Guest-blogging the DNC: Joel McNally
The last breakfast of the Wisconsin delegation to the Democratic National Convention honored retiring Sen. Herb Kohl and former Gov. Jim Doyle and welcomed the next generation of leaders headed by Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin who will speak to the convention before President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech tonight.
John Nichols, associate editor of The Capital Times, brought the delegation to its feet by recounting Wisconsin’s historic progressive role at the 1964 convention that helped pave the way for Obama’s election. The Wisconsin delegation, headed by now-State Senate president Fred Risser, gave up their seats to Fanny Lou Hamer’s integrated Mississippi Freedom delegation allowing them to sit in front of Mississippi’s segregationist Democrats.
Baldwin portrayed her race against former Gov. Tommy Thompson as part of the modern battle to prevent Republicans from writing government rules for their own benefit.
As Georges Bush’s Health and Human Services secretary, Baldwin noted, Thompson wrote the rules that then made him a millionaire representing pharmaceutical companies.