Just saw Melissa Etheridge give a great performance to a standing ovation.  Then Harry Reid came on to talk about energy.

That’s the political equivalent of a hairpin curve.

Earlier, some of California’s finest women addressed the convention, as every Democratic woman in the US House hit the stage.  Hilda Solis, Maxine Waters and Lois Capps gave remarks.  Waters had a good line saying that McCain doesn’t understand the housing crisis because none of his seven homes are in foreclosure.

I had some good chats with some electeds.  I asked state Board of Equalization member Judy Chu about how the budget is affecting her office, and she replied that they’re just trying to collect revenue wherever possible to paper over the crisis, but sales tax revenue is down because of the struggling economy.  Kamala Harris and I chatted about blogging and how the traditional media is covering this election.  She said that every single interview she’s had has a question about disunity in it.  What a false meme.

Netroots hero Patrick Murphy from my parent’s district is up now, and he’s doing great.

…Boy, Evan Bayh ate his Wheaties today.

Though Barack Obama has been nominated by the Democratic Party by acclamation, the delegate counts still are tabulated.  And I just heard that the final count here in California was 263-169.

FWIW.

…let me update.  Apparently it was 273 for Obama, 166 for Clinton, with two superdelegates not voting, one of them DiFi, who isn’t here.

…the fact that California was the only state of the ones that went through the roll call that had to pass because they didn’t have all the votes cast… well, the word “disorganization” comes to mind.  Of course, it’s also the largest delegation, so it’s maybe understandable.

Speaker Pelosi has just hit the floor, and the Presidential nominating process has begun.  Dolores Huerta is making the nominating speech for Hillary Clinton right now.  People are pretty rapidly taking their seats.

It’s important to note that a roll call vote is a completely perfunctory and normal process.  Some may have been outraged by the fact of a roll call, but it’s wholly unsurprising and will end with Barack Obama as the nominee, just as Bill Clinton became the nominee on the third night of the convention in 1992, and Clinton in ’96, and Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004.  It’s a nominating convention.  This is how it works.

UPDATE: Hillary released her delegates, making them free to vote for whoever they want.  As many feel the obligation to vote the way their constituents asked them to vote, Hillary will still get a lot of votes.  Also, Hillary signed her ballot for Barack Obama this morning.

UPDATE: Obama is about to be nominated.  The applause for Obama’s nomination is defeaning.  There will be no fight on this floor.  A registered Republican from Tennessee, Michael Wilson, is offering the nomination.  He’s an Iraq war vet.  “I support Barack Obama because America needs a President with the strength, wisdom and courage to talk with our enemies and consult with our allies.”

UPDATE: Apparently everyone in the West wears a bolo tie.

UPDATE: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a strong Hillary supporter in the primaries and co-chair of her campaign, is seconding Obama’s nomination.  “No matter where we stood during the campaign, Democrats stand together today.”  Seriously, the disunity idiots need to stuff it.

UPDATE: The roll call is beginning, and it will continue until there is a nominee.  Alabama is kicking it off, so it looks like they’ll go alphabetically.

UPDATE: Alabama – 48-5 for Obama.  Alaska – 15-3 for Obama.  American Samoa – 9-0 Obama.  Arizona – 40-27 Obama.  Arkansas – 47-0 for Obama (in a call for unity; Clinton crushed Obama there).

UPDATE: So Barbara Boxer and Art Torres announced that California passed on its roll call vote.  There’s a very good reason for that.  First of all, the floor is being managed so that a certain state puts Obama over the top.  Second, if California voted now, less states would be part of the process, because when Obama reaches the threshold for nomination the roll call immediately ends.  So don’t go reading anything into this.

UPDATE: Actually, Chairman Torres just explained it to me a little differently.  A lot of the superdelegates never checked in with their vote with him ahead of time.  He’s legally required to go to their delegated proxies for a vote, and a lot of them didn’t know about the voting either, so he would have had to announce significantly less votes than the 441 California is granted.  Anyway, that’s what he told me.

UPDATE: I haven’t been totally keeping up with the count, but the overwhelming majority of votes are going to Sen. Obama. It’s kind of fun to be in the room for this, but calling it a “floor fight” would be kind of absurd.  I’m going to try and talk to Sen. Boxer soon.

UPDATE: Right next to me, Bob Mulholland and some CDP staffers are frantically tabulating votes from Representatives and their proxies.  So that appears to be the reason for the pass.

UPDATE: Gasbag emeritus David Gregory is chatting with Boxer and Torres right now.  I’m sure that, after the explanation, Gregory will claim that the pass was because of disunity and Democrats who hate one another.

UPDATE: Word is that New York will ask for a voice vote and Obama will be put in by acclamation.

UPDATE: They should really have a running total somewhere in the hall.  Mistake.  I guess Obama was up to 744 by the time they got to Kentucky, but it’s hard to keep track.

UPDATE: New Hampshire, Arkansas, and a couple others have gone entirely for Obama out of unity.  New Jersey is up now and they just did the same thing.  Let’s see if that rumor about New York is true.  

UPDATE: So New Mexico yielded to Illinois.  And Illinois will yield to New York.  And there will be a voice vote… and Hillary has come out to call for it.  The whole crowd is on their feet.

UPDATE: It’s over.  Pelosi moved quickly to do the ayes and nays.  It was a nice moment.  Lest California delegates worry, all votes will be counted.

I just got settled in my seat here in the Pepsi Center.  State Senator Leticia Van de Putte is calling the session to order.  The room is more crowded than usual this early because there’s going to be a roll call vote on the nomination around 3:45MT.  The California delegation actually already did their vote back at the hotel, but any delegate who hasn’t will be able to cast a ballot on the floor.

I want to thank the DNC for offering this type of access for state bloggers.  I know that the national bloggers are stuck in some windowless room, a step backward from 2004.  And that’s not right.  But the state blogger access is really a mirror of politicians going to the local press instead of the national press.  They are getting great blogging press in the localities, and I think it’s offering a far better perspective of the convention than the traditional media, which came up with their headlines two weeks ago and is now just filling in their words.  Maybe it’s because I’m here, but this is the most shameful job I’ve ever seen from the media in terms of a disconnect between their own paranoid fantasies and reality.

As for the local and state blog strategy, it’s an extension of the Dean 50-state strategy.  I hope they only increase the access in the future.

So I’m hanging out at the California delegation area while waiting to do an interview.  Jimmy Carter is giving an interview to CNN.  Terry McAuliffe just walked by.  And there’s some country band doing a soundcheck.

Having not been inside a Democratic convention facility before, it is undeniably impressive and it came through nicely on television last night.  The buzz over the Michelle Obama speech seems to be generally good, with the pull quote “stop doubting, start dreaming” seeming to be the one all over the newspapers this morning.

Teddy Kennedy obviously gave a powerful, emotional speech.  Many people I talked to didn’t know he was coming out at all.  I’m a little perturbed that Jim Leach’s speech was passed over by the media so quickly.  Here’s a Republican who served in the US House for 30 years, now completely excoriating his party, particularly in the area of foreign policy, and it didn’t raise an eyebrow.  Even though it was in prime time I’m not sure anyone showed it.  If the tables were turned, you can be sure it would be a major story.

Lots of Californians on stage tonight, but obviously all the focus will be on Sen. Clinton’s speech.  I saw James Carville by Radio Row and he said to the assembled media that they would “all be disappointed” tonight, because it would be a unifying speech.  I’m sure the media will latch on to some word or facial tic and relentlessly hype it.

Anyway, Lucas will be taking you through this evening from the floor.

Jim Leach, a 30 year Republican Congressman from Iowa, just spoke at the Convention.  While, I’m outside the Pepsi Center at the Big Tent, there was a little bit of outrage that MSNBC didn’t bother to play the speech. Yeah, could you imagine the outrage if they chose not to play the JoMentum speech at the RNC.  Jim Leach was an effective Congressman, despite being a Republican, and a powerful one at that. It’s ridiculous that Lieberman gets all of this attention after he was ejected from the Democratic Party, yet MSNBC can’t be bothered to air it.

As for the speech itself, it went back and forth between the applause, and the uncomfortable silence.  When he praised his party, there was a quiet in the audience; when he spoke about how Barack Obama would make a “trascendent candidate” there was a roar.

Leach spoke loudly about a cooperative multi-lateral foreign policy, for working with our allies, and for returning to a workable relationship around the world. And to a loud round of applause, he spoke of bringing our troops home as “heroes that they are.”

If you missed the speech, which you probably did if you were watching on one of the cable news networks, check it out on YouTube when the DNCC folks post it on the webz.

• Do you know how many houses you own? Well, John McCain doesn’t. Check the ad to the right. Also, Check out this site from the Montana Dems.

• Are you as impressed with the hard work and dedication that Dr. Bill Durston has put into his campaign for the 3rd Congressional district against the social-security despising, cake-eating, swimsuit-cavorting, lobbyist-junketing Dan Lungren. Do you live in the Bay Area? Well, great! You can come to a fundraiser for Durston on the Stanford campus.

• AD-15: Joan Buchanan has a spiffy new website and will be having a fundraiser with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass on September 10.

• Debbie Cook will be having house-parties to watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on 8/28. More information on her house party ActBlue Page.

Fiona Ma is doing a “Citizen Co-sponsor” thing for AB 1778, a bill that would require people selling over 2,000 cans ($100) to provide their name. It’s an interesting idea aimed at stopping people from rummaging through garbage cans in the middle of the night. However, there’s some risk to homeless and low-income folks in this as well. Many of them will sort public trash cans looking for recyclables, and that’s tough work.

Democrats across the state and nation today are calling on Exxon John McCain to support lowering gas prices by requiring Big Oil to use some of their windfall profits to reduce gas prices.  Here in the Bay Area, DNC Vice-Chair Rep. Mike Honda just did an event at a Shell station in Campbell.  

And down in SoCal, CA-44 nominee Bill Hedrick held a similar event calling on Ken Calvert to actually, you know, do something.

UPDATE: Nice little Exxon John video to the right, a little play off the “Big John” Cornyn video that made its way all around the webz a month or so.

Press release on the flip.

CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE BILL HEDRICK AND SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY RESIDENTS TO URGE “EXXON JOHN” MCCAIN AND MCCAIN COHORT KEN CALVERT TO SUPPORT IMMEDIATE RELIEF FROM HIGH GAS PRICES BY REQUIRING BIG OIL TO USE PORTION OF WINDFALL PROFITS TO EASE BURDEN ON CALIFORNIANS

San Juan Capistrano, CA – Democratic Congressional Candidate Bill Hedrick will join with a group of local residents fed up with high gas prices and sky-rocketing oil profits to call on “Exxon John” McCain and his cohort Ken Calvert to stop fundraising long enough to back immediate relief from high gas prices by requiring Big Oil to use a portion of their windfall profits to ease the burden on Californians struggling to fill up their tanks.

As Bill Hedrick joins hard working Californians to form a comprehensive energy plan that will help them deal with high gas prices in the short term and set in place long-term investments to resolve our nation’s energy crisis, “Exxon John” and his buddy Ken Calvert want to reward their Big Oil buddies with nearly $4 billion in tax breaks. That includes more than $1 billion in tax breaks for Exxon, which just reported the highest profits in the history of mankind.

Participants will carry signs that say “Exxon-McCain ’08” and offer to present “Exxon John” with a massive check made out to him from Big Oil, in the sum of $2 million dollars he’s reaped from the oil industry.  The check will be endorsed over to Calvert for his continuation of votes for Big Oil.

Similar events are taking place across the country on Tuesday, the National Exxon-McCain Day of Action. For more information on Exxon-McCain ’08, visit our campaign website at www.exxonmccain08.com

Who:        

Congressional Candidate Bill Hedrick, 44th Congressional District

When:          

Tuesday, August 12 at 1:00 PM PDT

Where:    

South Orange County Democratic Headquarters

31876 Del Obispo

San Juan Capistrano, CA