Denver: So What Was It <i>Really</i> Like?

Jeff Alworth

I have now been home nearly 24 hours, and I've had a chance to digest the experience of the Convention; one of the key hallmarks of the event is that there's so much going on that you don't have time for a whole lot of reflection midstream.  I suspect there's more reflection to be made, but before we go to far past the event, I thought I'd recap what I now know that I didn't a week ago.

Race
The topic of race at the convention has been little-discussed by the media or even the bloggers.  I understand that; we are generally reluctant to ever discuss race in America.  That reluctance creates a an almost physical presence we can't ignore when we are in public.  It is so well-established now that it doesn't even have to have an obvious source; the fact that it's always been there is enough to keep it going.  We look across the racial divide and wonder what the other person is thinking.  Is that guy a racist?  Does that guy think I'm a racist?  I wonder if that woman thinks I'm a threat?  Does that guy think I'm thinking that he's a threat?  It's an endless feedback loop.

To me, that presence was gone throughout the convention.  (I hedge slightly because I can only speak about my experience; as always, others' mileage may have varied.)  It was as if we were able to drop it off at the airport.  I guess that since we were all there to celebrate this nominee, to celebrate our work to make this man the nominee, and it gave us a common ground of trust.  It was helpful that the state delegations are more diverse than the US as a whole--44% were from minority communities, and a quarter were black.  But diversity alone isn't enough to guarantee that the old anxieties vanish.

I live in Southeast Portland, and there are pubs and coffee shops here where I don't ever hesitate to talk politics, religion, or class, so confident am I that I am among my fellow-traveling liberals.  We all have places we go to be with others like ourselves so we can feel comfortable and speak freely.   It felt like that, like we were all among ourselves.

The election of Barack Obama will by no means end the anxiety of race.  It may worsen it for a time.  Americans don't all feel like we're on the same page.  Racism does exist.  But the feeling at the convention was something special and unique, and it suggested that racial anxiety isn't something endemic to American culture.  It was certainly special to experience that for once.

The Faithful and the Parasites
I have never been in a place where there were two so distinct, clashing groups.  On the one hand, you had the party faithful--idealistic people who have volunteered tons of hours and money to get candidates elected.  While there are some cynics in the ranks, mostly the delegates, activists, and bloggers I encountered had a rawly emotional belief in the possible.  These are the most committed and the most involved people in the political process, and the Convention was the moment they gathered to rock out and party.  For these folks, it was a celebration of accomplishment.  Being in the blogger corps was further affirmation of that mood, because we contribute our own variety of belief into the process.  (At the end of the post is a must-see video from a Tennessee blogger that underscores the point.)

Then there were the parasites--those for whom politics is a business. Mostly this group was comprised of the immense cadre of media, but there were also peddlers, con men, and cynical hacks who added to the stew.  They didn't believe in the candidates; in many cases, they didn't seem particularly stirred by this exercise of democracy.  They were there to score: the next scoop, the next job, the next political gaffe, the next buck. 

The two groups overlapped and interlaced jarringly.  I'd walk out of some warm cocoon the first group and be thrust into the world of the second--a protester condemning me to hell or a camera crew with an aggressive, well-coiffed correspondent (inevitably running me over--they cede personal space to no one).  It was a bizarre contrast.

Patriotism
Liberals have an awkward relationship to flag-waving patriotism.  It's not that we aren't patriots, it's that we aren't by nature tribal. Patriotism invoked to stir up partisan sentiment strikes us as a suspicious endeavor.  Well, I can report that at this convention there was a lot of un-ironic, flag-waving patriotism going around.  Particularly during that last night in the football stadium, there was a sense of rebellion in the air, like we needed to seize back the country from the dangerous, corrupt madmen who'd taken over the country.  I was aware of it when I rocketed out of my seat, roaring at something a speaker had said, madly swinging my little flag around.  I looked around and saw others roaring with me, and there wasn't a note of irony or false stagecraft in it anywhere.

Other Cool Bloggers
In my request for guidance about what you all wanted me to cover, someone mentioned other cool blogs.  I encountered dozens of great bloggers, and they seem to all have great blogs.  Sorting through them would take five posts.  So instead I'm going to tell you about the most impressive blogger I met there.  Her name is Valerie Reynolds, and she blogs from Tennessee.  She is a lesbian, doing her best to fight the good fight in Nashville.  Important context: that state's version of Measure 36 passed with 89% of the vote.

She told me this amazing story about how in July last year, a local Fundamentalist Christian group conducted a silent march through the gay section of town to "reverse the curse of the sexual revolution" (that is, "the disintegrating family unit, divorce skyrocketing, sexual abuse is everywhere, pornography is the norm, and gross perversion, rape and violence ravage our land").  The GLBT community read this as a direct challenge, but instead of protesting openly, they provided the marchers with water instead.  The bottles read "Love is all there is."  Here's the vid. 

Other Random Observations

• Big media isn't that cool.  I mentioned earlier how they're aggressive and parasitical, so I guess this is redundant, but every time I tried to interact with someone from broadcast media, they'd look at me like I was an untouchable who had just polluted them with my speech.  (Since I was a lesser member of the press, communication was sometimes required.)  It did nothing to dispel my mistrust of the MSM.  (On the other hand, I chatted briefly with David Sarasohn, whom I admire, and he was gracious and nice.)
• The DNC was disorganized.  Man, were there some organizational blunders.  For example: every day I had to pick up my credential before 1 pm, but the DNC had arranged to have the first shuttle from my hotel in Far Aurora at ... 1pm.  On Thursday, they told us to be at 7th for the media shuttle, but we needed to be at 9th.  And that was nothing compared to the cluster#%*$ at Invesco.  People were in endless lines to get into the building, and then all the shuttle buses were in different locations after the event.  (Kari captured the emotion of this nicely on our Twitter feed.)
• Cabbie talk 1.  More than half of the eleven cabs I hailed were driven by African immigrants (Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia), which created a certain resonance.  To a person, they were well-educated about the election, and not surprisingly, they were fans of Obama.  But the more inspiring piece was listening to immigrants talk about how they had come to America for opportunity.  Except in the details, the stories didn't deviate from those we've been hearing for 200 years, but they were still inspiring.
• Cabbie talk 2.  I also had a US-born cabbie who was an ordained Baptist preacher about to move to California to helm a church there.  He had just finished a master's degree in theology, and we had a wonderful discussion about politics and religion.  He was theologically conservative, but politically moderate and an ardent believer that the two should never be mixed.  "This is a seculuar country," he said, following it up with, "James Dobson doesn't speak for me."

Okay, that's feeling like more than enough.  However, there's one more piece of business.  Yesterday, I forgot one picture in my batch, and it's a good one.  I reproduce it here and bid you adieu:

By Jeff Alworth Aug. 30, 2008