I may be 20 years old but the significance of what happened today was not lost on me. I mean, I walked from a panel on how we’re going to reform the American Healthcare system in the next couple of months onto the convention floor where we nominated, for the first time, an African American for president. I cannot begin to define the feeling on the floor when that nomination was completed. I have no doubt that the feeling would have been just as profound if it had been Hillary nominated today, but a milestone was accomplished today and a barrier was broken. I have just two words for that (and forgive my language): holy shit.
I described over at MiddBlog what it felt like as the roll call was taken today. I just want to reiterate, however, that it was incredibly emotional for everyone and it set the tone for the rest of the evening. The heightened emotion left people more excited, more eager and more open to coming together. (Even Joe Biden had teared on his eyes when he walked on stage.)
It’s funny, when you’re actually on the convention floor, you don’t actually pay attention to the speeches (except for Biden’s), not because they’re not interesting but because there’s so much going on. For example, I got pictures of all of the Congressmen from Vermont, of Luke Russert (he smiled at me!), and a few minor celebrities. And, AND, the big news of the night, Susan Sarandon sat with our delegation. She was an absolute delight and George McGovern loved being able to flirt with her. In fact, it was poetic justice this afternoon. I’ve mentioned before that SD has crap seats on the floor and gets no attention. However, at about 6:00 tonight, Susan Sarandon, Josh Harkin, George McGovern and Stephanie Herseth all arrived at our location AND Tom Daschle was on stage. Thus, for 15 minutes all eyes were on SD. I tell ya, when it rains it pours.
Like I said, it’s difficult to pay attention to all of the speeches and I plan on going back to YouTube as soon as I have some time to re-watch them. I did get into the habit, however, of reading the teleprompters. Bill Clinton used the teleprompter the least, Chet Edwards the most, and Biden deviated the most from his script. I suppose that itself provides some very interesting insight into what type of politician each man is. Naturally, the teleprompter was OFF for Barack Obama’s “surprise” visit and it was completely unscripted.
There are a million more things I could say about being on the floor today (I was there for 5+ hours and time just flew by), however, I want to get to the after party before I go to bed. It was hosted at a Mexican-Japanese fusion food restaurant by the same guys who took some of us to dinner last night. Vonda Shepard, of Ally McBeal and Gullickson household kitchen clean-up time fame, was the entertainment for the evening. I got the feeling that the majority of the delegation was intimidated at first by the sophistication of the event. That issue was of course remedied quickly by the endless supply of mojitos for the guests. Hell, if only we’d known Tuesday morning that all it took was a couple of mojitos, we all would have gotten along so much better from Day 1. Oh well, next time I guess.
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Wo sind deine endgültigen Bemerkungen? Ervil
(Where are your final comments?)
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