(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

This morning began bright and early here at the DNC Western Regional Caucus meetings. We began with breakfast, followed by a discussion of grassroots organizing in the red parts of California.

That was followed by a great panel presentation on the Democrats’ message on immigration in the West, with an emphasis on the new media opportunities available to political campaigns. There was a nice discussion of polling in the West, expanding on some of yesterday’s discussion, with how voters view immigration. In general, we learned that the Democratic view of immigration is generally the more accepted view by the public, while the hard-line GOP view is not helping the Republican Party (which, as you may recall, was in line with what we heard yesterday, as well).

We also heard from a number of media providers about the changing media habits of Americans, and the need to make sure that media plans keep up with these changes. The shifts to cable viewership, video-on-demand, and mobile communication devices have changed the ability to reach key voters. Our Democratic candidates need to be aware of these changes, and the fact that a “traditional” media plan may not have as much “bang for the buck” as in previous years.

Finally, we had a wonderful lunch featuring California Lt. Governor John Garamondi. I had the honor of joining the Hawaii delegation in sitting with the Lt. Governor (the highest-ranking Democratic state official in California) during lunch, and learning a lot more about what he does, and how he works with Republican Governor Schwarzenegger. The Lt. Governor gave a wonderful speech — one which would be well-received by any crowd in Colorado — about the need for us to be energy-independent, and how important that issue is to our national security. It was a very cogent, intelligent dissection of the needs and opportunities that require a Democratic President to implement.

There’s more discussions this afternoon (including presentations by the campaigns of our Democratic Presidential hopefuls), followed by a dinner. Tomorrow morning, we’ll conclude with a breakfast hosted by Speaker Pelosi and some communications training.

I finally have some photos up — although the quality of many of them is very poor due to my distance from the stage and the poor lighting — you can find them at:
http://www.DemNotes.com/photos

In addition, there are a couple of other folks out here live-blogging from the meetings. You can check out a detail of each of the sessions at the DNC Western Caucus blog at:
http://web.mac.com/jgreenleaf

You can also check out Calitics (much like SquareState) at:
http://www.calitics.com/frontPage.do
Calitics has much better photos than I do, and several sessions blogged in more detail than I’ve done here.

PS - I mis-spelled Rick Ridder’s name yesterday — it isn’t spelled like the Governor’s name. I’ve corrected the online versions, but wanted to be sure those of you who get this via e-mail know of the error, as Rick’s years of wonderful service to this Party deserve better than that…

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 4:00 pm and is filed under DNC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.