Attend, yes; protest, no.
A first-hand report from someone who was there shows the wisdom of that decision. Follow me past the jump for more.
"Field Hand" Patrick at Al Giordano's "The Field" blog made the following report today:
Hi guys,
I just got home after dropping off Keirsten at her car. There were just a couple of things I wanted to add to the information I’ve been providing all day for you guys to chew over -
- During the long break, security wouldn’t let anyone back into the meeting hall for about 30 minutes (they claimed it was due to cleaning, I don’t know if that was the real reason). During that time, I was wandering around and happened to see Ickes down in the main hotel lobby on what appeared to be a conference call (a cell phone on speakerphone) with a couple other people. This was at about 4pm, smack in the middle of their deliberations. Conference with Hillary, perhaps? I still contend that she agreed to the compromises you saw in the meeting ahead of time - this is why there was so little debate and the venomous objection by Ickes was likely pure theater.
- Something probably more interesting. At the beginning of the day, all of the Hillary supporters sitting around Carthage, Keirsten and I were quite vocal and energetic. Even up to the time the committee returned from their "lunch", they were still quite vehemently pro-Hillary.
However, as the hecklers and yellers in the room got more and more vitriolic, most of the Hillary supporters grew quiet and by the time we left, were having awesome conversations with Obama people about unity and moving forward.
I think the hecklers had alot to do with that - because in the end, the more reasonable among us don’t want to be associated with that kind of behavior. And I suspect that many people watching that behavior on C-span would have responded the same way. It was pretty interesting to see that transition from way pro-Hillary to accepting what they had seen the committee decide, spurred in part by the behavior among the worst of them.
This, my friends, is why Obama skipped the drama. (It's also why he came up with the brilliant idea of asking supporters who had come out to DC already to go and sign up new voters in Virginia instead -- the latest polls have Obama narrowly beating McCain there, believe it or not, and if he takes Virginia he can take states like Ohio.)