I posted some comments about my experience at the Nevada democratic State Convnetion last night. Now I have uploaded my photos. There are some below and the entire collection can be viewed here. (Let me know if that link doesn't work, I'm not all that familar with flickr.)
I've also reposted my comments from last night below.
Warning, the lighting really sucked, and I haven't made any adjustments yet.
I know that the results have already been posted a couple of times, but for anyone who missed it, or just likes seeing it again: Obama got 14 delegates and Clinton got 11 delegates. That is a net gain of two delegates over the caucus results from January.
The add-on delegate is Rusty McAllister. He is, apparently, uncommitted. I'm not sure why they went this route. There were more Obama delegates than Clinton delegates, so it seems that the add-on should have been a committed Obama supporter.
I arrived around 7 am and checked in. I was pre-registered (and did get the fee waiver for anyone who followed that thread) so that part went really fast.
As always, Hillary does everything bigger, but not necessarily better. Maybe some of her signage budget should have gone into... you know... the paying the vendors budget.
From there I went to the Obama delegate meeting room. For some reason the Obama room was tiny. The Clinton room was about three times the size of our little broom closet. Did they think Clinton would have more people? Do they just hate us? Whatever, we made due with our tiny room and had a nice pre-convention meeting.
Delegates in the tiny Obama room.
After the pre-convention meeting we went down to the convention floor. The convention started a little late, of course.
It was pretty clear early on that there were more Obama supporters, just based on the sea of Obama rally signs.
The first hour we had a fight over the rules. Specifically how our electorates were chosen.
The fight over the consent agenda begins.
The chairman and the executive board had selected a slate of electorates and wanted us to approve them. Many of us felt that the delegates should elect the electorates, rather than having them appointed. We ultimately won that, but the selection of electorates was tabled.
Bill Clinton taking the stage.
Then we had a series of speakers. Bill Clinton showed up to speak on behalf of Hillary. His speech was all about uniting behind the nominee and he pretty much did not talk about Hillary at all.
When Jill Derby came on stage everyone became Democrats again.
For Obama, we had Kal Penn. I absolutely adore this guy, so I was thrilled. He's way better, and hotter, than Bill Clinton. He spoke well on Obama's behalf.
Kal Penn looking way hot.
The theme of most of the speeches was John McCain and unity.
Senator Reid mostly talked about his book and unity.
After everyone spoke they announced the delegate allocations. You can see the actual percentages in my pencast.
When it finally came time to elect our national delegates each CD went to different rooms. I was there with the rurals. We only had one delegate to elect. Since Obama won the rurals that delegate was for Obama. The Hillary people started shouting and getting pissed because they weren't allowed to run candidates. I really don't understand why they thought they should have a right to run candidates when Obama won. They kept claiming they were being disenfranchised. Of course, the reality is that their presence there was their vote. They didn't have enough votes so they didn't get the delegate. That is not disenfranchisement, that is losing.
I ended up leaving early (around 7:00 PM) after a sandwhich made me sick. I feel a lot better today, but last night by the time I got home I was having chills and felt sick to my stomach. Today every muscle in my body is sore. I don't know why, I expected my feet and legs to be sore, but my arms and shoulders are sore and my fingers are swollen.
Well, that's my convention report. I would be happy to address any questions below. Overall, it was an awesome day for Obama.
This is how the Clinton delegates looked by the end of the day:
Resurrection of the Flesh - Salvador Dali
I recommend Jon Soltz's speech (except that I wrote down John Stoltz, so look for that). Bill Clinton's speech was interesting, too. He did not really advocate for Hillary at all, mostly he just talked about unity. Kal Penn was great. Just click on the first letter of the speaker's name to jump to that part of the audio (once the audio has downloaded). You may have to run it back a little depending on how long it took me to write the person's name down when they spoke.