Convention diary: The odd, the good, and the boring

Pro-life speeches aren't new to me. Neither is liberal (anti-war, anti-Bush, etc.) sentiment. The combination of the two, however, was rather disconcerting.

I'd already gotten a bit of this at the DFLA dinner on Monday, but it was cranked up a notch at their Tuesday rally.

The rally's speaker lineup was even more impressive than the dinner's -- Ambassador Ray Flynn spoke again and was followed this time by Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Rep. Charlie Stenholm of Texas, State Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba of Minnesota, and several others.

Two Congressional candidates spoke and it was one of those -- Bill Gluba, who's challenging Rep. Jim Nussle in Iowa -- who brought the starkest unfamiliarity to light as he challenged the pro-life credentials of Bush and the GOP Congress. "How can Bush say he's pro-life when he advocates war as the first option, not the last resort?" he demanded as part of a litany of complaints (including the issues of health care and No Child Left Behind) about Bush betraying pro-life principles.

Silvia Delamar, the Democratic nominee for Georgia's 8th District, also spoke, proving to be a passionate and enthusiastic pro-life advocate with an interesting life story. Optimistic about her chances, she declared that she will be proud to be the only Democratic woman in the House who will say out loud that she's pro-life.

After the rally ended and I'd gotten my final dose of pro-life rhetoric (albeit of a different variety than I'm accustomed to), I headed off to what I consider to be the most worthwhile part of the convention.

I mean the Democratic GAIN (Grassroots Action Institute and Network) trainings (http://www.democraticgain.org).

The speeches are all well and good and may very well succeed in firing up the base and swinging voters their way (those that can stay awake through them, that is).

But whoever thought to use the convention as an opportunity to provide campaign training deserves a gold medal. According to the DNC, 2,000 young people went through the training last weekend, and they expected 4,000 more attendees during the week.

I checked out the training, attending a nuts-and-bolts session on getting out the vote and another on faith-based organizing (more on that in tomorrow's diary). Both were sparsely attended (about a dozen attendees apiece) since many people had apparently opted for the strategy briefing with James Carville and Stan Greenberg.

Tomorrow I hope to check out a few more, although unfortunately the DNC general election training session is closed to the press.

After the trainings, I decided to run the security gauntlet at the FleetCenter and check out the convention speeches themselves. The security proved to be somewhat less eagle-eyed than I had expected -- their look through my backpack failed to unearth the small umbrella (a prohibited item I'd forgotten to remove) in the bottom of it.

The convention speeches were as exciting as I expected (meaning not at all), but I got a good overview of the scene from my perch in the nosebleed section.

In case you haven't heard, there are 3 members of the media present for every 1 delegate. As a result, access to the convention floor is given to most of the media only on a 1-hour rotating basis. I snagged myself one of the floor passes and headed down there around 5:30, when it was somewhat sparsely attended (speeches start at 4, really get going at 7, and hit their stride at 10 when the network channels pick them up).

I interviewed delegates from three states (South Carolina, Alaska, and South Dakota), specifically targeting those with Senate candidates who seem to be keeping their distance from Kerry. Each expressed confidence that their candidate (Tenenbaum, Knowles, and Daschle, respectively) would win and claimed that the Kerry-Edwards ticket is not a liability.

The South Dakota delegate dismissed Thune's chances of defeating Daschle and suggested that Daschle would likely help Kerry (although not enough for him to win the state) rather than the other way around.

The most interesting bit of spin came from the Alaska delegate I interviewed. When asked whether national Democrats' opposition to drilling in ANWR was detrimental to Knowles' candidacy (Alaskans -- including the state's Democrats -- support drilling), she claimed that the failure to permit drilling in ANWR wasn't the fault of national Democrats, but rather of Bush and the Republican Congress that has the majority.

2 posted on 07/27/2004 10:30:29 PM PDT by GeronL (geocities.com/geronl is back under construction, just check in and tell me what ya think?)

The Alaska delegation has been into the purple Kool-Aid slurpees, I see.

she claimed that the failure to permit drilling in ANWR wasn't the fault of national Democrats, but rather of Bush and the Republican Congress that has the majority

HUH??? That makes zero sense.

5 posted on 07/27/2004 11:11:47 PM PDT by GeronL (geocities.com/geronl is back under construction, just check in and tell me what ya think?)

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