Denver Democratic Convention
Colorado Polls Swing
Obama Enjoys Western Surge
After his campaign swing through Colorado last week, putting down in Golden, Pueblo, and Grand Junction, Barack Obama enjoys a solid lead in polls in the state.
The latest poll from the independent surveyors at Quinnipiac University shows Obama with 49 percent of likely voters versus 45 percent for McCain. That's a reversal of the findings from the week after the Republican convention, when Quinnipiac found McCain ahead.
from the new west blog: Presidential Campaign
The Distortion of Election Reporting
This story on Politico is a good start in explaining why election reporting is increasingly irrelevant, distorted, and shallow.
According to Mike Allen and Carrie Budoff Brown, reporters are more cut off from the candidates than ever, with even the press on the official campaign planes unable to talk directly to the candidates. Apparently, the days are gone when reporters and candidates played poker and hung out together after long, exhausting days of campaigning.
Allen/Brown:Not only do the reporters have little interaction with the candidates, but increasingly they are having little impact on the broad campaign narratives and daily story lines that supply most voters with their impressions of the candidates.
That's more often taking place in cable studios or on Web sites far removed from the ceaseless grind of the press bubble — in which reporters schlump on and off the plane, in and out of buses and gymnasiums-turned-filing centers, several times a day, dozens of times a week.
A combination of technology and iron message discipline by heavily centralized campaigns has consigned these reporters – once the storied “boys on the bus” – largely to feeding off the public material available to almost anyone over the Web, with very little interaction with the next president of the United States.
It’s distressing, but not surprising.
More Denver Democratic Convention
So this is how I happened to stand in front of a stage in a nightclub in downtown Denver during the Democratic National Convention while Sen. Max Baucus belted out a rendition of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."
What to make of it? That's harder to say.
I should mention that to be a journalist within the scripted confines of the national political conventions is, mostly, to gin up controversies (Will Hillary's die-hard supporters fall into line?), be spoon-fed story lines (Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin walks the walk) and be turned away from the private big-money bashes where tongues are loosened by drink and the lobbyists mix with lawmakers and delegates.
Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Out West: Land of Opportunity for the Democrats?
I wended my way to Denver from Seattle last week my preferred way, by car. The vast empty of the high desert that comprises most of the geography between the two points always lends itself to some good thinking, and I needed to do some good thinking about this election, where it could lead for our future, and what it could mean for the West.
Struckman’s Pick: Get the National Journal Online
By far the most comprehensive and insightful political convention coverage this year has come from the National Journal, usually considered a thorough but boring insider's record of Beltway politics.
Now is the time to shine, though, for those reporters and editors who have been at the politics game long enough to know the ins and outs but still fresh enough to approach the coverage with energy and to do so broadly. OK. My point is this: If you're interested in what it's really like at the Republican National Convention this week -- beyond the tabloid-driven revelations about Sen. John McCain's running mate's daughter -- or if you want an honest account of what impact the news has made at the convention, go to the National Journal.
Convention Coverage: Reporter's Notebook
DemCon 08: What Was it Like?
These questions are from email received during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Plus I made a few of them up.
Q. What was it like?
A. The whole town was a big party around the clock. Street music, hawkers with every kind of Obama product you can name, Denver “hosts” in official tee-shirts directing people everywhere. The 16th Street Mall is like a long Main Street with open space in the middle, which was occupied by vendors selling everything from political memorabilia to on-the-spot neck massages. You had to walk this mob scene every day to get to the Pepsi Center, but it was great fun.
Q. Did you meet anybody famous?
A. I shook Caroline Kennedy’s (who is very short) and Michelle Obama’s (who is very beautiful) hands, and got ten feet from Jimmy Carter (who is looking frail) who turned and smiled at me when I stupidly called out, “Mr. President!” (what was I going to say next? Come over here and talk to little old me? I was without a master plan.) I met Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (who really is 4'5"). I sat next to either Judy Woodruff or Leslie Stahl on a press bus, but she was asleep so I’m not sure which one it was. And around the press halls it was hard to miss Diane Sawyer (who is tiny) Keith Olbermann (who wears very expensive clothes) Joe Scarborough (who is skinnier than he looks on TV) and Rush Limbaugh (whom it’s really hard to miss.) And I met quite a few Congresspeople, but I’ll be danged if I remember who.
EYES ON COLORADO
Colorado Has Day in DNC Sun
Thursday may have been Barack Obama’s turn to light up the Democratic National Convention, but it was Colorado’s day in the sun.
“It’s fitting to have the eyes of the nation on Colorado,” said Rep. Mark Udall, whose father Mo made an unsuccessful presidential bid and addressed the Democratic National Convention 32 years earlier. “It’s fitting that the change we need in Washington starts here in the Rocky Mountain West. It was hope that first carried early Americans here, not know what lay ahead but knowing they must go forward, just as we must go forward. And like those early Americans, we believe this is a land of fresh starts and boundless optimism. We look to our mountains and prairies, our wide-open skies, and we see the limitless possibility that is America.”
Scences from the DNC
The Denver Democratic Convention in Photos
The Democratic National Convention has wrapped up in Denver. Here is a slideshow of what NewWest.Net correspondents saw in and around the convention. Click here for more coverage from Denver.
convention Coverage: Reporter's Notebook
Obama’s Acceptance Speech - Catharsis for Desperate Dems
By now, billions of words have been written about Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance of his party’s presidential nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, and TV news people will pick apart the performance and call it show business and Republicans will express their disdain.
Of course it was show business. The Republican convention will be, too. For the past twenty years both parties have held essentially pro forma conventions designed simply to bolster the faithful and hype their candidates. They are what they are.
Whichever convention comes first gets the brunt of the criticism, but it generally dies after the second convention.
But no matter how it looked on television tonight, I am here to tell you that being here on the floor of this huge stadium to feel the wildly inspired throng of 70,000 fired-up Democrats stomp and stamp and whistle and cheer and clap themselves into a near frenzy of hope and shared inspiration was profoundly sincere.
