I’ve been to many a convention, but this one was the most interesting.  You’ve read about most of it by now. This is my Blog post from www.sfgate/community/blogs

To San Diego and Back: Our State Democratic Convention
Posted 5/1/2007 4:45 PM
Politics alert: This Blog contains partisan viewpoints and might not be suitable for small children or those with short attention spans or high expectations.

I’m back from the Convention, thank you for asking, yes it was exciting.  The usual suspects traipsed through to be adored or ignored, depending.  In this case, the usual suspects are presidential candidates (all except Biden, even that Alaskan guy no one ever head of, and he is a fire brand) and Party hacks, with budget reports or passing out awards to volunteers of the year in Visalia. Oh, and Gavin was there, pressing way too much flesh for a guy simply doing his job.

My personal fave is John Edwards. Hands down. He has programs, he has energy. He has hair. (Whoops, edit that out!) He’s a serious candidate who seems to really care about social programs and has the guts to say he was wrong to vote for the Iraq War. Go here for his postcard you can send to your representative.  http://johnedwards.c…  Get out of Iraq.  This was his message, and it resonated with the crowd. See the YouTube footage of his Iraq statement here: http://johnedwards.c…
All the Caucuses held meetings, so did the committees, many at the same time and it was impossible to juggle between them all, especially with mini-crises and important votes that couldn’t be missed. Some of them got missed. Some people left the building early resulting in an embarrassing lack of quorum for an important resolution: Stop funding the Iraq War now. 

You’ve read about the famous quorum call, about which Art was “shocked, shocked, I tell you!”

Aside to Party Leaders:  Please put the important business on first.  Save the awards and back patting until later.  And make the resolutions available as soon as possible, so that all know what they may be voting on and why it’s important to stay in your seats until the votes are cast.

  In other news, our Progressive Caucus rocks, in the word of one Blogger at  http://usliberals.ab…  We elected some new officers (I’m still an Officer at Large) and reported on the progress of our initiatives for the year.  We may be the largest Caucus in the Party now. Yay progressives!

Our own Marin County activist, Mayme Hubert, was elected to the unsung position of Regional Director. That means she rules the roost from Marin to the border in matters Democratic.  Really, she has to keep us all informed and log a lot of miles as she travels from meeting to meeting. 

And there were parties.  Charlie Brown, the once and future candidate against  ethically challenged John Doolittle in Congressional District 4, spurred on the crowd eating family style pasta and eggplant at the Take Back Red California Dinner (cheap eats). In the hospitality suites which took over the meeting rooms in the evening,  you could eat ice cream with Bill Lockyer or drink red wine with the progressives. I did both, but declined the photo op with Bill.

Hope to see many of you in Sacramento in July for the quarterly meeting of the Executive Board.