The Denver Carnival

Showmanship rules the DNC's various conventions

By CARA BAYLES

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The Democratic National Convention tore through Denver like a week-long, altitude-induced hallucination. The politicians, press and protesters have since abandoned the city, as the national spotlight swings to St. Paul, Minn. The Democrats' show will be hard to beat: They touted their accomplishments, goals and above all, populism. But in reality, Denver hosted two conventions last week, and the beauty pageant in the Pepsi Center differed from the political theater on the street.

One month ago, Jack Kelly, a delegate for Massachusetts' 8th Congressional District, sat in the Rosebud Diner and talked about the Big Tent. "You can't just speak to one group," he said. "If you don't talk about the guy who goes to work every day, you're pushing him out."

He worried that Barack Obama couldn't win over the "Reagan Democrats" of Kelly's native middle-class Charlestown. Kelly was elected as a pledged Hillary Clinton delegate and even when she didn't get the numbers, he insisted she was the stronger candidate. But then he saw the writing on the wall. "We need to get behind Barack Obama, otherwise the issues Hillary supported won't be addressed," he said. "I want to convey a message of unity."

Not everyone agreed with Kelly. Mary Hatheway is a member of PUMA (Party Unity My Ass)—an organization that insists Clinton was robbed of the nomination—who came to Denver from Pennsylvania to protest. "I've worked on every Democratic presidential campaign since McGovern," she said. "But it's not my party anymore. I'm voting for John McCain in November."

The Democrats were aware of these fractures and sought to ameliorate them. Michelle Obama mentioned Clinton's "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling." Clinton herself told the crowd last Tuesday, "Barack Obama is my candidate," and warned, "John McCain doesn't think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis ... he still thinks it's OK when women don't earn equal pay for equal work."

To address Kelly's concerns, the DNC program featured several citizen speakers, including a parade of converted Republicans and union members like Roy Gross of Michigan, who saw teamster jobs shipped overseas thanks to a tax code that favors corporate globalization. Politicians claimed various shades of middle class for the party. "Waitresses, small businessmen, single moms and truck drivers," Sen. Claire McCaskill of Minnesota said on Monday. "Cops, firefighters, teachers and assembly line workers," Joe Biden added when he accepted his VP nomination.

The mantra of populism was well received by the hordes that buzzed about the Pepsi Center. But it seemed the delegates were extras, carted in to wave signs and cheer ... until Wednesday night's roll call vote.

While delegates had the option to vote at their hotels that morning, Jack Kelly waited to check off the Obama box on the ballot that night. "After I voted, I felt a huge sense that I was a part of history," he said. "I felt that a lot of the history of the Democratic Party kinda culminated at that moment. To vote for the first African-American, when you think about how it was in the 1960s ..."

Much was made of Hillary Clinton's speech falling on the anniversary of the 19th Amendment (women's suffrage) becoming law, and of Obama speaking exactly 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. But on the eve of the convention, thousands of protesters advocating radical change gathered at the Colorado Capitol, listening to Fred Hampton Jr., son of the Black Panther chairman, say that these anniversaries weren't simply the nation's historic triumphs, but an ongoing heritage of disenfranchisement. "I come speaking of the ... original victims of terrorism, people who have been terrorized under such euphemisms as slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping, gentrification, ... police brutality," he said. "Every day in the community I come from represents every day of September 11th."

Down the street, a group of counter protesters blasted country music and waved "support the troops" signs. Steve Ferencik, an Army sergeant and member of Veterans for Freedom, said he wanted to see success in Iraq defined and achieved. "[We're trying] to get all campaigns to pledge that the goal should be victory in Iraq," he said. He hadn't decided who he would vote for in November. "I could criticize and I could praise the [Bush] administration."

Ralph Nader, the Green Party's presidential candidate in the last three elections, was bumped off the 2008 ticket by Cynthia McKinney. He's running as an Independent. He told the Dig he doesn't think much of either mainstream candidate. "They both flunk," he said. "The American people have got to be more demanding of politics ... Partly, it's that we don't have a multiparty system. It's winner take all and that traps people. Their choices are very restricted on the ballot, there's no proportional representation ... in Germany, if they get 5 percent of the vote, they get 5 percent of Parliament."

Tent State University, a collection of activist groups gathered in City Park, was the alternative convention's Pepsi Center. McKinney and Nader led discussions, and instead of caucuses, activists sat on the grass in circles, participating in conflict de-escalation workshops and hatching plans to sleep in the designated "free speech zone." Amnesty International brought their recreation of a Guantanamo Bay prison cell and the American Friends Service Committee set out boots and shoes, each pair labeled with the name of a soldier or Iraqi who died in the war.

The Pepsi Center was a separate spectacle. When the roll call got to New York, Clinton took the mic and declared, "I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules," conceding the nomination to Obama. The announcement electrified the crowd, and powered them through awkward dancing to "Love Train." It was a pleasant—and most likely, staged—resolution to a nail-biting narrative, with Clinton's concession giving her power over the process that undid her nomination, the two ends of the party tied together in a neat bow.

Kelly said he was only mildly surprised by the method of Clinton's announcement. "The thing about the Clintons is that they know good political theater," he said. "She wanted to convey that this is a united party."

But Marc Rubin, executive director of the Denver Group, an ally of PUMA, says it was a sham. Looking at states like Massachusetts, where Clinton won 56 percent in the primaries and 55 out of 93 pledged delegates, but only got 52 of the total 121 roll call votes, Rubin says delegates like Kelly broke the rules. "There's a rule in the DNC call for the convention that states delegates must represent the candidate they are pledged to. Those 18 million voices were disenfranchised," Rubin says. "The media is only talking about her speech, saying how sincere it was. They're acting like a bunch of hack theater critics ... Politicians compromise themselves in a way that most of us wouldn't. That's why she went along with this process: she's been a Democrat her whole life." The Denver Group will support John McCain, because "the Democratic Party doesn't deserve to win this year."

That night at the Pepsi Center focused on foreign policy, and Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who walked to the podium on skeletal aluminum legs, called Obama a champion of VA care and a stronger GI Bill.

Meanwhile, several thousand people walked from the Rage Against the Machine concert at the Coliseum, led by about 50 Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) marching in uniform. The protestors wound up blocks away from the Pepsi Center, and faced a front of police officers. "Police said they'd escort one member behind the police line to communicate with the Obama folks," said Liam Madden, the treasurer and founder of IVAW's Boston chapter. Madden and Jeff Key, both former Marines, met with Phil Carter, the Obama campaign's veterans coordinator. IVAW wanted the opportunity to read a letter to the delegates demanding immediate withdrawal from Iraq, full veterans' benefits and reparations for the Iraqi people.

"Today we called them to say we understand the impracticality of reading this letter to the delegates. However, we want to meet with Sen. Obama before the election," Madden said. "If he's standing in front of a group of pumped Obama fans, he'll say, 'I'm gonna end this war!' But if you look at what he's said to media and the Israeli lobby, he wants to leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for 16 months, only taking out combat troops, who are going to another combat zone in Afghanistan. This isn't a strategy to end the war, it's to repackage it. That's how Vietnam was extended for 10 years."

IVAW is still waiting to see if Obama will meet with them, but of course, there's no guarantee he won't hush them with platitudes if he does. "That's the game of Russian roulette we play when we elect leaders. If Obama gets elected, he needs to be held accountable," Madden said. "It can't just be an election every four years, there has to be a constant dialogue between him and the constituency he represents."

"That's what democracy's all about, that's what the party's all about, is movements like that," Kelly claimed, when he learned of the IVAW march the next day. At the time, the Pepsi Center was oblivious to what was happening outside. The convention was its own little bubble of wonder: The crowd cried for Duckworth, clapped up thunder for Bill Clinton, shrieked for Obama.

Rep. Martin Walsh, D-Boston, had been to conventions before, but this one was different. "The energy in the hall, you could just feel it," he said. "It changed last night, I don't know if it changed at home, for people watching in South Boston and Charlestown. I don't know if it changed in the country last night," he said. "But I think it did."

The next day, the walls of Invesco shook when more than 75,000 people stomped their feet for Obama. He ended his acceptance speech explaining "the American promise" as told by Dr. King 45 years before. "In America, our destiny is inextricably linked," Obama said. "Together, our dreams can be one."

"I came out here a Clinton person, but now I'm completely, 100-percent on board with Barack Obama. He convinced me, and I think millions of others, that he is the right man for this job," Kelly said. "It was a personal honor to be there. I'll remember it the rest of my life."

Madden was more cautious. "He's a good speaker, a good salesman, that's what politicians are," he said. "I hope he follows through."