necessity in order to keep the serfs happy. The only story that interests them is the story they tell each other about themselves.

Exactly. We were talking about this last night. The traditional media is a set of sportscasters who DON'T LIKE SPORTS. It's fascinating. They are contemptuous of policy, beyond the fact that they refuse to understand it, and so these little bits of spin machine operative talk gets magnified and everything goes back to their personal stories. You have to wonder why they participate in an industry they so clearly hate, but I think it had to do with some kind of "Great Man" theory. They imagine themselves to be standing astride some consequential moment in history, and that force gives them meaning. So the story becomes how THEY perceive what is being said instead of what is said. It becomes how events validate their preconceptions rather than the events themselves.

They are the most dangerous force in politics, thwarting progress at every single turn. I have nothing but absolute disgust in my heart for these puffed-up gasbags who actually believe their Heather-like takes on the narrow set of issues they care about actually matters.

It's shameful. 100% shameful.

Partitions

Stoller is accurate that progressives are somewhat marginalized here. Actually I think it's that all sides go to their corners. If you wanted to have a fully progressive convention and see great progressive speakers and meet with them and brainstorm, you certainly can. I ran into Jane Hamsher and Ned Lamont yesterday and out of that might come a great counterpoint to Joe Lieberman's RNC speech. There are also insiders and lobbyists, and that's a different convention that has better food and a decent view of the action. And they don't let progressives in.

GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, it’s amazing. And essentially, we probably tried to interview twenty-five, thiry people going in, and every last person refused to even give their name, identify themselves, say what they’re here for, what the event is for. It’s more secretive than like a Dick Cheney energy council meeting. I mean, it’s amazing.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what are you here for? Why do you want to interview people?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, because, I mean, it’s extraordinary that the same Blue Dogs that just gave this extremely corrupt gift to AT&T are now attending a party underwritten by AT&T, the purpose of which is to thank the Blue Dogs for the corrupt legislative gift that they got. So AT&T gives money to Blue Dogs, the Blue Dogs turn around and immunize AT&T from lawbreaking, and then AT&T throws a party at the Democratic convention thanking them, and then they all go in and into this exclusive club.

There isn't a party thrown not sponsored by some corporate behemoth, so it's hard for me to get worked up about any individual one. What does bother me is all the corporate signage that really swamps the convention. The coal industry has a bunch of young kids passing out fans with "clean coal" messaging on it. Interesting, they're giving me something that harnesses the wind to create energy. It was a hot day, so I took it from them to use for a few seconds. Then I gave it back, saying, "Here, it's renewable."

Interestingly, one of the most prominent corporate presences here is Trojans.

To spin it out and see the partitioned convention as an example of an Obama Administration hostile to progressives takes a little bit of extrapolation, but it's clearly true that any leader of a party is going to mold it in his image. Obama is stage managing the podium speeches, for example. And as progressive power in Washington isn't exactly strong, then progressives will be shoved to one side as well. Our challenge is to collectivize our power and grow it from the bottom up, making ourselves impossible to ignore.

Day 2 Wrapup: This One Was For The Gasbags

So I was in the hall last night, albeit barely. We spent about 15 minutes and all of Lily Ledbetter's speech trying to find a seat, and the only ones forthcoming were behind the stage in the nosebleed section with a view through the rafters of a JumboTron.

Still and all, it was good to be in the room. In ascending order, I thought Mark Warner's speech was mostly wooden with brief flickers of passion; Ted Strickland's offered some OK red meat but he's not the best messenger; Deval Patrick completely lost the room, it was embarrassing; Brian Schweitzer was a knockout, credible on energy (though he has his own idiosyncratic beliefs on it like clean coal and CCS) and great taking on McCain:



And Hillary Clinton was, in a word, spectacular. Not one person in that room had a bad word to say about her performance. She delivered like a pro, calling for unity and asking her supporters to get off the sidelines and put away personality in favor of country. Digby was right, this was the best line:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

I think the supporters selfish enough to react to that with indignation are infinitesimally small (they also happen to be skilled PR mavens and Republican ratfucks. A lot of this is not real). And what's more, the pundits, the morons who have been trying to drive this wedge for months upon months, can really just shut up now. I don't know what more Sen. Clinton can do to prove to everyone that she supports Barack Obama. Though the gasbags wrote the story a week ago and then tried their best to find people to fit into it, the disunity story is a dead letter. I talked to Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) yesterday and she said all these media types are coming up to her asking about the divisions in the party, and she said "I don't know what they're talking about!" Hopefully this speech puts it to rest for a little while.

Democrats love nothing more than to criticize other Democrats, so you're going to keep seeing that (and Bill still seems to be holding a little grudge, but he's a pro and will give a great speech tonight). But overall, there's a lot of unity in the party, particularly ideologically, where the left and right flanks have actually come together on a number of issues. One PUMA delegate (in an ad that played nowhere) isn't going to change that.

What's The Story?

Katie Couric puts on her serious face and talks to bloggers, who then post about her talking to bloggers, and the universe explodes on itself.

Meanwhile apparently this is the Hillary Clinton convention and the Democratic Party is at war, although none of us know it.

And oh by the way: Pakistan's government has collapsed (which is probably as it should be after Musharraf was dumped), Iraq's Prime Minister reaffirms the need for a hard timeline for all US troops to leave Iraq, the Prime Minister has also cut oil deals with China and Russia, the Russians have recognized independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in the wake of yet another airstrike killing dozens of civilians in Afghanistan...

Frustrated by the mounting toll of civilian deaths from U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan, the government of President Hamid Karzai called Tuesday for a full-scale review of foreign-led military operations in the country.

Our foreign policy is literally blowing up in our faces on multiple fronts, but the media is dead-set on whether or not someone with a sign somewhere is a PUMA or not.

grr

That Would Be Because You Are Racist

Unbelievable.

Businesswoman Sheila Johnson, who is the owner of the Washington Mystics basketball team and an African-American, was imploring the crowd not to let voters get distracted by Obama's mixed race heritage or his unusual name when a man wearing a "Hillary" button called out from the crowd.

"Hussein! Hussein!" yelled the man, a reference to Obama's middle name. Many in the crowd leapt to their feet, shaking noisy tambourines at him and drowning him out.

The man, Igor Zhivotovksy from New York City, said later he is a strong Clinton backer who thinks she was cheated out of the nomination — and he doesn't like Obama.

"We just finished getting rid of a guy named Hussein in Iraq and why are we trying to elect someone with the same name?" said Zhivotovsky. "Everybody thinks if you're against Obama you're racist."

Yes, well, you are. And if you continue to treat elections like a popularity contest, and threaten to take your fucking ball home if you don't get your way, we'll get the country we deserve - one that prepares to crumble into the sea.

I'm not one to get nervous about these things, and mainly I'm disgusted by a traditional media deliberately finding every note of discord and blowing it up into something immense, but I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. While I don't totally subscribe to the idea that we have to have to have to attack McCain every five seconds, there was no Biden bounce, at least in the tracking polling, and combine it with media sabotage and this has a hint of 2004's Democratic convention, when there was no bounce at all. Mark Warner is fixing to piss me off tonight as well.

I don't scare easily. All I have to say is that Hillary had better give one hell of a speech tonight.

Disconnected Thoughts

• The media narrative of this convention is that Democrats aren't doing enough, they're being too boring, they're not giving enough specifics, they're not attacking McCain enough, they're attacking McCain in the wrong way, they're too divided, Michelle Obama mentioned Hillary too much... I mean it's all over the map. I wish we had an adult campaign for serious, adult times, and everybody quit with the blather. Republicans, by the way, will not have to do anything at their convention.

• This was very good from Hillary Clinton:

Mrs. Clinton, preparing for her own speech Tuesday night, appeared before emotional members of her home state delegation this morning. She urged the party to come together while taking a shot at new campaign commercials by Senator John McCain that seek to foster division between Clinton backers and those of Senator Barack Obama, the soon-to-be nominee.

“Let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads,” she said in an appearance at a downtown hotel. “I’m Hillary Rodham Clinton and I do not approve of that message.”

This PUMA thing is the most media-savvy non-story in history. Celebrilawyer Gloria Allred was at the California delegation today claiming that she had been "gagged," and she had a gag around her mouth and everything.

• Steve Benen has more thoughts on Jim Leach.

• The recent polls I've seen, none of which really matter before the convention, are somewhat mixed, but it is notable that McCain can't win his own state handily and will probably have to campaign there.

• McCain, who thinks candidates shouldn't talk about their military service, continues to... talk about his military service, using his POW time as a convenient excuse (even though CBS edited it out of yesterday's newscast). McCain, meanwhile, has a crappy record on veteran's issues.

Ladies And Gentlemen, Welcome To Tuesday

So I'm hanging out at the California delegation area while waiting to do an interview. Jimmy Carter is giving an interview to CNN. Terry McAuliffe just walked by. And there's some country band doing a soundcheck.

Having not been inside a Democratic convention facility before, it is undeniably impressive and it came through nicely on television last night. The buzz over the Michelle Obama speech seems to be generally good, with the pull quote "stop doubting, start dreaming" seeming to be the one all over the newspapers this morning.

Teddy Kennedy obviously gave a powerful, emotional speech. Many people I talked to didn't know he was coming out at all. I'm a little perturbed that Jim Leach's speech was passed over by the media so quickly. Here's a Republican who served in the US House for 30 years, now completely excoriating his party, particularly in the area of foreign policy, and it didn't raise an eyebrow. Even though it was in prime time I'm not sure anyone showed it. If the tables were turned, you can be sure it would be a major story.

Lots of Californians on stage tonight, but obviously all the focus will be on Sen. Clinton's speech. I saw James Carville by Radio Row and he said to the assembled media that they would "all be disappointed" tonight, because it would be a unifying speech. I'm sure the media will latch on to some word or facial tic and relentlessly hype it.

Anyway, Lucas will be taking you through this evening from the floor.

UPDATE: Leach's speech:

DNC Update: Day 1

So I've been basically anchored to the Big Tent all day. There were some solid speakers at the Digg stage, and hey, free beer. They aren't running sound out of the main tent area right now, but they should have it up for the major speeches. The traditional media is definitely pushing this PUMA angle here, although Chuck Todd pushed back. The Republicans are really skillfully ratfucking this convention and getting the media to cover it. The RNC is holding a "Hillary happy hour" tonight. They blanketed the area behind Chris Matthews today with McCain signs. They are managing the media response to this convention and doing it pretty well, honesty. But it doesn't entirely matter. What matters are the speeches - that's what resonates into November. Sure, the wingnuts will manufacture a hissy fit somewhere along the line, but if Sen. Clinton, Sen. Biden and Sen. Obama are powerful, I think we'll be fine.

Julia Rosen has some good pictures of the floor from the vantage point of the California delegation (where I'll be) here.

And Jon Stewart speaks for me.

LOCKED DOWN

So I attempted to get into the "soft perimeter" area to see Digby's panel, and at first I got through, then I tried to go into the wrong building and I had the wrong credential, so I left, and when I tried to return they had restricted the area I originally accessed.

This place is locked down. The security is "the worst I've ever seen it," according to a couple people I've talked to who have attended many conventions. You can feel the presence.

It's borderline creepy.

Pelosi at the California Breakfast

While my pal Lucas and I were sitting here bullshitting, Nancy Pelosi was apparently holding a press avail. We're good journalists. Todd Beeton was there, and I guess it was a litany of wanker traditional media scribes asking "Is there unity? UNITY? UNITY!!!1!????"

UPDATE: Speaker Pelosi has just taken the stage at the breakfast. Lots of Congresscritters are here as well. I may lose power here in a second. Pelosi: "California will give Barack Obama and Joe Biden the biggest victory in the history of our country... the most votes ever for a Presidential candidate... are you ready to come together in unity and support Barack Obama and Joe Biden?... I bring this up because reporters ask me all day about this... but as we gather here... remember, it's not just about us and what our feelings are about the campaigns. It's about the hopes, aspirations and challenges of the American people. And they are looking to us to come out of this convention with unity, organized and focused to take this country in a new direction. We owe them that... this is about our country."

UPDATE: Pelosi: "If people want to talk about drilling offshore, don't come around California with that kind of talk. Let's talk about the connection between oil, which belongs to the people, and the record profits from the oil companies, and how they take it out of the ground with no royalties (in California)." Pelosi is talking about green jobs and renewables.

"If you're a senior, and you care about Medicare, Obama is right and John McCain is wrong. If you care about children's health care, where George Bush said we can't afford covering 10 million children for one year, which costs 40 days in Iraq, Obama is right and McCain is wrong... McCain supports George Bush's failed economic policies... and on the most important foreign policy issue of our time, Iraq, Barack Obama is right and John McCain is wrong."