Sunday

After a nice visit with relatives outside Lancaster, PA, last night, I was on the road at 0:dark:30, heading south.  If you have to spend a day in the car, you can't do much better than I-81 through the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia, and then I-77 south across North Carolina.  Coming down out of the mountains onto the piedmont this afternoon, I drove through scenery as breathtaking as any I've ever seen.

Charlotte is a new city - lots of chrome and glass in tall, modern buildings.  It's the smallest national convention venue since New Orleans in 1988; there are 'only' 15,000 hotel rooms in the metro area, and 40,000 folks are expected (just under 5,000 delegates), according to today's "Charlotte Observer."  I had looked forward to having my wife Abbey join me for the convention, but as the summer progressed, I got more and more bad news from the DNC and the NY Democratic Committee regarding how few, if any, credentials, venue space and even shuttle seats would be available to non-delegates.  It's a small town to be hosting such a huge event.

But so far so good.  There were representatives of the NY Democratic Committee and the Charlotte event planners right in the hotel lobby, with credentials, maps, and information.   I'm watching a baseball game for a while and - most important - not driving.

I had a note from a friend yesterday, remembering her experience of conventions past, when we were all much younger:

This is a ritual I remember (just watching) from a childhood where the trinity really was FDR, Adlai and Hubert.  When I see any of it I can go right back to the roasting Maryland nights we watched every last minute. Gavel to gavel quite literally.  I can feel the wallpaper peeling off from the humidity and hear the ice settle as it melted in the glasses of tea. That ritual and all that went with it all year long taught me to believe so strongly in the system, the power of the people to effect change and the truly good that we could all do together. That is why this means so much.

I have similar memories.  Ted Kennedy in 1980:  "The dream shall never die!"  Mario Cuomo in 1984:  "This country is a shining city on a hill."  The iconic 1968 DNC in Chicago:  "The whole world is watching!"  Barack Obama in 2004:

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America... We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.  We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.  There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. 

That's something to believe in.   I listened to that one with my family, and at the end I said, "He will be the next Democratic nominee for President."  Now here I am, ready to vote on the convention floor, ready to put his name into nomination for a second term, this, the second inexperienced junior Senator from Illinois to become president.

It's been nearly 30 years since either party began their convention without a candidate who had clinched the nomination.  Many say the days of conventions as useful or relevant events are coming to a close.  We'll see.  I'm part of a history that means a great deal to me, and that's enough.

See you soon.