10:56 you know, elizabeth warren told her rags-to-harvard-prof story, and taking charlotte together with tampa, it's hard not to see american politics as basically a competition between (overlapping) elites: academic and biz types, for one thing.
10:53 been listening to warren etc in the car. she had good moments. clinton of course is masterful.
12:06 sadly i will be toodling hither and yon at least until clinton. if you're a dem don't start gloating yet; plenty can still go horribly, mortifyingly wrong. still the obama org is singularly professional. wait actually i might give snippets before i pull out of baltimore at 8:30.
11:30 the person who removed 'god' from the democratic platform was very foolish: just handing out sticks.
8:53 david brooks made a good observation last night; the things the delegates were most intense about were social issues: gay marriage and abortion. mentions of these are what was cheered most enthusiatically. now a couple of observations about this; i think it reflects a bit of retrenchment to the base in the democratic party: naral and union groups, for example, had a huge presence. well, they did in 2008 too, but on the other hand obama brought all sorts of nerw people/energies into the party. whatever energy remains is basically where it always was, and even people not directly in the advocacy groups use issues like this to try to whip up their own enthusiasm, as in the republicans too. now i think this is one reason why the election is on a knife's edge, and certainly obama is unlikely to carry some of the states he did last time, such as north carolina and indiana.
