Dispatches from the Democratic National Convention

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Founding editor Jacob Wheeler was in Denver last week reporting for Chicago-based magazine, In These Times (www.inthesetimes.com), on the Democratic National Convention and the coronation of Barack Obama as the party’s presidential nominee. Here are his dispatches:

Was Hillary’s speech a turning point?

Many Clinton supporters in Denver swallow doubts, support Obama
Wednesday, August 27
DENVER — Just about everyone inside the Pepsi Center last night for Day Two of the Democratic National Convention had reason to smile. Hillary Clinton supporters saw their hero at her best: graceful and conciliatory, yet visionary and wise. Gone was the feisty (some would argue, condescending) tone that accompanied the senator from New York whenever she raised her voice against Barack Obama during their primary battle.

Obama supporters breathed a sigh of relief when early in her speech, Hillary left no doubt that she was behind Barack in his bid for the White House.

“I’m a proud mother, a proud senator from New York, a proud Democrat … and a proud supporter of Barack Obama!” she said, to thunderous approval, after waiting through three minutes of applause before she could begin her speech.
Democratic Party faithful clenched their fists in gleeful, testosterone-driven rage when Hillary attacked Republican presidential candidate John McCain with witty (for a politician) jabs: “No way, no how, no McCain” and “How fitting that Bush and McCain will be together in the Twin Cities next week, because these days it’s hard to tell the two apart.” Hillary on the offensive meant that the party could once again count on the Clintons — their best attack dogs against Republicans in decades.

Even His Highness, William Jefferson Clinton — left out of Hillary’s introductory words (she never said “proud wife”) and treated as a liability through much of her primary campaign — was reported to chuckle and tear up a bit during poignant moments of the speech. At other times, Bill sat back in his chair, appearing to lip sync entire lines. If he helped Hillary practice her speech, Bill must not have been completely banished from the camp.

These political conventions are all about symbolism, and so it was no mistake that vertical blue banners on sticks (distributed among the delegates during the speech) sported the word “Unity” on one side and either “Obama” or “Hillary” on the other. The family reunion turned out to be a success, with more handshakes and hugs than bitching and shoving.

Leave that to the media — those hordes toiling throughout Denver with backs made crooked by laptop bags, gobbling up free stuff around every corner. The media are always looking for dissent within the ranks: the crux of another story.
This week they found it in the supposed intra-party Obama-Clinton chasm. Hillary and Bill, and Chelsea, too, are pissed, we’re told. Obama and staff are arrogant and ungrateful for not considering Hillary as a vice presidential candidate. Hillary’s supporters, especially the phantom group PUMA (Party Unity My Ass — The Nation’s Katha Pollitt wonders if they have been McCain supporters all along, are considering throwing rotten vegetables on stage at Obama and voting for the old man from Arizona in November. And rising above it all (though not quite like a phoenix from the ashes, for that would suggest grace) is John McCain, whose campaign advertisement last week sought to manipulate this rift.

Is it actually possible that these empowered, emotional, angry-as-hell-at-Bush-and-Cheney Hillary lovers would vote against the upstart young black man, and in favor of the neo-cons and tax breaks for the rich this fall? Is their party truly tearing itself apart?

I’m not getting that impression in Denver this week.

Sure, there are exceptions. Bob Kunst, a self-proclaimed single-issue Florida Zionist, stood near the state capitol building on Tuesday yelling at anyone who would listen that Obama is anti-Semitic. His alleged willingness to consider a Jewish-Arab border in Jerusalem would spell the end for the chosen people, according to Kunst.

Kunst digs Hillary. He thinks the people behind Obama dig Hamas, and so he’ll vote for Hamas’ self-proclaimed worst enemy, John McCain. Kunst added that Bush and Condi Rice are gambling with Israel too, and that Obama would represent a third-Bush term. But that ain’t chutzpah, that’s ridiculous.
Lauren Fort Miller, a former mayor of Sag Harbor on Long Island, represented a more typical sample of Hillary supporters. She and a friend stood on a street corner in downtown Denver with Hillary signs aloft, slowing down traffic and drawing attention aplenty.

“I think Hillary is definitely the most qualified person,” said Fort Miller. “How fitting that she’s the first woman to reach this level. I admire her because I’ve dealt with her personally, on a community level in which she really listened to people. That’s such an incredible challenge for a person. Mostly they want to talk. Obama is a talker. Hillary is a listener.”

How does Fort Miller feel about Hillary asking her to vote for Obama?

“She has to do that. What else is she gonna do? I’ll vote Democratic because I’m born to do that. But I have severe doubts about Obama, what he’s going to do and where he’s going to take us. He lacks experience. Hillary knows everybody and everything… She’s been studying and learning for this job her entire life. And where did he come from? He hasn’t even done the job [in the Senate] he was elected to do.”

Tammy Tesky, a delegate from Minneapolis who sported two pins on her shirt at the convention last night — one that read “Hillary Supporter” and another that read “Minnesota Delegate for Obama” — echoed some of Fort Miller’s fears, but is ready to support Obama.

“I’m a supporter of Hillary, and I will cast my vote for her at the convention. It’s been an historic campaign and we want to honor that with a vote. But as soon as I go home I’ll put an Obama sign in my yard and I’ll vote for him in November,” Tesky said.

She was hurt by Hillary’s loss in the primaries, and that the metaphorical glass ceiling withstood the “18 million cracks” it suffered. Tesky also regrets that the Obama camp didn’t at least vet Hillary, out of respect, for vice-presidential consideration. “I don’t even know if she wanted it, but I would have wanted her to have the opportunity.

“I bawled when she offered her concession speech,” she said. “I worked for two years on her campaign.”

But Tesky doesn’t believe that Hillary supporters are in danger of voting en masse for McCain. She thinks that scenario was cooked up as media spin — or by the enemy camp. As for McCain’s commercial last week that sought to draw Hillary supporters over to the other side, Tesky and Fort Miller both found the idea ridiculous.

“The only way I’d be afraid of McCain [winning the votes of Democratic women] was if he chose a woman as his running mate,” concluded Tesky. “I’m 100 percent Democrat. I’d never vote for a Republican.”

Fort Miller echoed, “I want someone who will at least answer to the Democratic Party and for democratic values.”

Bringing Baghdad to Denver Streets
Tuesday, August 26
DENVER — “This is not street theater! This is real!” shouted a man wearing a baseball cap into a microphone as approximately 20 soldiers of the United States army — decked out in camouflaged uniforms and sporting expressions as tense as if they were invading Fallujah — hurriedly established a checkpoint on 16th street (the pedestrian mall in downtown Denver) around noon today and scanned nearby buildings and open windows for a sniper. Steps away stood dozens of police officers, arms folded, doing nothing.

Suddenly one of the soldiers announced that they were looking for a suspect wearing an orange bandana, who they suspected of planting roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). At that the GIs began forcing nearby pedestrians face-first up against a wall and yelling at them to “shut the fuck up.” One man was pinned to the ground in what looked like a stress position. The police officers, from Denver and surrounding towns, did nothing. They had been informed days before, one officer told me, that the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) were coming to town and preparing to engage in nonviolent street theater on Tuesday and Wednesday. The scared pedestrians pinned to the wall and the sidewalk, I learned, were volunteers. This was all just acting.
As the order came to re-group and move on to the next checkpoint, I recognized one of the soldiers, bushy-haired Jason Hurd, a former medic in the Army National Guard, who I had interviewed at the IVAW’s Winter Soldier hearings near Washington D.C. in March.

This is what I wrote about Hurd in The War That Never Ends:
Jason Hurd, an Army National Guard medic who served in Baghdad in 2004-05, said his unit regularly opened fire on civilians. After taking stray rounds from a nearby gunfight, a machine gunner fired 200 rounds into a nearby apartment building. “Things like that happened every day in Iraq,” he said. “We reacted out of fear for our lives, and we reacted with total destruction.”

“Over time, as the absurdity of war set in, individuals from my unit indiscriminately opened fire at vehicles driving down the wrong side of the road,” Hurd continued. “People in my unit would later brag about it. I remember thinking how appalled I was that we were laughing at this, but that was the reality.”
I called out Hurd’s name, but he was already on the run, up 16th street, ducking through crowds of delegates, journalists, Denver tourists, police officers … trying to bring the neurosis of war to the Democratic National Convention.

I’m told that the Iraq Veterans Against the War will march, and continue their street theater, tomorrow, following the Rage Against the Machine concert.

Michelle’s speech on family values
Tuesday, August 26
Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last night had one purpose — to convince Americas that she is as typical a family-woman as they come, capable of tucking her daughters into bed at night, packing their school lunches in the morning, and supporting her husband, like any good wife (in his improbable quest for a job in the White House).

The powers that be in the Democratic Party would much rather have you believe in this Michelle Obama than the one maligned in the right-wing media for saying “For the first time in my life I’m proud of my country” or presented on the parody cover of a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine as a Kalashnikov-toting, America-hating black panther.

The Dems have been working hard on fixing Michelle’s image. That’s why she spent most of her keynote address last night talking about the ultra-familiar, and soothing topic of family: sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers, sisters and husbands. How many times did she use such words? I just re-read her speech on the Obama campaign website and found familial words used 47 times … in 42 paragraphs.

Here were a few snippets:
“Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us … I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor … I come here as a wife who loves my husband … I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world — they’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night … And I come here as a daughter … my mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family … my Dad was our rock.”

Toward the end of the speech Michelle uttered a stand-alone line that sought to overshadow her perceived gaffe about pride and country. “That is why I love this country.”

Then she painted a picture of Barack as the quintessential, loyal father.
“He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.”

We all remember how her address ended, of course. The girls coming up on stage and talking to Daddy through a television screen. Barack was in Kansas City, meeting with a family who, we were told, are undecided, swing-state voters. The Illinois senator looked decidedly relaxed, and the scene in the room behind him looked traditional, and familiar: a white family with children sitting on couches while watching the Convention; Barack in casual attire, a wedding photo of the mom and dad sitting on a mantel behind him as he spoke to his wife and daughters in Denver.

Will the framing of Michelle as a typical Midwestern mother and wife — and not as an angry black revolutionary — convince the American voters? If I see Bill O’Reilly inside the Pepsi Center tonight, I’ll ask him …