Denver - Democratic Convention Day 3 [August 27

Flickr* has experienced a technical glitch with their upload system -- we're among dozens to report this bug, and we are assured they are 'on the case.' In the meantime, we offer up a few teaser images from Day 3 of the convention.

* Our site remains up but without new additions.

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Wait, someone told me Bill Clinton arrived in a hybrid rocket chariot from the heavens made out of recycled satin sheets and Safeway bags and granted wishes to the first 2008 conventioneers to line up and rub his tummy? Is that true? He's like the new Santa? I didn't get home from dog agility class in time to actually see what happened on tv. I sort of just pick this stuff up on the internet I guess.

We Are Family

Quite an interesting spectacle from here in the heartland: the mediated message almost embarrassingly transparent; the Clintons, the old masters of politics, with carefully chosen words that place Hillary in a good strategic position whichever way the die should fall ("vote your conscience, delegates" sounds so Democratic and so self-serving in the same breath); Obama's televised visage looming over his children in a vaguely threatening big-brotherish way--oh wait, I get it, that was god talking--(but why is it that a smart woman has to spend so much time convincing us that she is a good mom when it is self-evident anyway); the appearance two days later (no wait, they just messed up, that should have been three days) in real life--or to be more accurate, in first level mediation--of the chosen one, whom it turns out is just hawking tickets to the next show. "And now for the historical perspective we turn to..." and you know that Jim Lehrer is my chauffeur ("Gwen Ifill" -- I need say no more).

But I am loving it. It would be my choice, right now, to be mingling with the delegates shouting "Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!" I am a sucker for sappiness and emotional appeal; I love being pandered to. I feel latent tears well up in my eyes as Beau-boy Walton talks, addressing us before he goes off to fight the good American fight in foreign lands. I read mom Biden's lips saying "that's true" to her neighbor in affirmation of a story Joe is relating that is much too good and too heroic and too American to be true. Tonight, I am willing to accept the story. I am caught up in the tide washing from Denver through my television set and spilling out in my living room (and you DO realize that we Iowans gave Obama his start, don't you). In my own private war between hope and cynicism, hope seems to have slight edge right now. Perhaps it is not the hope that the organizers envision--I am hoping that the Democrats can hold this constructed image together for 69 more days. Nonetheless it is hope.

outside the convention hall

Where is today's Senator Ribicoff?
Somebody tell the media to look outside the convention hall:

www.thenation.com/doc/20080901/protest_video

Dispatch 2

Dispatch 2
The Fallen
David Levi Strauss

The principle drama of the conventions is the relation between the press (now, the MSM) and the politicians. This entire spectacle is built for and caters to the media and the media cannot get enough of it. This year Wolf Blitzer and CNN have set themselves up in the middle of everything, right down on the floor rather than suspended above it. CNN pundits James Carville, et al. wear black Madonna headpiece mics so that they can hear themselves and each other above the din. They look like astronauts in New Guinea.

After eight years of Bush/Cheney-style bunker mentality and press blackout, the conventions are orgies of access, and the MSM is bleary-eyed and gooey with the surfeit.

Last night, the stage belonged to the Clintons, and they showed (if anyone remained unconvinced) how masterful they are at this kind of stagecraft. Chelsea introduced her mother with a film that almost managed to make Hillary look hip, and Hillary gave the best televised speech of her life, artfully intercut with close-ups of weeping women delegates and extreme close-ups and reaction shots of Bill Clinton (often even in splitscreen) laughing, loving, earnestly rapt, and tearful. The words said “Vote for Obama,” but the images said “Look you now upon the President and First Gentleman who could and should have been, and weep.”

Filed on Wednesday, August 27, 2008, after the second night of the convention.

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My favorite part was where the whole army came out in dresses and was banging the drums with Lightsabers under the roof designed by Suede from Project Runway of the Chicken Basket Stadium. Every time we get a medal, I like to stand up on a chair and sing along.

Oh wait. What week is this? No one up there is wearing ANYTHING by Ralph Lauren. Just Hillary buttons.

Dispatch 1

Dispatch 1
Isn’t She Lovely?
David Levi Strauss

For a mere voter, it was frustrating to watch the overdetermined and utterly predictable Spectacle that is the party’s nominating convention lumber to life tonight in Denver. Our excitement at Barack Obama’s rise, from his incandescent keynote speech at this convention four years ago, to his unlikely early victories and impossible triumph in the primary, led us to believe that something, everything, had changed, and
that perhaps even this hapless ritual might be transformed into a better version of itself. But it was not to be, at least not yet. Just as the opening ceremonies of the Bejing Olympics went all North Korea on us despite extraordinary individual feats, the first night of the Democratic National Convention insisted on Ken Burns without realizing that it had everything it needed in Malia and Sasha Obama.

Something felt wrong from the beginning; not just the self-conscious mawkishness, but something deeper, lurking under the deadend of identity politics. It was as if the worst tendencies of 1980s had come out to make one last attempt to stifle the future. Race vs. gender. And the hall was haunted by other spectres of past failures: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean. I’m sure we’ll see Al Gore soon. There is something inside American liberalism that forgives too much and gives up too soon. A compensatory, defensive liberalism that refuses to win. Is the Obama campaign a real political movement, or just another empty promise? Having gotten our attention, will Obama Democrats, like their predecessors over the last 30 years, find a way to lose?

This time, the stakes are just too high. Barack and Michelle Obama realize this. They are real leaders, not empty vessels that must be filled up with platitudes, and tonight showed that the Democratic establishment hasn’t yet figured that out. Watching Michelle Obama give that speech was like watching a great miler run through tapioca. I think she came through anyway, but why put your best through that?

If American voters again decide that they want someone in the White House who appeals to their worst selves, who they can feel “comfortable” with, the Obamas will lose. But if they agree with Michelle Obama that “the world as it is just won’t do,” then this spectacle is just a distraction. In his speech at the convention in 2004, Barack Obama invoked “the true genius of America” without irony or cant. If that genius survives, it needs to rise now, and push aside the party faithful. “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”


Filed Monday, August 25, 2008, after the first night of the Democratic National Convention.

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