Friday - 9:30pm - So we're driving into Colorado Springs on I-25 and there's a sign that says "El Paso County" and then 10' further one that says "Ronald Reagan Highway." Sort of sums it up - huh? Checked in to the hotel (some people take their wife to weekend getaways at lousy places like San Francisco - I go all out with a romantic weekend in Colorado Springs at the convention).
Checked in and was talking to the person at the front desk about the convention. I asked her if Democrats are allowed in Colorado Springs and her answer was, I quote "I think so." Also discovered this is not a terribly green convention - no shuttle buses to the convention. So everyone will be driving their own car.
Did get a chance to look up at Pike's Peak earlier. I don't care what Bob Schaffer says, I don't think it looks anything like Mt Denali.
More tomorrow live blogging all day at the convention.
Note: first part written offline while the DNC press person tried to get us wireless (I forgot my cellular modem).
9:30 – This is amazing. We’re talking rock concert levels of people, Hannah Montana levels of craziness in the crowds, and all kinds of candidate crap for sale from t-shirts to a life size cut out of Obama.
The Clinton team has not given up. I shared a cab over with 2 Clinton supporters and they are still in this to win. The signs outside are all for Hillary. And walking the outer ring hallway there are more Obama t-shirt booths but more people carrying Hillary signs on sticks.
The other large presence out there is for Udall. There are Udall supporters everywhere wearing blue Wal-Mart type vests with UDALL on the back of them. They’re handing out credential strings with a Udall flier attached. It looks like the Udall campaign is starting to move.
Jared Polis has a booth here but I did not see one for either Joan Fitz-Gerald or Will Shafroth. I did see some Fitz-Gerald signs taped up, but not a lot. It looks like they are taking a pass on the CD-2 campaign today. Curious since the people here are voters in the primary.
9:55 – The Hillary team has a major chant going on the floor. They are here to win. It is nice to see that the still have the enthusiasm. Obama is so correct in handling the end of the primary gently.
10:06 – I just talked to Taylor West of the Udall campaign and they did not get their greeter jackets from Wal-Mart. They also made sure they were made in the U.S. and not in the Marianas Islands (sorry Bob).
10:09 – Mike Mayfield just lead the pledge of allegiance. He has a really good voice.
10:15 – Pat Waak is calling us to order – standard stuff.
10:18 – Bill Ritter is in the house! Listing off the people to applaud for, nice cheer for Romanoff. Another big cheer for Udall winning the Senate. Ritter is a forceful speaker, but he’s not inspirational. It’s a good speech and he makes his points well, but it’s not one that lifts the audience up.
Now we’re getting the laundry list of issues we need to address here. They’re all real problems and saying we must address each gets the correct cheer. Maybe I just spend too much time following politics but this actually gets boring hearing it all again. The crowd liked it – he got a standing ovation at the end.
10:32 – I see a cowboy hat – it must be Ken Salazar. The crowd is on it’s feet welcoming him. Now Salazar is getting them charged up. Short, sweet, and to the point – about how we’re going to take back the country and undo the damage inflicted on us by 8 years of Republican mis-rule.
10:38 – Dianna DiGette is up. More of a professorial listing of what we need and why we are going to win. It’s interesting how each has a very distinct way of speaking. And then a zinger – “we are going to mop the floor with John McCain” – crowd loved it.
She’s now listing out what McCain stands for and is getting giant boos from the crowd as she lists each of McCain's points. It’s interesting, with our primary not officially decided (although anyone good at math realizes it is over), it’s an anti-McCain speech rather than a pro-Clinton/Obama speech. Good approach. Same for CD-2, that we need to send “a Democrat” to Washington.
Interesting, she just started a “Yes We Can” cheer about sending all our Dems to Washington. I don’t think that was a spur of the moment item. We’ll see Dianna switching to Obama soon.
10:47 – Hey, we have a Lt. Governor! Starting off with a girl-power speech. A couple of anti-McCain points. Back to when women vote Dems win and so women - go vote.
10:52 – Cary Kennedy is up. Not a great speaker. You know you’re not carrying the crowd when the speaker has to start the clapping herself. Nothing new from her.
10:57 – Apparently the cowboy hat store had a 2 for 1 sale. John Salazar is up and has a cowboy hat on too. Apparently that is required to win the rural districts. I can’t wait to see if Betsy Markey wears one when she speaks. John is giving a good talk. It’s all about all of us coming together, working together, to take back our government. Good job on this being about all of us.
11:04 – Ed Perlmutter appears to be a rockstar. Got about half the audience on it’s feet when he walked up on stage. He’s doing a really good job. About how the change started in ’06 (it definitely did for him) and we need to continue with it on ’08. Very inspirational speech. Not so much the content as the delivery – very good job.
Bill Ritter was just up in the press box asking if anyone had news about Ted Kennedy's condition. Speaks well of him that his prime concern is the well being of another over talking up the press.
11:28 - Udall is being nominated. Apparently he's climbed every 14er in Colorado (unlike Schaffer who doesn't even recognize the one he proposed to his wife on). Joe Rice is seconding him. Joe gives a good speech - I think we'll continue to see him climb.
11:39 - Udall is still being nominated, now by Salazar who keeps saying Udall is a "true Son of the West" - I'm guessing as opposed to someone from Ohio who doesn't recognize Pike's Peak. The interesting thing was Salazar said we needed another vote to get us out of Iraq. Neither Salazar or Udall have been pushing that recently but he was talking the talk at least just now.
Note to my daughters if you're reading - Hi Girls!
11:46 - Finally! Mark is coming up. They have the lights low and Mark is walking the length of the floor with a crowd around him and a spotlight on him. He's getting a standing ovation.
11:52 almost to the stage walking up. It looks like a Wal-mart rugby scrum with all the campaign staffers (wearing the blue greeter vests) around him moving him through the crowd. He definitely has the crowd behind him. The contingent that's mad at him for not pushing to leave Iraq yesterday is nowhere to be seen (and this is the Democratic party - there's no control on who's where here).
11:56 - Really Finally! Ok, Mark is on stage, the others have left the stage, and he's starting to talk. Only 28 minutes to nominate him.
First 10 minutes is about how we have to get it right on energy, with an emphasis on how it hurts us to be sending money to the oil countries and where the money goes on to. Then going through the economic mess the present policies inflict on families.
He's getting an occasional heckler now. He started talking about Iraq and that started. It's an occasional lone voice among the background crowd noise and Udall is just continuing through it. At the applause points in his talk he is getting strong applause. You have the core of the base her and he has all except a very few behind him.
The speech is good. Hits all the right points, covers all the key issues with great applause points. Find moments of humor, and moments of serious commitment. But it's not great. It's not as good as Ritter or Salazar. Udall has to win this on what he will do rather than how he speaks. I think that is how all campaigns should be. But to win, I wish Udall could lift up the audience.
BREAKING NEWS - 12:17 - Udall was just won the primary by acclimation.
12:21 Jared Polis is in the house! Short & sweet speaking mostly of the economy. He did not get much of a response.
Joan is not here - she is out walking precincts today. That's interesting that she did not show - I'm not sure what it means.
12:26 - Terry McAulife is up to speak for Hillary. Lots of cheering for him. He starts off saying "Colorado is the greatest state in the United States." What a dick - we're supposed to believe that? Full disclosure - I think McAuliffe was a horrible DNC chairman so I don't like the guy.
So he's up there talking about how we are going to put "a Democrat" in the White House. Now he's listing out the vote totals for each (using the Florida & Michigan numbers too) and he turned a come together moment into a very divisive one. The entire audience is on it's feet, 1/3 cheering and 2/3s booing.
Now saying we need to continue the primary to not upset the voters in the remaining states (I agree with that). Getting a giant chant of "Yes We Can" in response to shut him up.
Ok, now he's brining them back together. "when this process ends, and I believe it will end in early June, then we have to come together." And he's talking more about how we have to come together in the general. If McAuliffe sees it as "over in early June" then he knows Obama has won.
Ok, now he's talking the positive points to Hillary. Getting a good response to that. Interesting, brought up Bill Clinton for an applause line, and got almost nothing. Bill seems to have worn out his welcome with the Dem party, at least here in Colorado.
Closed with we have 2 great candidates, but we need to elect Hillary because she has a uterus. Repeated again that the primary will be over in 2 weeks. And once again that Colorado is the greatest state in the country.
I don't know how this guy every got to be chair of the DNC. It definitely was not for his speech-writing or presentation skills. Thank god it's over. Wellington Webb was much much better.
1:15 - during the platform presentation I walked around outside and met someone interesting. Here's a picture of the two of us (I'm the one on the right). He had some very thoughtful ideas - I'm hoping he decides to run for office someday.
We now have the presentation of the candidates running for the state Senate. They all just got to wave from the stage as each was introduced. The only thing of interest was that Rollie Heath was there, but Cindy Carlisle was not.
Now Andrew Romanoff is introducing the house candidates.
At the end one of the other legislators spoke about Romanoff and that got a giant round of applause and some people standing. He clearly is liked & respected by the other legislators and is very well respected by the base. If Ritter's 2nd term ended in 2 years, Romanoff would be it. I hope he finds a way to stay this visible for the next 6 years. Maybe Secretary of State?
1:32 - Betsy Markey is now speaking. I think she is trying to channel JFK. The speech she is giving is superb. But it isn't grabbing the audience. They are paying attention but it's not sucking them in. I'm guessing that people are getting very tired and it is hard to be speaking at the very end of the assembly part.
Ok, she's starting to carry them along. Oh wow - she's good. This is my favorite speech of the day. She is taking it to Marilyn Musgrave ending with a direct attack on the disaster that is MM. For those of us worried that Betsy won't be getting in MM's face and won't get aggressive - she's starting to do it.
1:41 - Hank Eng up now. Taking on Mike Coffman is tough and Hank doesn't have a political base. He is giving a nice professional speech celebrating our immigrant heritage and our diverse demographics. I think he'll be a candidate that we can be proud of.
But he is not a captivating speaker. Granted he sees the same problem Betsy did - we all want to go home. But to beat Mike Coffman in that district, he's got to be superb, and with an existing political base.
That's too bad as he is clearly a thoughtful and eloquent person.
1:53 - Hal Bidlack up now. Another sacrificial lamb, but again he sounds thoughtful and reasonable. Both Hal and Hank give us a good alternative if the Republican candidate in either race is found to have any of the issues that dog so many Republicans, well then we have someone very good to then win that race.
2:05 - We're now hearing speeches from candidates for our rep to the Democratic National Committee. The thing is, how much do we really learn about each in a 3 minute speech? I won't vote as I have no idea who any of them are.
Debbie Marquiez (GreenChileDem) is one of the candidates - vote for her!
2:59 - I was just walking the outer hallway again. They are trying to seat the alternates. Of course, as we are the Democratic Party, it is a total cluster-fuck. So I guess we need all these DNC member speeches to use up time while they get everyone their credentials.
From the AP wire, two people were arrested for trespassing here.
3:08 - Just passed by acclimation, we are not going to let the delegate candidates speak - thank god! I'm a delegate and I don't want to sit here for 3 days as they all get 2 minutes.
How are they going to get ballots to all of us? There are 5,000 people here to vote and we have no ballots yet. They have tables up at the front of the floor of the arena. They will call people up by section and give them their ballot. This is going to take a bit of time.
When you get your ballot, remember to put a check mark next to the name "David Thielen." That is the most critical part of voting.
Someone was yelling from the audience when the guy on the stage was giving instructions. The guy on the stage told that person to shut up and we all cheered - major round of applause.
The guy explaining the voting must be a 3rd grade teacher, he is explaining this perfectly for this crowd.
3:20 - I think the way this works is that the Obama ballot will have the 2 delegates they want on the ballot, and only those 7. I'll write for sure on this once I see the ballot - this strikes me as very questionable if true. Update: read below - this is the PLEO candidates (junior super delegates).
3:24 - Lecture from the El Paso County chair - we need to all go home and work locally to take back not just the country, the state, the county, the towns. Well received and very good advice. I will ignore it as I live in Boulder and we already own the County and City offices - to a degree that is bad for us. But very good advice for all of you - get to work :)
3:36 - Walked through the outer hallway - JeffCo is still seating alternates. Every other county seems to have this all done. JeffCo did appear to have the longest lines most of the day. I guess one county has to be the most disorganized.
Note: All ballot problems listed from here down are only for Obama delegates. For Hillary there is no line and they have full ballots.
3:51 - Getting in a looooong line to vote
4:06 - Talking to a major official in one of the county Democratic parties (not next to Boulder). She was talking to Rollie Heath and afterwards I asked her what she thought Rollie's chances were against Cindy Carlisle. Her reply was that the party owed Rollie after he stepped up to be the sacrificial lamb against Bill Owens 4 years ago. That explains a lot of Rollie's support, but that won't be close enough to win - it's a vote, not a dedicated supporter.
4:52 - They just announced that they are out of ballots, but are bringing more down from upstairs and those will be handed out as they come down.
5:21 - No movement and they announced that they are having to get special 1 page ballots printed but they will be here "real soon now." I asked to see one of the full ballots by someone who had it - the 7 candidates only are the PLEO candidates, the 7 super delegates we elect. This is from a group that is restricted to elected officials and top Colo Dem party officials - not the regular delegates. The whole ballot was about 80 pages of people to vote for.
5:39 - They've got the 1 page ballots. The line moves a lot faster for these. They forgot to put a place to print and sign the ballot - but it does have a line to write in each vote.
5:51 - I'm out of there and my wife is picking me up. I would guess in another 25 minutes everyone will have voted.
I was told by 1 Obama person there that Hillary had 100 delegate slots still empty and Obama 182 still empty so all alternates were seated and there were still empty slots. I asked one of the Boulder County people staffing their desk and she said Hillary had 1 empty slot and Obama about 20 in Boulder County.
6:41 - last post in this diary. My wife wants to know - why don't we just take the initial precinct totals and use that for the delegate allocation and skip the County, CD, and state conventions? My reply was "beats the hell out of me" so anyone who knows why, please post a comment. (Not that's what the law requires, but why the law was written to have all these steps.)
As always, long, exhausting, inefficient, and wonderful.
