LiveBlogging the Roll Call in Denver

This is why I am a political junkie
First nominating speech for Hillary

This year has taught me much.  Highest on that list is how much of a disservice the MSM does for this country.

Starting with the big guns, eh?  Nancy Pelosi.  Wow, nomination process is underway!

Love those voter registration numbers.  Folks are trying in these parts, Western Washington, but apparently are having trouble finding folks not registered! I hear we have the highest registration numbers in the country.

first Obama nomination sppech comes from a republican
good move Obama people

I thought I had come a long way in my path from being a Republican, being from a diehard R family with an Air Force dad.  But that guy that just put Obama's nomination has come a LONG way.  Raised in the reddest of states, OK, coming from a Republican family and serving in the military.  HE supports Obama.  And my dad is leaning that way.  I look at that just shake my head at the polling.  When the Dems come out of this convention united and then start laying the heat on McCain, there's no way we don't see a President Obama.

She can help us win Florida with speeches like that!  That was great having a Hillary supporter second the nomination.

A new poll today finds that 53% of Americans think Obama will raise their taxes - http://www.gallup.com/poll/109816/Half-Americans-Expect-Obama-Raise-Thei... - actually, Obama will decrease taxes for 95% of people, and decrease taxes for 80% of them more than McCain.

I made a calculator to figure this out for yourself at http://ObamaTaxCut.com

I think this could be useful for persuading the (at least) 52% of voters who don't understand Obama's tax policies.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans is just breathtaking.  They probably made skid marks to try and mock the "columns".  It would never occur to them check first and see if maybe they had done the same thing.

They are so busted with the pictures of Bush from 2004.  They might also want to take a look at the architecture in Washington, D.C. You guessed it, there are columns everywhere.

They passed?

California passes? Huh?  Is that so they can give their votes to Hillary only if Obama has enough to ensure that the Cali votes don't make a difference?

might have 200 - 300 votes today, but I was really surprised that Arkansas went totally for Obama.

This part of the convention used to be more interesting in the 60s and 70s.

She can help us win Florida with speeches like that!  That was great having a Hillary supporter second the nomination.

Tara: I thought DW-S did a great job!  I can't wait to see her stumping for Obama with that same enthusiasm.

Eliot and Joy - Stay calm. At every convention states - particularly the big states - "pass" like California just did. It's often a maneuver to get back in line and be THE state that puts the winner over the top later on.

Your instincts should always be to stay calm until you know why something has happened. Otherwise, you just contribute to unnecessary panic.

It wasn't so much panic as confusion.  I was thinking that they didn't want to give Hillary too many votes, just in case.  But thanks for the explanation.

You should work to get that calculator out there.  That's a kick ass tool for Obama to put on his website.  Of course, you're not going to get very many folk's attention with it now.  But really, there should be a calculator for each candidate's proposals.  A GREAT idea!

I'm loving watching the roll call.

CSPAN is listing 2118 votes needed to nominate. Since MI and FL were given full votes, that's wrong - it should be 2210, shouldn't it? MSNBC has it right...

Looking at this it occurred to me how many women I have watched so far on the stage in this convention.  Michelle and Hillary ruled prime-time, Kathleen Sebelius as the chair, here we have Nancy Pelosi and Madame Secretary running the show here - and many of the vote casters are also women.

KD

Since the 1950s I have always enjoyed the roll call at conventions. In former times has been suspense and greater anticipation. Yet it is an exciting and inspiring ritual of a democratic country. Love it!

KD

and I am loving the roll call...something so democratic and wonderful.

so goes Vermont.

OBAMA THE FIRST BLACK MAN TO EVER BE NOMINATED BY A MAJOR PARTY FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!

It's official. Barack's the one! And Hillary's move for acclamation was gracious and healing for the party. It helps the party and it helps her.

The orchestration behind this is incredible. they pulled one on both the corporate and liberal media and choreographed the perfect story. Kudos to Al for picking up on it.

Put that together with their "math skills" and on - the - ground organizing skills and you have quite the politician.

What am I missing?

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

Just like Al said it was going to go.

Poor Wyoming...do they ever do the roll call in reverse?

CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA.

amk

What a glad moment, Barack is the official nominee!!!!

What a day!!! This day is for Obama, for all those who fought and struggled for equality, and for America. Woohoo!!!!!!!

Great touch having Clinton move for nominating by acclamation.

Yes. We. Did. And yes we will in November!

If you read most of the Pro-Hillary blogs like TalkLeft, you'll find they are REALLY pissed about the roll call process and thought it did a big disservice to Hillary.

There are countless "She almost had me last night, but after this, forget it".

Ugh... helpless.

I respect Senator Clinton again - she's good.

She totally messed up traditional media's disunity meme.

Amk - thank you.  It's about 7:15 in western MA, USA, and I just LOVE how this technology and our shared values have created community. I watched the roll call on CNN.com - and tho we knew the outcome, it still stuns me how excited I am about what's happening.   It really IS happening!!!!  YES WE CAN.  What a glorious day this is for the world!

Love that Barack is  FINALLY the official nominee!!!!  Wow- it's been a long time coming --- in more ways than one.

Al, thanks for all your interesting reports - I've been reading your blog anonymously every day almost hourly. 

I got a new computer recently and in the process lost my password for The Field.  I have sent a couple of emails this past week to get it restored (where it says on the top of the page to request a new password.) but have not received any correspondence on it.   I hate to bother you at the convention so I apologize but can you direct this to one of your IT guys? Thank you Thank you.

 Catherine Cain 

I just love watching History be made.

That was pretty amazing. Thank you, Senator Clinton. That's all I can say.

I have refrained from talking about Hillary's hold-outs since she conceded the primary, but I just have to say that I am so sick of hearing about them and what they want that I have to change the channel every time it comes on. Mostly because I know that if we had lost, and we were doing this, it wouldn't get a second of airtime, and it certainly wouldn't have gone as far as the convention. But I'm not bitter or anything.

I'm just glad he's the (almost) official nominee. I'm probably going to bawl tomorrow night.

And a Big Thank You, Al.

I was floundering in a sea of blogs before I found sanity at The Field.

Yes. We. Did. Indeed.

amk

No, those folks are a) Repugs or b) true dead-enders.  Still trying to stir the pot.  Whatever...time to walk away.  All the rational folks are on board or soon will be.  The rest deserve to live with their scorn and the cancer (figurative and literal) that it will bring to them.  It's hard to even imagine the kind of world those folks live in.  That goes for the Repugs too.  Do they really have nothing better to do with their lives than fuel fires?

It's great theater.  And I'm not sure why people though it would be bad if it happened.  Ending with acclamation was good.  But it would have been great if they had just let it play out.  I wanted to see the rest of the states!!

I agree with you that registration and turnout is the key - particularly in swing states.

Acorn, however, has a pattern of registering large numbers of people but doing it incorrectly and sloppily.  I recall many registrations they had made being disallowed in prior elections, with legal citizens being disenfranchised as a result.  Part of the problem was that staff was paid based on the number of voters they enrolled.  I hope they've corrected those prior problems, and together with all the other folks registering voters, it makes the difference.

Next, it will be getting all these voters to the polls and knowing which lever to pull (metaphorically...).

Good to know he is a Dem.  That can help with turnout.  Man, he's a bad speaker though...

This is absolutely awesome. Choreographed to perfection. New Mexico to Illinois to NY to acclimation. Followed by women in the Senate and House saying why Obama must be elected. ‘Tho it hard to be in TN where everyone seems to have written us off. Never-the-less I keep working to get my network working to bring about change.

I heard that CA passed because many of the delegates from the state legislature had gone back for an important vote, and they were still getting the proxies in order. Not sure if it's true, or if CA might not have passed anyway since it's such a big bloc of votes, but just shows that there are credible, innocuous explanations for everything that's been odd.

idiotic Ayers smear.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_camp_to_mccain_camp_um_y.php

amk

Here's Ploufee on states, organizing, and polls:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/08/27/the-view-fro...

"Most of the world sees tomorrow night's speech as Obama's big coming out. Plouffe and the Obama campaign see it as an organizing event on steroids. Plouffe stressed that there would be 60,000 voters who aren't donors or delegates in the audience tomorrow, roughly half of them from Colorado. The hope is to collect their e-mail addresses and phone numbers and integrate them into the campaign's Colorado ground organization. "We don't think about national polls," Plouffe said over and over. "We think about states."

Plouffe wasn't kidding about that last point. Later in the discussion, he talked about how Jim Leach, the former Republican Congressman from Iowa who spoke Monday night, wasn't carried on most networks or really talked about at the convention. "But, boy, the coverage he got in Iowa was voluminous," Plouffe said. He made a similar point about Brian Schweitzer in Montana, though Schweitzer obviously generated a bit of buzz in the national press."

And remember to Digg it up here:

http://digg.com/politics/ObamaTaxCut_com_What_s_your_Obama_Tax_Cut

And here's Plouffe on McCain's attacks and how voters see McCain:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/08/27/the-view-from-plouffe-s-office.aspx

"Asked repeatedly about the success of the recent McCain attacks, Plouffe conceded that they'd had an effect. In particular, he said they'd helped McCain consolidate his base. But he argued that the progress had come at a real cost for McCain with women, among whom Obama has opened up a 15 point lead in several key states. The point was that McCain was getting more of the voters he should get, but not expanding his universe of gettable voters.

Relatedly, Plouffe argued that the campaign was in a much better position to define McCain than it was two months ago. Back then, he said, voters accepted that McCain would mean more of the same, policy-wise. But they rejected the idea of McCain as a practitioner of scorched-earth politics, and the idea of McCain as remote from their problems. No more, Plouffe said. Swing voters are now receptive to both points. (Plouffe said the campaign talks to 10,000 voters every night.)

Plouffe seemed pretty eager--or as eager as the famously even-keel manager gets--at the prospect of running against a McCain-Romney ticket. He may be at ease talking about the economy, Plouffe said, "but they're really doubling down on 'out of touch.'" Plouffe also bemusedly referred to Romney as an expert on "Cayman Island tax shelters."

Finally, Pfeiffer made a great point about the significance of McCain's housing gaffe. The gist: Before the gaffe, people saw McCain's policies as a continuation of Bush, but they didn't really understand why McCain would support them. The housing gaffe helped them connect the dots: It's because McCain's out of touch."

Ok, this is going to be a bit rambling, sorry, I just thought I might share my excitement and some rather unstructured thoughts.

I just tuned in and watched a bit of a civil rights leader being interviewed at the convention after the roll call on MSNBC (I missed his name, unfortunately). His reminder of those Americans who worked for civil rights more than 40 years ago, those people who fought and even died for the right for African-Americans to vote as we stand here today and celebrate Barack Obama's nomination as the Democratic nominee, made me feel both solemn and yet joyful (Democratic Underground had something during the Mississippi primary which moved me to tears with a similiar feeling -- grateful to those who went before and joyful and proud that we're helping to make happen that for which they gave their lives).

I know this will be discussed a great deal tomorrow during Barack Obama's speech as it is the anniversary of MLK's "I have a Dream Speech" but I guess this all occured to me when I didn't expect it. I've never experienced this feeling of being so moved by a movement for change, the wave of history in poltics this way before (though have long been interested in politics). It's very moving to me and I felt I got one of those brief "aha!" visceral moments of understanding and a glimpse how the potential of people to join together to stand up for what is right, to organize, to fight, to hold a light on the path the future is a power but also then, if understood, becomes a kind of an obligation and at the same time, a great honor.

I got a brief feeling that while we joyfully and confidentidenally declare: "Yes we can!" we are too saying gratefully to those who came before: "Yes, you did!" and with pride and determination to those who will come after: "Yes, you will!.

 Today they are a good thing! I missed the roll call on Teevee, but reading it here brought tears to my eyes. Thank You Al, and all of the fieldhands. What a great day!

wacthing evan bayh's speech:  why is he doing a gwb impersonation.  the head bobbing . the turned up clutching hands. short list? ha.

We have to get this on HuffPo. Everyone send in as a tip. (On the right on the homepage.)

ObamaTaxCut.com

Just for y'all's info, you can watch a clean feed of the convention without any commentary online at MSNBC - just click on "watch live" in the band at the top of the screen. (Sometimes CSPAN doesn't work for me)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/

We are seeing the reclamation of America after the 27 year theft that began with Reagan and was only partially mitigated by Clinton triangulation.

Ms Clinton more than rose to the occasion and Bubba will now only look ridiculous if he tosses off some sulky thing. The Clintons did what they could in the day under fairly horrid conditions like a Gingrich Congress.

This is different like Carter in 76. The broadscale devastation to our national fabric from the Reagan launched looter era is now finally doomed. It's probably just in the nick of time given the pending implosion of a healthy middle class from debt, earning stagnation and monumental fraud from the Looting Class.

Fairness can now come home.

Bill is being brilliant.

amk

amk

He is giving a brilliant brilliant speech.

Now THAT's the Bill I remember!

Great Job Bill. Thank you.

amk

(Playing Bill out with "Addicted To Love" was an odd choice...)

I can't wipe the grin off my face - Bill was great.  I think he was better than Hillary actually, because he really emphasized Barack Obama.

KD

He does know how to get the job done.  He was even uncomfortable with the degree of the welcome he rec'd.  He really seemed to not want to upstage the real events.  "We've got work to do here."  Lots of good sound bites...loved it.

THIS is the stuff I've been waiting for.  Folks just now tuning in to the election are going to have a very good case laid out in front of them.

Bill Clinton did his job!  Yes, there were a lot of "I's" - but he did the job!

Since Clinton is a sex addict of the highest order, I'd say playing him out with "Addicted to Love" is perfect!

knows where I can see it from the start ?

amk

You are 80% forgiven!  You both hit it out of the park today and we appreciate it...

Keep it up it through November, and pay off your own debts, and I'll love you again...

But really...Bill DID come through for real today!

Thanks, Bill!

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

Okay, John Kerry is on fire!  Outdoing himself actually.  Senator vs. Candidate McCain!  "Are you kidding me?"

He's really doing GREAT!!

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

"Before John McCain ever debates Barack Obama, he should finish the debate with himself!"

That is one of the best lines I've heard all night!

Kerry is giving a great speech!  If only he had done that 4 years ago.....Well, maybe we have all learned a few things.

He's got the guts today to say what all Democrats need to say in response to the Republican Party's attack. This is courage and this is what the media was asking for. Did they at least show it?? I was watching on CSPAN.

It might be that the scales-falling-from-my-eyes feeling about him during the primaries or his recent "I'll tell you all what I *really* think later" stage whispers to the press but Bill's speech tonight strikes me as a difference between a great orator and someone speaking from the heart (the marine wife who spoke right after him spoke from her heart, she meant every word and she clearly ached with her passion about what she felt).

That said, he gave a good speech, he said what he needed to say and he's taken a step toward redeeming himself to the party as he needed to do. I thought he hit the right notes and it's even possible that he introduced some new memes into the campaign and for those things I can thank him and congratulate him on a job well done.

Kerry was all fire and passion! Yay, Kerry!

YES!  John Kerry - wow!  Best speech I've ever heard him give!

With all these 'surrogates' on the road until Nov.

YES WE CAN!

GRAND SLAM. beeeyoootiful.

Kerry mad.. was a reference to an old article Al mentioned recently something he wrote 4 years ago when kerry ran.

Wow.

Here's a transcript of Clinton's speech as prepared, though not as delivered .... The ad lib parts, when available, I suspect will be worth noting. 

And the only observation I'll make that might not fit right in with all the glowing stuff -- though it was a brilliant speech, the guy is good (Irish like Kennedy, but not gorm) -- is the reaction of Michelle Obama (as I saw it on camera) to Bill's apparent ad lib comment about the primary making Obama a stronger, better candidate, having tested and steeled him.

I don't know, Michelle seemed a bit, well, circumspect about that comment. It was sort of like someone telling you, after they just broke your nose in a fit of temper, that they did you a favor, after all.

... Didn't sit quite right with me, even if a grain of truth can be found in it.

But in the context of the bigger political game, being the consumate politician that he is, Bill did deliver.

I agree with you about Bill. Haven't gone through the prepared remarks. Will do, tho'.

I found Bill's speech to be like starting a kayak race off of a rocky shore. Took a while to find the balance from the waves slapping back.

Senator Obama is the nominee.  My Great Gran, Gran and Mother would be SO pleased. Thanks for providing such a wonderful environment Al.  This is my 2nd post.  Woo-hoo!

Set the bar high for BO -- He'll top it, but it will be tough!

Bill's nose is working well.  I responded to that comment too.  Tho, mostly I remember seeing the 2 of them in the audience, when Obama took the microphone from Jill Biden, and OWNED THE HOUSE!

Past in the stands, FUTURE on stage.  WOW!  Plouffe & Co. really are brilliant - I am in awe of this campaign.