Democratic Convention Watch 2008 - Pre-Obama

A lovely dinner with friends kept me from the Convention earlier (and look! It's Monica Early on TV now!). I missed Gore. So I'm going to review his speech without having heard it...

Gore rocked the house! No one's better in pointing out the differences between the two parties. The differences matter. Indeed, if Gore had been given the office he won, global warming would be healing, we wouldn't be at war with Iraq, the economy would be stronger, we would be weaning ourselves off the oil.

At least that's what I'd say if I were him. And because Gore is no longer a candidate, he was much more relaxed than he used to be, so his delivery wasn't stiff and stilted. Rather than reliving the world of RoboGore, Al gave the speech of a Nobel Prize-winner elder statesman, who's just chillin' on his sofa telling us what's what.

Well done, Al Gore.

I assume.

The missus thinks the stadium is a mistake. The sound is a little worse. It's not as intimate. Well, we'll see, missus. Oh, we'll see.

Now we've sitting through the "regular person" part of the program. The woman from North Carolina makes a compelling argument for former Republicans. She's pretty natural in front of the crowd. She voted for Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush, but now Obama will be her president.

Barney Smith would like to be put before Smith Barney, which gets major applause and chants of "Barney! Barney! Barney!" And Barney felt the power of that applause and ended strong. He was nervous as hell to begin with, but ended with a smile. Man, that was a good "regular person" closer.

Mark Shields and David Brooks (Shields and Yarnell) are floored by the "regular folks." "Where did they find these people??" Even Yarnell is absolutely amazed.

After a station break, they're talking about the crowd at the stadium. Looks fun, they think. Everyone's having a great time. And why not?

The head of the NAACP is named Jealous. Attempting to comment on that is too dangerous when I'm just writing as the thoughts come.

OH! Historians! Today is the anniversary of the MLK, Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech. Forty-five years later we see a piece of that dream realized. OK, I have to admit that I got distracted and missed most of the historians talk. Damn.

I think Dick Durbin is now introducing Barack Obama. I'd like him to be done already. I might ignore Dick Durbin until Barack comes on. Yeah, I'm just gonna post this thing now.