Well, the rest of Day 2 proved to be much less confrontational than the first 4 hours, though that may be mostly due to the fact that I avoided the SD delegation for most of the day.
I spent my afternoon at the Hispanic Insitute’s forum entitled “Culture Wars: The role of race, gender, ethnicity, religion and values in the fall campaign” (say that ten times fast). I’m so glad I went to this discussion. It was moderated by MSNBC’s Dan Abrams and other panelists included
-Gov. Bill Richardson
-Harold Ford, Jr. (DLC Chairman and frequent MSNBC guest)
-Tucker Carlson (MSNBC)
-Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
-Richard Wolffe (Newsweek)
-Faye Wattleton (Director of the Center for Women’s Advancement)
-Dee Dee Myers (worked with the Clinton Administration, sister to Betsy Myers who came to Midd this Spring)
-Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
-Markos Moulisas (Founder of Daily Kos)
The panel, unfortunatly, did not address most of the issues proposed in its title, but there was certainly no lack of intelligent discussion and food for though. I won’t go into some of the issues now because I could discuss them all day but I did come away with these few conclusions. A) That race was more a positive to Obama than gender was to Hillary, B) That current issues voters have with Obama are more about class than race and finally C) That the idea of “values” has switched from what’s right for one to do personally to what’s right for one to do for their children. I would also add to this that, McCain’s recent use of Hillary in campaign adds will likely do the Democratic Party a favor because there are countless Hillary supporters who, when actually paired with McCain, will realized the absurdity of it all.
After the panel, I headed over to the Pepsi Center on my own just to get the lay of the land. I found South Dakota’s crap seats (which are actually almost directly behind Vermont’s) and just sat for a while and took it all in. I did actually get a chance to see Kucinich speak, which is always an interesting affair.
For dinner, I went with my mom and a few others from the delegation to dinner with a client of my dad’s and his colleagues. Dinner was nearly four courses and was fabulous. And, if finished just in time for Jack Billion and I to get his driver to take us back to the Pepsi Center for Hillary’s big speech. We almost didn’t get in, which would have been a bummer, because the Fire Marhsall closed the Convention Floor down. Jack, all angelic like, just stood in front of access control and managed to convince some old guy that we were important delegates and had seats waiting for us (which was more or less true). However, we were nowhere near the SD delegation so we had to hop a few rows, which is always a good idea in high heels.
