Convention Diaries: Tuesday

by The Young Sentinel

Day Two: A New Hope

In the morning I visited the Denver Art Museum but was not especially captivated. As a New Yorker who frequents the Met, most small-city art collections are comparatively bland and dull. The modernist design of the building (which included diagonal walls and slanted ceilings) was slightly confusing and slightly claustrophobic.

After eating lunch at the hotel I walked over to a panel discussion held by the progressive organization NDN. The panel consisted of Joe Trippi, the strategist who pioneered internet campaigning and brought about Howard Dean’s 2004 web success, one of the Obama campaign’s top advisors (on web issues), and the head of Google’s elections division. Their remarks (especially Trippi’s) were insightful and informed. But this is the subject of another post.

I then took a bus to the Pepsi center, whereupon I obtained a seat high up with a great view of both screen and speaker. In contrast to Monday night’s rather dreary cavalcade of speakers, Tuesday’s crowd gradually grew until every person in the room was focused intently on the orator. I was sitting next to Mark Warner’s law school roommate, who promised to “raise hell for him”. I remembered with a wry smile my very first blog post (long since taken down) when I advocated a Warner-Schweitzer ticket. This is not the year, but someday that pair will take the country by storm. This seemed to be a sentiment shared by the people around me.



Warner, the cofounder of Nextel, ran for and won the governorship of Virginia in 2001. Defeating a divided Republican party, he spent the next four years working with state legislature Republicans to get things done in Virginia. He took the education system from one of the worst in the country to one of the best. He cleaned up hundreds of rivers and streams. He encouraged investment, especially in high-need areas or towns where big employers had laid off workers or moved. Creating thousands of new jobs, he reinvigorated the economy and turned a deficit into a surplus.

Schweitzer was a rancher from Montana who had never before held elected office. A truly brilliant man, he had earned a degree in soil science from the University of Colorado and spent seven years working on irrigation projects in the Middle East. As such, he speaks fluent Arabic. Schweitzer, although a highly effective Governor, is very informal. He takes his border collie everywhere with him and enjoys playing practical jokes on state legislators.

Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, also spoke. I was (and remain) amazed that as eloquent and compelling as he is, he remains unpopular. I hope he can right his ship. If he can, he just might run for Ted Kennedy’s seat a few years from now.

Warner passed up an offer to be Obama’s VP because he was already engaged in a Senate race in Virginia (which he will handily win). Although the choice surely wasn’t easy, he knew that the right thing to do was to stay in Virginia and ensure the Senate seat there.

Looking out at him giving the convention’s keynote address, I felt a rush of confidence for the future. He and Schweitzer defied the odds, succeeded, and became successful Governors of their respective states. Both have proven abilities to bring people together, to get things done. As I watched them walk up on that stage, I saw two young leaders preparing to lead the country. They are not tainted by the corrupting force of lobbying or the culture of DC which Schweitzer detests so much that after spending more than 48 hours in the city, “I have to bathe myself in the same stuff I bathe my dog in when it meets a skunk.”

New blood. New vision. New hope. 2016.

Hillary

Although the convention is chock-full of Hillary backers, I have been assured time and again by delegates and contributors who support(ed) her that the likelihood of mutiny among the delegates is virtually zero. In her speech last night, Clinton eloquently spoke to the women of America, eloquently expressing the Democrats’ superior position on women’s rights. It was described as “the best convention speech in history”. Although I hesitate to award it that distinction (Democratic conventions have been the location of many of the century’s greatest speeches: Barbara Jordan in 1976, Mario Cuomo in 1984, Barack Obama in 2004), Clinton’s speech achieved its purpose. When she walked onto the stage, the entire hall turned white with the Hillary signs the distributors had passed out. The cheers were deafening. “Wow,” I said, turning to the woman next to me. “She’s something else altogether.” I didn’t expect a response. On the stage below us, Hillary Clinton was feeling the love.

A Note: Rudy is in town. I saw him from the bus on the way to the Pepsi Center. I must remember to watch him keynoting the Republican convention. His facial expressions are worthy of a bad Jim Carrey movie.