I just got to the house we are staying in after the night's festivities. I'm an Obama delegate from California. Here is my quick reaction:
Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy ennobled the evening. Caroline's intro to Ted was very nicely done and Ted's mere presence inspired everyone, let alone his commanding ability to galvanize and tell it like it is. The emotional truth that it might be the last time many of us will see him alive, was not lost on the delegates.
Michelle's speech was masterful. What a totally impressive person she is! She wove in her and Barack's family stories and touched every heart with how important their girls are to her and Barack. I have seen her on tv numerous times and was very inspired, but in person she is even more inspiring. In other speeches she displayed more of an edge than she did tonight. I'm sure the strategy was to show her as a loving Mom, wife, and daughter and not as an angry assertive woman. Tonight was not the time to take on Bush/Cheney/McCain.
When Michelle said .... "and that is why I love this country." it was sincere, genuine, and delivered with dynamism and strength. It brought down the house. It will indeed by an honor to live in a country where she can be our first lady and Barack can be our president. I for one would feel great if their roles were reversed.
At the end when there were many moist eyes, it was delightful for Barack to come on from Kansas City where I guess he watched the festivities with a family there. The family did look kind of zombie like because when he mistakenly said he was in St Louis, they didn't bother to correct him or even seem like they noticed. Were they heavily medicated?
Some of the other speeches on the night would have required medication (dexedrine, mescaline or methedrine) to find particularly interesting. Why the city clerk of Chicago rated a prime time spot I don't know. He was fine, but I thought maybe he was gonna talk about the new online system for paying parking tickets or something he knows a lot about.
Criticism might be that they gave McCain a pass on the night. No hardhitting critique, no appropriate biting sarcasm about the 7 plus houses, minimal George Bush's third term. Mostly positive, let's all get together and change the world, etc. Nice sentiments, but Al Gore and John Kerry tried the positive route and got swiftboated and negatived to death (said he invented the Internet,etc.) Rove and company will attack and attack and lessen the enthusiasm for who Barack is and what he represents. We will have to fight back and maybe Joe Biden will take on that role. Someone will have to.
Logistics
Want to live in a police state? Come to Denver. Expect lines and inexplicable displays of police marching around in large groups. Want to ride a bike or get dropped off near the Pepsi Center? Forget it. You will have to walk close to a mile to get there. The police barricaded all the bike trails to the Pepsi Center and I had to ride and extra mile or two to get as close as they permitted. I made the mistake of taking the shuttle bus home and it took an hour an half to go about seven miles. It crawled along with a security officer riding shotgun with binoculars and directing our route. We asked him why and he said they were on the outlook for protesters so he could detour before we reached them. We didn't come within a mile of sniffing a protester. He was actually a great guy and I had an excellent talk with him. He was extremely well versed in every possible protest group from Code Pink to the Crusade for Justice. And he is friends with some of the leaders of protest groups. He seemed very happy with all the overtime he and his pals will earn this week. The expenditure for security and the paranoia must be like China. I wonder if they have as many security cameras as they did in Beijing.
I don't mind security that protects Barack and family, but I do mind paranoia about protesters. The only other convention I attended was 1968 and I was one of those protesters and I don't like the out of sight out of mind and let's make sure the police out number the protester method of dealing with democracy in action.
The Pepsi Center
Walking in to super charged gospel music, the scene was beautiful and choked me up. The colors, video screens, and podium were all very well designed. The sound system was great also. The seats at the Pepsi Center have NO leg room. I was seated in the middle of the row and I had to trip over three congress people and one of our Senators to get out to talk to a friend. One of the congresspeople was so nasty about letting me get by, that I spent the rest of the evening crouching in the aisle, rather than pass that way again.
Free Bikes
The group Free Wheeling To Go has arranged for 1,000 bikes to be available for anyone to ride for free. The bikes are great and the system is wonderful. I rode along the terrific bike trails along Cherry Creek and the Platte River. The people working at the bike stations said this is a big experement and if it works they will offer similar services around the country. Let's hope it works!
That's about it. I better get some sleep, especially if I end up stuck on a shuttle bus tomorrow morning.