Super Tuesday

Today- Breakfast with my usual group and then we headed over to the Regis Ranger Dome a bit early to get good seats. We got the third row so we were pretty happy. Ricky Kirshner, the producer of the DNC (Convention) was so interesting. He talked about a lot of the behind-the-scenes work they put into the Convention. For example, he talked about the podium that will be used by the speakers. It is mechanical and raises or lowers to match the height of the speaker, blows air conditioning on the person, has green/yellow/red lights to signal how much time is left to speak, and has a little LED screen with the speakers' text as a backup. He also talked about what a challenge it was when Obama decided to speak at Invesco Field, because they have been planning this Convention for a year and had to scramble to get ready. The Invesco Field change added about 200 crew to his staff temporarily.

We then had a professor lecture about the issue of age in this election, and how it is both candidates' strongest strength AND weakness and how that would play into the results.

Reverend Leah Daughtry (you've got to check this out- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20minister-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) was absolutely the best, most articulate, inspirational speaker we've had so far. She works to combine religion and the Democratic Party. When I read her bio, I wasn't sure I would enjoy her but myself and pretty everyone else in the room would have loved to listen to her all day. After a couple of the audience questions, she got a standing ovation from the room. Definitely not what I expected from an older Pentecostal preacher speaking to a room of college-age Democrats.

Professor Bob Loevy from Colorado College, a Republican, spoke about the nominating system for Democratic Candidates and spent most of the time complaining, "Why Iowa and New Hampshire?". He has a new plan to give smaller states the chance to vote (in a primary--he HATES the caucus system) first to weed out candidates, and then let the big states choose. He called Iowans "aristocrats in a democracy" because we caucus first, so of course I took a little offense :) His plan had a lot of holes (and he admitted it has been rejected by both Republicans and Democrats) and I disagreed with him on a lot of points, but I really enjoyed the opportunity to hear some flaws of the current system, and it did get me thinking about what I would change if I could.

Smaller group meetings after lunch were interesting because we talked about why Hillary lost and what could have helped her secure the nomination. We spent the afternoon taking a loooooong bus tour of Denver and then a couple people from my group (including the Iowa boys and my Virginia friend, of course :)) and my Professor went to a good spaghetti dinner.