an unconventional convention

There in the stands, it was the same thing, only multiplied by 80,000. Sure, some of the working stiffs in our press section looked like me -- pale-faced and grey-haired, sweaty and pooped from carrying camera equipment, bearded and khakied -- but the delegates mostly didn't. They were older urban black women with dark lipstick and good clothes; they were middle-aged white women, fine lines around their eyes and in this setting not attached to men; they were full-throated youngsters, some with accents, getting mustard from their brats on their jeans as they jumped up and down like the Broncos were making a fourth-quarter drive to the end zone.

But the guys that I have always associated with politics -- guys like me and Al Gore, white, well-educated, noblesse oblige know-it-alls -- were very much in the minority. And, at this moment, without the gender or color to be visible.
That was a clue, perhaps, to some of the perplexing questions of this election year: the mystery of the polls stuck in neutral; the lack of obvious inner circle of pals (of any color or gender) around Barack Obama; the corporate wizards you never see, feverishly pulling levers behind the curtains at these rock star events; and the off-putting belligerence of Hillary supporters toward the charismatic candidate who beat her.

Let's pretend, for purposes of argument, that John McCain did not on Friday gift-wrap the White House like an Alaskan smoked salmon for Barack Obama, and examine these mysteries. Beginning with the last one: what's with this enduring anger among Hillary’s women?

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www.demconvention.com

When journalists like me analyze campaigns, we mostly talk to the big-shot strategists (usually male; usually white) from D.C. We don't often sit in on county caucuses, or interview the folks who faithfully walk the wards and do the dirty work of a party organization. But I drop in on those meetings now and then, and I'll risk this generalization: the faithful who attend and somehow stay awake in the school cafeterias and county courtrooms for the droning, essential exercises of political parties at the community level, the ones who organize the agenda and remind people to come, are predominantly older women.

This may have its roots in the 1950s, when many of our mothers stayed home to manage families, with schedules flexible enough, and spirits restless enough, to get to party meetings. That was a time today's young working women can only imagine, when the best chance a female had to express herself politically was by doing a party's essential housekeeping.

In Denver, there was a certain grim set to the faces of many of the women, even as they (not all, but some) grudgingly shifted to support the party's astonishing young champion. At the Women's Caucus in the vast Denver Convention Center, they acknowledged a pantheon of heroes I didn't recognize, women who had worked for lifetimes organizing, making phone calls, setting out refreshments, attending and running those county-level party meetings that are the smallest capillaries of the political circulatory system. Please don't think I’m mocking them -- my mother did this, and I admired her boundlessly. The audience's warmth of recognition for the speakers was palpable, but a stranger like me knew none of the names or faces -- because despite their decades of dedication, few had been invited to take the podium as candidates. They enabled others -- usually men, often stupider, often vainer, men.

Later, standing in a refreshments line at Invesco Thursday -- no beer at this Super Bowl, but I felt gonzo enough for a brat -- a woman from California told me, "Hillary paid a lot of dues, deep dues." As had the woman waiting in line. That was the connection, and the source of bitterness. When it came time to party, the Democrats turned their backs on the flag bearer for the gender-specific workers who had sacrificed lifetimes for the cause, and flipped over the young, black male who had just walked in the door.

I should mention an important, joyful subset to this group. The women of color on the bus I rode to the stadium were glowing. Several were old enough to remember the 1960s -- and some of their aging joints stiffened on the long walk through security into Invesco Field. But they weren't going to miss it. While they were clearly sensitive to the loss felt by some of their white sisters, they understood the scale of this accomplishment. And when the dull repetition of the afternoon's speechifying began to ascend toward inspiring rhetoric -- when John Lewis intoned like a preacher, and then Martin Luther King's voice rang out as his image appeared on the screens -- I hope they looked at the whites in their midst, as I looked at them, and realized what a triumph it was that we were wet-eyed together.

Obama wants to change the way Americans politick, particularly the ugly negativity that inflates non-germane issues like the ethnicity of a candidate's child, or the absence of a lapel pin. That sort of rhetorical cancer is pretty easy to spot and address.

Harder to remove is the influence of corporate America on the political process. It isn't so obvious -- you don't see an Exxon bumper sticker on the convention podium -- but it's everywhere. The party in Denver was catered by corporate America.

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When the Rolling Stones fill a football stadium, they charge admission. They sell CD's. They make enough money to pay the security guards and take home a few million. But there's no charge in Denver for the endless series of lunches, receptions, and parties. Since the outcome was already decided, delegates did not spend five days meeting with candidates, trying to make a decision. They spent five days wandering from shrimp dip to Chardonnay.

For instance, a lavish luncheon for Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Wednesday was not put on by the Wyoming delegation or some old law school buddies. It was paid for by the FMC Corporation, which no doubt wrote it off as a business expense for its lucrative trona operations in the Cowboy State. This is not to suggest that Wyoming politicians can be bought with prime rib; but corporations are not charities, and the practice is so ingrained that no one -- certainly not the buffaloed press – finds it troubling.

Nothing new, but it certainly is more pervasive than it used to be. Corporate America, following the lead of Dick Cheney at Halliburton, knows that an essential tool of "free enterprise" in the 21st century is good government contracts and connections. And politicians know, as they make the rounds in Denver and Minneapolis, that the show of wealth at these events is also a show of muscle. And that muscle will be knocking loudly on their doors when they get back to governing.

Weeks before the convention, some political insiders said the Democrats were $50 million short of paying for the extravaganza. The docile press simply broadcasts the carefully packaged message from the podiums, rarely asking who foots the bill. That's fine with the corporations -- the cocktail parties are mostly invitation-only, and, as press, I got turned away from two of them -- who want the politicians, not the public, to be aware who's picking up the tab. Something to think about as the masses celebrate "their" victory at the appropriately labeled Pepsi Center and Invesco Field.

And who are and where is Barack Obama's inner circle? In the run-up to the convention, when the Clinton coterie of consultants (Mark Penn, Geoff Garin, etc.) and political allies (Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Sen. John McCain ... no, wait) were scrumming all over the field, Obama seemed to wander alone, his message sounding a little forlorn, even his "friends" suggesting through the press -- as if no one had his cell phone number -- that he better cowboy up.

John Kennedy, the candidate Obama is most often compared to, had a bunch of pros, many of them old family retainers of his father's, to shore up his inexperience. Some of them were truly intimate -- his brother Robert, and Ted Sorenson -- and you knew they'd join him in the inner sanctum when he faced his 3 a.m. of the soul.

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Obama's life story simply doesn't supply that kind of deep-rooted political Mafia. But he is not doing this alone. And if the convention did nothing else, it should quiet those who worry about his supporting cast -- the game was nearly perfectly pitched, and the candidate and his managers had the unhurried confidence and patience to know he would cast out the doubters with his acceptance speech.

For the record, the two key players in what appears to be a brilliantly organized campaign are David Axelrod and David Plouffe. You don't hear much about them because -- unlike Clinton's sniping consultants -- they assiduously avoid the limelight.

Axelrod is the strategist who came up with "Change You Can Believe in" and "Yes We Can." Plouffe, probably more important, is the grass roots organizer, the one who sets up state offices faster than competitors, the one who is plotting to register hundreds of thousands of new voters.

Which brings us to those recent polls. Do they matter? Not much. These are the same brilliant folks who gave John Kerry the last presidential election before the last votes were cast. They instill panic in consultants who think frenetic activity is brilliance.

Political change is glacial when it involves getting a voter to change his or her preferences. Most of us are generally inclined to vote for the Democrat or the Republican, the conservative or the progressive, regardless of the name or the year. Historically, a more effective way to change the political tide is to bring in a whole new raft of voters -- a Democratic Party strategy that goes back to Andrew Jackson in the 1830s.

It's an obvious tactic, for either party, in an era when voter turnout is roughly 64 percent ... in a good year. There are 70 million eligible voters out there who didn't do it in 2004.

The Obama campaign has done that within the party -- that's how they won so many caucuses -- and now they're hard at work finding those sleeping votes for November. The targets are African-Americans and young people. Young people particularly are hard to measure with the current methods of polling -- you've probably heard of the cell phone problem (my daughter, for instance, lives in North Carolina, but has a Wyoming cell phone...).

That's my report from the Democratic Convention, which, I realize, has wandered far afield into analysis from the vivid moment of history in Mile High Stadium that drew me there in the first place. A few more random notes:

The Wyoming contingent: first, despite my whining about the corporate underwriting of events, Wyoming delegates paid their own way, which was not cheap; second, Gov. Dave Freudenthal was offered a chance to join the long daily lineup of redundant speakers at the convention (which television mostly spared viewers at home) -- an offer no one from dog catcher up seemed able to refuse -- and the Wyoming Guv smartly declined six minutes in the spotlight when all the network cameras were turned away.

There was substance in Obama's final speech, in addition to the seductive theater of it all, and not all of that substance will please those who think he is some sort of progressive messiah. He pledged $153 billion to renewable energy, but he also promoted nuclear power, without any caveat about waste. He promised to make health care available to everyone, not to provide it universally.

But he said some things that were good to hear. "We are a better country than this." "America -- that last, best hope." "Change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington."