I ran into Ralph Nader, who stopped by the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Wednesday and shared some strongly worded criticism of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders over Single-Payer Healthcare. About ten minutes later, I ran into Vermont Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin who shared some equally strong words in Senator Sanders defense.

It’s clearly not a showdown I would’ve expected to capture…

The “good grief” moment: This convention has been managed, coordinated and implemented masterfully for purposes of messaging to the nation. It really has. That’s why the cringe-worthy moment that just passed is so anomalous.

Can somebody tell me why, oh why somebody thought it was a good idea to pipe through the sound system this particular 80’s gem after Bill Clinton himself wrapped one of the best speeches of his life (and that’s saying a lot):

Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah

It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough, you know you’re

Gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love

Arg.

The “holy crap” moment: I think John Kerry may have given a speech as good as Bill Clinton… god, maybe better. I was actually choking up a little. And I really don’t do choke.

Vermont planned to cast its votes unanimously for Barack Obama, but…

The process leading up to near-the-end-of-the-alphabet-Vermont was entertaining from the floor. California with its huge swath of votes passed when their turn came along, presumably to give Obama’s home state of Illinois the opportunity to put him over the top. Illinois, however, passed as well, likely for the same reason (math can be unforgiving), although there was a bit of muttering about the possibility that some of the leapfrogging was because Hillary Clinton had not arrived.

On the lead up to Vermont’s turn, word came down from on high that the process was (believe it or not) moving too quickly, and Senator Leahy was asked to take up some extra time.

Then things got crazier.

New Mexico “yielded” its vote back to Illinois when its time came, and Illinois then yielded to New York as Clinton moved through the crowd, suggesting that at least some of the math games were in fact due to her absence. Made for a nice entrance cameo, though (in sharp contast to the BAD image that would have spread across the media if she had been elsewhere when Obama had gone over the top). Clinton herself then stepped forward and, in a complete surprise to everyone near me, formally moved to pass on the remainder of the roll call vote ENTIRELY and that the body vote by acclamation to nominate Obama.

The motion was seconded with a roar. The approval of the motion an even louder roar…. the “no” vote opportunity was abruptly sped by more quickly than anyone could really respond (one wonders if there would have been any at all, frankly – this place seems pretty unified).

All I can say is that I didn’t see that coming… and neither did the Vermont delegation, who went from planning for an extra long announcement, to none at all. Ah well. As theater, though, it was a truly effective moment.

(Side note: Massachusetts paid homage to their numerous successful sports teams in announcing their votes… as you can imagine, here in Denver, there were a fair amount of boos at the mention of the Red Sox. Heh.)

(Originally posted at the Guardian website – will be a bit of a rerun if you’ve been viewing the zannel vids)

There are many metrics by which one might differentiate the Republican from the Democratic national convention, but if there is one that has struck me immediately since my arrival in Denver, it’s the fact that it seems, no matter where I go, somebody wants to hand me a condom.

And it’s not simply at the events, such as the star-studded celebrity gala Monday night hosted by Rolling Stone and Trojan Condoms. The event showcased a stand up performance by comedian Bill Maher and featured luminaries on the red carpet such as Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon and Alan Cumming – and of course, plenty of condoms. Young, lightly clad women passing them out at the door, carnival-style condom trivia games, a condom bus. Additionally, there are several evening mixers hosted by Planned Parenthood with plenty more available.

But people are also handing them out on street corners and in doorways, and the overall effect is to put sexual health and pregnancy-prevention consciousness front and centre – which is clearly a good thing (and, I suspect, a good message for many of the convention-goers on this particular trip).

Nevertheless, despite the quality and importance of the messaging, there’s no getting around the fact that being handed a condom by a complete stranger every hour or two is inherently amusing.

And it’s happened enough that it becomes possible to glean patterns in the distribution. The first condom I was given was a standard lubricated Trojan, quite unremarkable. The second, however, was a larger-sized “magnum” version. I laughed and thanked the young man handing them out for his vote of confidence, and the next day my first condom was also a magnum. Perhaps I was impressing people more than I believed?

But then I noticed the pattern: the women distributing the merchandise had exclusively handed me standard-issue Trojans, while the men – to a person – offered the jumbo editions.

Now, I am not one to speak to the social-psychological implications behind which condom I’m handed. Perhaps, if I were a man passing them out, passing out a large-sized condom to a fellow male of the species would feel like a friendly pat on the back, and I would save the standard sized for the women. It doesn’t seem too likely that the choice of condom had sexual innuendo attached, but if it did … well, the mind boggles.

I won’t be attending the Republican convention. As a partisan progressive Democrat, I’d have no interest beyond the anthropological, and that would get old fast. Something tells me, though, that in contrast to the plentiful prophylactics and accompanying messaging here in Denver, the RNC will be more of a, shall we say, abstinence-only affair.

From Politico’s Ben Smith:

Leahy told Vogel yesterday the media has given McCain a free pass on flubs including mixing up Middle East geography, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and referring to Russia’s relationship Czechoslovakia – a country that hasn’t existed for 15 years

With Democrats on the precipice of raising the age issue against John McCain, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont seemed to cross the line completely, then immediately backtrack, my colleague Ken Vogel reports.

…The press “let Ronald Regan get away with” slips, Leahy said, though he denied he was suggesting that McCain was experiencing mental decline.

“No, I’m just saying he gets a free ride,” Leahy said.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see Leahy broaching age at all. He’s no spring chicken himself, after all. I see him broaching the issue of incompetence, and the refusal of the traditional media to face such questions. I see no mention of McCain’s age being mentioned, and even the new media ubersite Huffington Post is casting this as an attack based on age. User diarists on dKos are all a-twitter.

Hogwash. It’s about competence, and we have to be able to have the conversation plainly, without falling into the trap about people’s birthdates and courting charges of ageism that would hurt us in the senior community needlessly.

That said, Leahy needs to firm up his point, lest he invite just this kind of criticism.

When I went to the “gala” Monday night featuring the likes of Bill Maher, Susan Sarandon, etc, I had in mind a diary juxtaposing the well-intentioned frivolity of the event against the simultaneous “serious” conventioneering happening – in that case, a speech by Michelle Obama. Over the last day, though, I’ve changed my mind. There is no juxtaposition – the gala affair actually fit right in to the greater context.

And before you assume that’s a sneer, put-down, or dismissal of the convention – it’s not. It’s just a… thing.

I suppose if I’d thought about it very deeply I would’ve come to this conclusion anyway, but being immersed in it now makes it easier to recognize. A political convention like this is always made up of 1 part politics, a pinch of activism, and about 10 parts fluff. Fluff like the kind of marshmallow fluff that doesn’t have any nutritional value, but it really makes the people who reach for it feel good. It’s simply the nature of the beast, and the longer I’m here, the more I feel that those who are criticizing it so venemously are criticizing it on their personal terms, rather than on its own terms. Call it a pep rally, a revival tent, or whatever – these conventions serve to gather, energize and support the faithful, and in the process do some basic (and I mean really, really basic) messaging to the traditional media. Although the traditional media coverage has been (for the most part) predictably banal, it’s clear at this point that – barring any big disaster – those goals are being met.

But I’ll go a step further still. This convention, with all its obligatory pageantry and silly peripherals, is accomplishing more than what a traditional convention does, and although its happening organically, the DNC deserves a share of credit for helping seed the process.

The presence of new media and their (our) impact on the character of the overall event is pronounced, and seems to be growing daily. In fact, the traditional media have been roving for something different to cover as their largely fabricated “disaffected PUMA” storyline has fizzled, and the Recreate 68 protests have not been entertainingly violent enough (its a real crime that the media only want to cover “lifestyle anarchist” style, slash-and-burn protests and are neglecting some of the extraordinary and effective demonstrations underway by groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and the like…. but that’s a diary for another time).

Increasingly, those traditional media folks are gravitating to the “Big Tent” new media hub, where unknowns like myself are only a table or two away from luminaries like Markos Moulitsas and Jane Hamsher. Today, especially, you couldn’t spit without hitting a professional journalist. Two reporters from The Financial Times stopped by to speak to me this morning. JDRyan called me from his cell and reported that a journalist from an Italian paper had stopped him to chat in the street. And I’m still on call to possibly talk to local Denver TV.

Increasingly, the emergence and convergence of new, citizen media are becoming, if not the story, certainly a story. And in a classic case of self-fulfilling storylines, the more such coverage increases, the more prominent, meaningful and significant the new media become. More attention makes us a bigger part of the story, and the bigger a part of the story we are, the more good we can do – and influencing the very traditional media that we’re all interfacing with is a big step towards maximizing that effect.

The point is, there’s a real community of progressive, citizen media – and its maturing daily before my eyes. It’s a process that couldn’t possibly be unfolding in such a way without the catalyst of the convention to power it. And that’s just a simple fact.

A lot of people deserve credit for making this happen, but clearly DNC Chair Howard Dean is among those on the top of the list. Dean has a real affinity for the blogs, and his opening the convention (and the convention floor) to bloggers and new media sites in such an unprecedented way set the stage.

Also at the top of that list are Markos Moulitsas and his cohorts at Daily Kos (even that Kagro guy). The extra-convention blogger space dubbed The Big Tent is more than just a new media hub, its a full blown incubator – and, as mentioned above, a space where the new and old media are increasingly coming together.

So a big thank you to both of our hosts is in order. Whatever else comes out of this convention, progressive citizen media has been given a real steroid shot in the arm, and the repercussions of that shot are likely to be many and varied… and very, very interesting…

It was a full house at the breakfast hosted by Senator Leahy’s Green Mountain PAC this morning. One person I caught up with was former Governor Kunin who has been blogging herself during the convention at the Huffington Post. To my delight, her reports are among the best I’ve seen… really good stuff. I asked her how it felt to be a blogger…

Quick note: There’ll be other stuff soon – written and video, including some video not well suited to the little zannel widget above, such as an anti-war demonstration I was fortunate enough to encounter. There was, reportedly, tear gas fired at protesters last night while I was elsewhere, but details seem to be sketchy.

Also a quick thanks to Julie and others for keeping the local focus while we’re off running around confused in the wild, wild west.

(crossposted at the UK Guardian website)

The state of Vermont is many things to many people, as those of us who live here are subjected to a daily helping of someone or another trying to define the mercurial “Vermont Way.” One thing everyone can agree on though is that Vermont is small. Burlington, it’s largest city, is home to a mere 40,000 people.

The state’s size and rural character makes for unique political dynamics. Vermont doesn’t have the critical population mass to sustain a “political class” in the sense that larger states do. What it has instead is something smaller and less impenetrable; what could be called a series of political “cliques.” In other states, for example, the prized national delegate slots are generally allotted to party elite, but in Vermont there exist opportunities for those who are not blessed with such institutional gravitas.

At 18, first-time voter and Obama delegate Taylor Bates may well be the youngest delegate at the convention and will be able to boast a unique introduction to the Democratic process. Bates, who at the 2008 State Convention was a high school senior, had to defeat more than 100 other candidates for a national delegate position, including some current officeholders. Bates was well positioned to be the beneficiary of an influx of new activists, engaged by the Obama campaign and who were moved to send newer – and younger – faces to Denver’s national stage.

But you didn’t have to be a new voter to break through the array of insiders. Delegate Daria MonDesire is a writer who has lived many years in Vermont’s northeast kingdom. Previously unengaged with Party politics, her compelling oratory captured the roomful of State Convention voters – no small feat given that each candidate was allotted a mere thirty seconds to speak.

MonDesire’s (pronounced mondeZEER) work has been published widely, and is working on a novel about the “first black president.” An African American woman in the most rural region of the “whitest” state, she drew national attention through an article that took umbridge at the declaration of Bill Clinton as “the first black president” during his personal travails. As such, she is not unfamiliar with national attention, but this stage is one she wouldn’t have expected to find herself on.

“I’m not nervous at all….maybe I should be,” MonDesire remarked the Sunday before the Convention. After acknowledging “survivor’s guilt” at being one of the few  Vermont delegates selected, she made clear that she had no intention of quietly walking back into political anonymity when it ended.

MonDesire said that the delegate selection process had left her “disenchanted,” citing its favored treatment of high ranking officeholders, and the influence of  “the muscle of Chittenden County,” the state’s largest county.

MonDesire indicated she “would like to do something to help change it.”

Bates and MonDesire are enjoying opportunities they would likely not have had access to elsewhere. Opportunities that will likely prove transformative – both for themselves, and ultimately for the Vermont Democratic Party.

Vermonters will certainly get their per capita share of coverage for the Democratic Convention starting tomorrow. Here’s a sense of what you can expect from GMD writers…

For myself, I’ll be posting one or two reports a day that will alternately focus on some of the more interesting peripheral events (there are many), as well as the Vermont delegation itself. To supplement coverage, I’ll be posting roughly 3 brief video “lifecast” style posts a day viewable at the zannel.com widget atop the page. In addition, I’ll be doing some blogging for the website of the UK’s Guardian newspaper. They will be viewable on the Guardian op-ed page, “Comment is Free America” and will be crossposted here (I think).

JDRyan will be blogging at Five Before Chaos as well as this site – and will be doing some vlogging of his own at the VCAM site. He gives us this preview:

As far as people go,  I’m covering Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton and whatever happens inside Invesco (as well as any other speakers I happen to see). Some might be articles, some might be liveblogging, I’m not sure yet. I’m also gonna cover some of the stuff in the Big Tent, and as much as I can cover of the protests without getting in trouble. I’ll also interview anyone I have access to if they’re notable.

Christian Avard will also be at the convention, but will be blogging under the auspices of the Huffington Post. I suspect he’ll be crossposting some of his coverage here, as well. Christian:

I’ll be doing spot news stories and exclusives for Huffington Post’s “Off the Bus.” Expect lots of photos. I’ll be covering a variety of events: Big Tent, protests, PDA conference, the press pool scene, etc. I’ll also do a nightly recap of events, observations, and gossip for Green Mountain Daily, iBrattleboro, and now Docudharma!

….and of course, blogging luminary and former GMD front pager Kagro X will be on the scene for DailyKos. Kagro sez:

I really have next to no idea what I’m going to do there… My backup plan is to borrow a video camera and post some “You Are There” YouTube videos, just conveying the experience.

Most of my time will be making the rounds of traditional institutional advocacy groups, looking to build bridges on legislative analysis, which we’re going to be doing a lot more of next year.

While we fully expect to inundate you with coverage, if you just can’t get enough, Delegate Philip Baruth will not only be blogging at Vermont Daily Briefing, but at the Burlington Free Press website as well.

Seven Days will also have a blogger on hand, but I forget who because I’m stupid. An attempt to find out on their website (including using their search function) came up short, and I’m too tired to keep looking. Maybe somebody can let us know.

And as far as the Democrats themselves, there will be updates on their website, as well some early-week blogging from gubernatorial candidate Gaye Symington on her campaign website.

…..and there will no doubt be even more from other media outlets. If you’re not sick of hearing about this stuff by now, give it – ohhh, about 24 hours. In the meantime, our intrepid GMD crew will continue to remember the other things going on in the state and the world, I’m sure.

…but not necessarily a place for the political blogger to sleep:

John Odum, 40, the lead author of the political blog Green Mountain Daily, felt similarly conflicted. Though his readers did supply him with a new laptop computer on his 40th birthday, Mr. Odum, who lives in Montpelier, Vt., and works for a local environmental nonprofit, was reluctant to ask them for further acts of generosity. In an election year, he said, “People ought to be giving it to a candidate, not giving me their spare money.”

Now a yellow “donate” icon on his site links to a separate PayPal account, where readers can contribute toward Mr. Odum’s estimated $1,000 travel costs. He said he had received enough support to pay for the $400 air fare.

“It takes me back to my hippie-ish youth, thrown in a situation with very little to fall back on and not 100 percent certain where I’ll be sleeping,” Mr. Odum said. He said he might have to unfurl his sleeping bag on someone’s hotel room floor if the housing space he reserved on Craigslist does not pan out.

Among the devoted readers who believe Mr. Odum deserves their donations is Nate Freeman, one of two Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor of Vermont. Mr. Freeman, 40, gave about $100 to Mr. Odum’s laptop fund, and said he would contribute $50 for Mr. Odum’s convention trip.

“Barack doesn’t need my 50 bucks,” Mr. Freeman said, “but John does.”

And yeah, the Craigslist connection disappeared, but I’m working on it…