On Sunday, the streets were closed off, so we walked a few blocks and took a taxi to the Washington Hilton for the Emily’s List luncheon. Other Coloradans Rollie and Josie Heath were there, and we also ran into Katie Hoffner with her mother. And of course, Rep. Betsy Markey and her staff attended.

It was so exciting to hear from the newly elected Senators Kay Hagan (NC) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH). Governor Bev Perdue gave us insight on her race in North Carolina. And we also got to hear from the three women appointed to the Obama Administration: Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security; Hilda Solis for Labor; and Hillary Clinton for State. The program ran an hour over time, but it was so exciting.

We then went by the Westin to do a walk through for the Monday Colorado Ball. From there we walked back to our hotel with strains of music coming from the Mall.

After standing in a crush of people trying to get onto the Metro, we headed for dinner with family in Springfield, Virginia. Everyone was in a good mood.

On Monday we spent most of the day on Capitol Hill collecting swearing in tickets for Colorado attendees. While having a late breakfast on the Senate side, we ran into Senator Shaheen again.

From there it was off to the DNC for the last group of tickets. It was an opportunity to hear more stories about how different states were faring in the process. There we ran to lunch where Anthony Graves and Erika Hixson showed up to collect their tickets. They told us how long the lines were to get into the Rayburn Building where Rep. DeGette was holding a reception.

Luckily, Lisa Cohen, Diana’s chief of staff, sent out rescue teams to get us in.

Our next trip was back to the hotel to change into our fancy clothes for the Colorado Inaugural Ball. It was very well attended and included Mayor Hickenlooper, Sen. Udall, Sen.-select Bennet, Reps. DeGette, Polis, Markey, and Perlmutter, State Sen. Groff, State Sen. Schwartz, State Rep. Gagliardi, State Rep. Primavera, State Rep. Kerr, State Rep. McGihon, State Rep. McCann, and many others. We partied till the end.

On Tuesday morning we started out really early. The Metro would not let us in so we walked two and half miles to the backside of the Rayburn Building where the Orange Gate line began. One and one half hours in line made us thankful for the long underwear, hats, gloves and other warm clothing.
But in the end we had a wonderful view of the inaugural ceremony. I was moved to tears more than once. You can see all the pomp and circumstance online, but I would not have missed the real thing. I felt really lucky to be there.

After the swearing in, we walked back to our hotel (2.5 miles). Scheduled us for an early dinner. Then we dressed again and were off to the Western Ball. One highlight of the evening was Marc Antony, and Jennifer Lopez joined him on stage. Joe and Jill Biden arrived around 10:30pm. We missed seeing the President and First Lady because my brother and his wife had to get the next Metro to Virginia before it closed down. It was a really cold night.

On Wednesday, Ken and I moved to the Woodley Park hotel where the Association of State Democratic Chairs met. Our main mission was to elect new officers. I was re-elected as the Western Representative to the DNC. In the afternoon the DNC met and paid tribute to Governor Dean. In a very moving moment, the Native American community presented him with an Indian blanket.

Gov. Tim Kane was elected as the new Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
He is very supportive of the 50-state strategy. We will be waiting to see what form that comes in.

Thursday was to be museum day for us, but we were invited to sit in the Senate Gallery in the afternoon. After a quick visit to the Native American Museum, we went over to the Senate to observe the discussion about the “Lily Ledbetter” law. That went on for about 40 minutes. Then Vice President Biden came to swear in Michael Bennet as Colorado’s new senator.

In the reception following, former Sen. Tim Wirth and now senior Senator Mark Udall spoke along with Rep. John Salazar and Rep. Betsy Markey. Many great friends and new acquaintances welcomed Sen. Bennet.

We flew back to Colorado on Friday. It was great to get home.

Pat Waak

One of the critical parts of being a successful party leader, I think, is the ability to recognize that there are ideas out there that you haven’t seen or thought of that just might work.  (Conversely, some of the party leaders that I think have the most problems are those who are unwelcoming to any kind of change.)  Pat and I get to attend a number of meetings and trainings, but easily the most helpful to us have been these ASDC meetings like the one we just concluded here in San Diego.

This morning, we spent several hours discussing many issues — and a key topic was how things will change now that we have control of the White House.

We began with several pieces of standard business — approving minutes, adopting a treasurer’s report, etc.  But we soon moved into a much bigger discussion of the national voter file and how we can work to make the voter file work better for us in 2010 and 2012.  We heard from DNC Technology Director Ben Self, DNC Voter File Director Katie Allen, Obama For America Technology Director Michael Slaby, and Keith Goodwin, who developed the “neighbor to neighbor” tool used by the DNC and OFA this year. 

In the end, there was a universal sentiment that while the voter file worked better than ever in 2008, there are still significant areas identified where changes can, and should, be made. 

We then heard from a couple of more veteran state party leaders about what the transition to a new DNC will look like.  As many of you know, when we have the White House, the President essentially gets to select the DNC Chair (Governor Howard Dean has indicated he does not intend to seek a second term).  But on the flip side, the DNC is responsible for all of the political costs of the White House, including all political travel costs, which are pretty large. 

These folks — New Hampshire Chair Ray Buckley (who apparently occasionally reads DemNotes) and South Carolina Executive Director (and former Oklahoma Chair, and former college classmate of mine) Jay Parmley — talked about exactly how that transition will work, and the complications of dealing with a White House political office where we have normally been used to dealing with the DNC political office only.  It was an incredibly informative and interesting discussion, and probably the most lively discussion of the day.  They were later joined by David Strauss, who was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Vice President Al Gore.  Strauss also talked about some tips to make life easier for the state parties in dealing with the White House.

After some discussion of new fundraising techniques that should help us raise a bit more money for 2010, we had a very interesting — and Colorado-based — presentation from the co-founder of Democrats Work, Thomas Bates.  His presentation did quite a bit to prove to the chairs and vice chairs that establishing a community service component to our field plan is actually a good move, politically.  His proof included a detailed case study of work that the group did this year in Arapahoe County, and was very compelling.  I didn’t know the extent of Democrats Work’s efforts in Colorado, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m incredibly convinced that we can win more elections in Colorado if we put together a community service component in place properly. 

The family and I are headed back to Colorado tomorrow afternoon.  But I feel like I’m a lot more informed about what we can do in Colorado — as I am after every ASDC meeting — than when I arrived here in San Diego.

See you soon!

This afternoon was chock full of information — and was a very long and crowded meeting.

Here in San Diego, the DNC’s Executive Committee met in a joint session with the ASDC. The day begain with an address from Governor (and DNC Chair) Howard Dean. He talked about the progress we’ve made over the past four years. In particular, one focus of many speakers was the new-found success among younger voters. For the first time in a long time, more people under the age of 35 voted than people over the age of 65 — a pretty stunning statistic. He also talked about how the DNC has been able to erase the technological advantage the Republicans once had.

But Governor Dean was not all positives. “With this extraordinary victory comes extraordinary responsibility. We have a lot of promises that were made and we have to keep those promises.” He spoke of the challenges to keep young people involved, and how we need to keep showing up and asking people in all reaches of the country for their support.

And Governor Dean made a bold statement: Texas is next.

That’s right, the buzz here is about our next big hurdle: winning in Texas. If we can win there, the back of the Republican Party nationally is truly broken.

After Gov. Dean spoke, we heard from several state party leaders about the success of the 50-state strategy and the importance of continuing to build on this historic program. Ray Buckley of New Hampshire talked about the amazing turn-around in New Hampshire and nationally, and presented Gov. Dean with a resolution from the ASDC. The numbers are pretty amazing — we’ve gained 6 Governorships, 14 seats in the Senate, 55 seats in the House, 6 state senate chambers, and 9 state house chambers under Gov. Dean’s chairmanship. We’ve gone from a 3% registration advantage for Democrats in 2005 to a 9% advantage today. Buckley was followed by Sam Lieberman, the Nevada chair, Larry Gates, the Kansas chair, and Caroline Valand, the North Carolina Executive Director. All had similar stories of successes due to the investments made by the DNC in our state parties.

Finally, the ASDC “presented” Gov. Dean with a token of our appreciation: a chair. A chair for the chair from the chairs. A Massachusetts chair-maker is hand-making a chair for Gov. Dean engraved and embossed with his name and title. He seemed genuinely surprised.

After a few more reports, we went into an informal “closed” session to hear some polling data and to have a conversation with representatives from the Obama transition. Steve Hildebrand, the deputy national campaign director for the Obama campaign, spoke about some of the things we learned from the campaign. He noted that Sen. Obama ended up with the largest popular vote margin in American history for any non-incumbent, and the 6th-largest popular vote margin overall.

He also noted the success of our voter registration efforts, singling out the importance of those efforts in Colorado. In Colorado, we were able to register 202,000 new voters; we won by 192,000 votes. We saw similar importance of the efforts in states like Florida, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Another key statistic from Colorado: voters age 18-29 made up a larger share of the electorate than those age 60+ — a pretty stunning statistic! We were able to win Colorado’s hispanic population by 61-38. And our success among younger voters showed not only in the electorate, but also among the registration rolls — there are now more registered voters in Colorado age 18-29 than voters age 60+.

Finally, we heard a wonderfully detailed discussion from the DNC pollster, Cornell Belcher. Since this was a closed session, I don’t want to reveal too much of his data, but one very key point: in 2004, the vast majority of Kerry voters polled said they were voting AGAINST George W. Bush rather than voting FOR John Kerry. As one Democratic strategist said, “We will never win an election like that!”

However, the tables turned in 2008. In 2008, 76% of Obama voters said they were voting FOR Obama, while only 4% said they were motivated to vote AGAINST McCain, and only 17% said they were voting AGAINST Bush policies. It was a very positive voting population for us!

One last encouraging point from Sam Lieberman, the Nevada Chair: apparently, in Nevada, the Republican Party office has had to close down, and the only employee is the state’s Executive Director, who is — get this — working out of his parents’ basement. Literally.

Nice.

Tomorrow morning will be solely for ASDC meetings. I’ll try to write more tomorrow afternoon.

I’m on a lunch break here in San Diego, where I just returned from an “informal session” with the other state party chairs and vice chairs. We had a nice discussion of both the successes in 2008 as well as a long discussion of the importance of keeping the State Partnership Program (a/k/a the “50-state strategy”) in place. Here are some brief reports from the other states:

– In Idaho — yes, Idaho — Vice Chair Jeanne Buell was proud to report that they’ve finally elected a Democrat to represent the state’s First Congressional District in Congress. But they’ve also heard they’re the number one target for the GOP in 2010.
– The Chair of Democrats Abroad, Christine Schon-Marques, reported that the 2008 campaign resulted in an amazing new ability of people being able to do phone banking from abroad, especially using Skype. Indeed, the campaign even had field staffers in some countries assigned to generate turnout among American citizens living abroad.
– Our chair, Pat Waak, talked about the good communication work among the organizations (Campaign For Change, Coordinated Campaign (Forward Colorado) and the Party), and the 51 CFC and 15 FC offices in the state. She was asked about the effect of holding the Convention in Denver, and reported that it certainly helped generate more excitement and volunteers.
– In New Hampshire, Chair Ray Buckley talked about the concerns about melding the new volunteers that were brought in by Obama and the long-time Party volunteers — and also reported that they melded perfectly. He mentioned that there would normally be some jealousy and infighting, but the volunteers for Shaheen (their Senate candidate) were happy to support Obama, and vice versa — and they all were happy to support all of the down-ticket races. In 2004, they had a record 2,000 people on election day working on GOTV. In 2008, 12,000 people worked on election day GOTV in New Hampshire.
– Karen Thurman, Chair in Florida, reported on the massive mobilization there. They had 57 field offices and 600 paid staff, just to pull all of the volunteers together.
– In Maryland, Chair Mike Cryer reported how they dealt with the challenges of being a solidly blue state. Nearly one-fourth of the volunteer calls into battleground Virginia originated in Maryland. Maryland Democrats were able to identify and mobilize 230,000 volunteers, an immense number. He reported being able to ably define a role that Maryland could play in this election that contributed to the overall success of Democrats.
– Missouri Vice Chair Yolanda Wheat followed up on that. She had great words of thanks for the volunteers that poured into Missouri from places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Illinois, but wondered how those states handled the “brain drain” of volunteers working on races outside of their blue and red states.
– In Washington, they had a very tough, but successful, race for re-election of their governor, according to Chair Dwight Pelz. He said the Obama campaign helped by “semi-targeting” the state.

At this point, Governor Dean walked in the room and talked to the crowd. He certainly got the mood right when he began by saying, “Doesn’t it feel much better than it felt four years ago?” He took a number of questions, and lots of kudos for a successful term as DNC Chair from everybody. Even one-time cynics, such as the Chair from Delaware, gave him credit for a successful 50-state strategy and true partnership with the state parties. Many noted that his role in the 2008 wins has not been fully appreciated by the press or the pundits. He did take several questions, and was very frank — and, at times, funny — in his responses.

Once Governor Dean left, the topic remained on the 50-state (or, as the territories like to remind us, the 56-state) strategy. I think it is a universal sentiment among all of the state party chairs and vice chairs here this weekend that keeping that program in place for the next DNC chair is going to be critical.

DNC Secretary Alice Germond came into the meeting toward the middle of the meeting, and briefly thanked all of the state parties for their work in making the National Convention in Denver “the best convention I’ve ever seen” — and she’s been around since the mid-70s!

In addition to the 50-state strategy, the other major concern seems to be a desire to avoid a repeat of 1993 and 1994, where a Democratic victory in a Presidential year led to a huge backlash just two years later, and major legislative failures. I spent some time talking about that last night, and the New Hampshire Chair, Ray Buckley, also echoed the same thoughts today. We’re still trying to figure out how we do it, but one thing is clear: we have got to give President Obama as much support in his efforts to change America as we possibly can, and we have to do that in all 50 states.

Well, I’m headed off to the joint meeting of the DNC Executive Committee and the ASDC, which will take up all afternoon. There are a couple of receptions after that. So, if I don’t get to write about this afternoon later today, I’ll be sure to do it before I head out in the morning.

Change is good.

Not only is change good, it is what we spent the past year clawing and scratching our way to get. So, now we’ve got it. The problem with getting change, though, is that there is a lot of uncertainty attached to change.

This afternoon, here in San Diego, the Association of State Democratic Chairs Executive Committee met to discuss — for the most part — all of this uncertainty. There were about a dozen people here for the Executive Committee meeting — of the 15 or so members of the ASDC Executive Committee, only Colorado has both its Chair (Pat Waak) and its Vice Chair (myself) serving on the committee. Not California, not Illinois, not New Hampshire. Just Colorado. I know it is a point of pride for both Pat and me.

Because it was a closed meeting, I don’t want to reveal too many details. But I think it is safe to say that we have a lot of questions about what the DNC will look like in the near future, and what the partnership between the DNC and the state parties will look like. We’ll get those answers in the next month or two, but for now, that uncertainty has led to a lot of discussion among the state parties here in San Diego, and it is likely to dominate the conversation in the coming couple of days of meetings.

We were joined at the beginning of our meeting by a very relaxed-looking Governor Howard Dean, the Chair of the DNC. Gov. Dean’s first comment to the group was a reference to the increasing importance of the West in the national scene: “We knew the road to the White House led through the West, but who knew it also led through Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia as well?!” The Governor walked into the small meeting room here before the meeting began and folks were just chatting. As he strolled through the door rather nonchalantly, he seemed happily surprised by the standing ovation by the chairs and vice chairs in the room as he arrived.

After the Governor had briefly said a few words and taken a couple of questions, he headed out (he joined us again later for dinner). Tom McMahon, the Executive Director of the DNC, remained and we had a good conversation with Tom about the DNC and its relationship with each of the state parties. The conversation included topics like the 50-state strategy, the voter file, and the organization of the DNC under President Obama. It was a very productive meeting.

Tomorrow, we begin the day with a meeting among state chairs and vice chairs. Then, in the afternoon, we hold a joint meeting with the DNC Executive Committee. We’ll hear about plans for the transition and inauguration, as well as hearing some polling data in a closed session. I’ll write more tomorrow night, when I get a chance.

We arrived yesterday in San Diego, where the Association of State Democratic Chairs is meeting. We begin our work this afternoon, with a meeting of the ASDC Executive Committee, on which both Pat and I sit (I represent the vice chairs in the Western Region of the United States; Pat is the Western Region ASDC representative to the DNC Executive Committee.

I’ll try to write often to keep everybody back home updated on what we learn — this is our chance to talk about both the future and the past. We are going to talk about the future of the Democratic Party and how we turn our successes into governing policies that help all Americans. And we are going to talk about the past in that we will study what happened in the 2008 elections, and figure out what worked, what didn’t work, and what we can do better.

Obviously, I won’t be able to let everybody in on all that we hear in some of these closed-door meetings; however, I will continue to pull back the curtain as much as I can to be sure that Colorado Democrats feel like a part of the discussion.

The meetings are here at the historic — and stunningly beautiful — Hotel del Coronado on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The weather is beautiful, of course — hard to believe there was snow on the ground when we left Denver yesterday morning. (By the way, if you’re looking for a good time to visit Sea World in San Diego, you couldn’t apparently do any better than a mid-week visit in mid-December — the weather is beautiful and there are literally no lines whatsoever for any of the rides, attractions, or shows.)

Anyway, I will report back later with more on what is going on here at the ASDC meetings and the DNC Executive Committee meetings here in California!

“This was the best Convention in the history of the Democratic Party!”  — Former DNC Chair Don Fowler.

At the DNC meeting on Friday morning, Don Fowler made the above comment, which really confirmed what I was hearing from so many other folks from around the country.  Don Fowler knows the DNC — he’s led the state party in South Carolina (which is the job his wife, Carol Khare Fowler, now holds), and he was the Chair of the DNC for much of the Clinton years.  He’s been to countless national conventions, so when he says something like that, you can bet he knows what he’s talking about.

My head was held high from the moment I arrived in Denver over a week ago.  Everything looked beautiful, and everything felt comfortable.  I spoke with a lot of delegates and state party officials, all of whom confirmed that Colorado was doing an amazing job hosting one of the biggest events in the history of this state.

I could not have been prouder to be a Colorado Democrat than I was last week.  This thing started three years ago, in 2005, when we began forming the efforts to bring the Convention to Denver.  Throughout, you may recall that we were told by an awful lot of “influential” people, both in Colorado and in Washington, that Denver had no chance.  The DNC simply wouldn’t choose Denver.  There was always some reason why we were supposed to quit; some reason why we needed to just put down the pens and stop working. 

We never stopped.

Then, once the Convention was awarded to Denver, everybody started working.  Those who said it couldn’t be done stopped being cynics and started being optimists.  Shopkeepers, hotel managers, carpenters, laborers, caterers, bus drivers — everybody worked tirelessly to put our best foot forward.  It didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican; Denver 2008 was too big for partisanship in Colorado. 

People came out of the woodwork from across the West to volunteer.  That’s not normal — in Minneapolis-St. Paul, they were still begging for volunteers last week.  We had to start volunteer waiting lists several months ago because of the intense interest.  And the volunteers, even if they ended up with a four-hour shift at a hotel in the Tech Center, were bursting with pride and generousity. 

That’s the key: most delegates were simply unaware about how kind and welcoming Coloradans could be.  And most — even if they’d been to Colorado before — were oblivious to exactly how beautiful and refined downtown Denver could be.  Every hotel, every party, every meeting area — all of it — exceeded expectations.  The Pepsi Center was transformed into one of the most stunning visual stages in the history of political conventions. 

Denver turned out to be an ideal convention city.  Unlike past conventions in places like Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta, Denver’s various hubs of hotels made for ideal delegation hubs, as well.  The fact that over half of the delegates were able to stay downtown, within walking distance of the Pepsi Center and the Convention Center, was completely unheard of for many convention veterans.  In Los Angeles, a two-hour bus ride from your hotel to the Staples Center was not uncommon.  In Denver, the only thing making bus rides longer was traffic — not the distance.

Don’t get me wrong — while this was about as perfect as a convention could have been, there were still a few glitches.  Like many, we found ourselves stuck in the mass of humanity leaving Invesco with inadequate directional instruction.  But the reality was there weren’t a whole lot of dry eyes at Invesco by the end of that fantastic event. 

This convention was all about the majesty of Colorado, and the humanity of the people of the Centennial State.  Every citizen of this state should be proud of how we performed.

So, thank you, Colorado.

Now, it’s time to finish the job over the next two months.

Well, each night of the Democratic National Convention just keeps outdoing the previous one. Monday was great — Tuesday was unbelievable. But tonight was even better than the past two.

I sure hope that you all got an opportunity to see most of tonight’s exciting moments. The session began earlier than normal for most of us — we were all told we needed to be there quite early — 3:00 — to see Senator Salazar speak and to be present for the roll call of the states. I even got to be a tiny part of the great evening — the Obama campaign asked me to second a procedural motion at the beginning of the session.

Senator Salazar had a key role early this evening. He was one of the nominators for Senator Obama, and did wonderfully. Right after the nominations, we went straight into the roll call vote. Senator Salazar, Congressman Perlmutter, and Pat Waak announced Colorado’s results — 55 votes for Senator Obama, 15 votes for Senator Clinton. (More on how we voted later.)

Then, there was an interesting dance — when they got to New Mexico, the State Chair, Brian Colon, passed the floor to the Illinois delegation, who then passed the floor to the New York delegation. In New York, Senator Clinton was introduced, and she moved to nominate Senator Obama by acclamation.

The motion passed overwhelmingly.

What came next was an interesting catharsis. I didn’t expect the rush of emotion at that point — I truly enjoy the roll call votes as one of the best parts of these conventions, but I honestly didn’t really give any thought to what would happen when Senator Obama actually received the nomination — I just figured there’d be some celebration.

But this was more than a celebration — it was a release. Several delegates from Colorado were shedding tears of joy. Indeed, I felt a little emotional. I jumped up on a chair and just screamed and cheered. Then, I got back down and gave several folks who I’d seen work so hard hugs and high fives. It was a rather touching moment.

But the convention must go on, and it did. Later in the evening, we heard from President Bill Clinton. There had been some concerns among delegates about what he’d say, but — like his wife — did a wonderful job of working to unify this Party and make it clear: He’s going to work to elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

We also heard a speech from Senator John Kerry. Senator Kerry — well, what can I say but WOW. He laid out about as compelling a case as can be made as to why John McCain is a poor choice to lead our nation, and then did a wonderful pivot and contrasted that well with how Senator Obama represents the values and the judgment needed to be President. He also — in a very ironic way — pointed out how John McCain has changed his position on an unbelievable number of issues.

That brought us to the nomination of Joe Biden as Vice President. We went through the process and nominated him by acclamation. Then, we heard from his son, the attorney general of Delaware. He gave a very moving speech that gave us a glimpse into the personal life and values of Senator Biden. We heard about his commitment to return home to Delaware on the train every night — and how tragedy marked his initial swearing-in to the U.S. Senate, so much so that he almost did not decide to swear in to the Senate. “Delaware can get another Senator. My children cannot get another father.” In the end, he was sworn in at his son’s bedside in the hospital.

And Joe Biden showed up to prove why he’s our Vice Presidential nominee.

He gave a great talk — including introducing us to his wonderful mother in the crowd, and talked of the values that he learned from her. He talked about what kind of race this will be, and also talked of John McCain, who he listed as a true friend, but who is wrong on so many issues important to America today.

That should have been the end of the night. You’d normally have the VP nominee’s family come out, and there would be a celebration. But not tonight.

We usually hear rumors about what is going to happen each night. For instance, I’d heard generally how the vote would be conducted the evening before. We’d heard that Senator Obama was going to be on the video screen after Obama’s speech. But when Joe Biden’s wife came out to the stage and said she had a surprise, it was news to all of us. I expected us to have another video feed.

But there was a slight delay: Biden looked genuinely confused. Then, we in the Colorado delegation saw the curtain to the side of the stage open and out came… Barack Obama. The delegation went wild. Senator Obama told us why he’d wanted to move the Convention to Invesco Field tomorrow night: he wanted to open the Convention to as many as possible.

I don’t know what the best adjective is for the night: “magical” seems trite. Amazing?

————————

The morning began with another breakfast. We heard from Congressman John Salazar, and the vice president of the United Farm Workers of America. There were a number of other speakers, but I had to leave to get over to Rocky Mountain PBS, where I was a guest on “Colorado Matters,” which is on Colorado Public Radio, but is also showing on PBS this convention week.

I felt like the show went well. I was on with Congressman Ed Perlmutter, who is so energized this week. (As an aside, I sat next to him at the Convention, and I can tell you that he’s about as enthusiastic about Barack Obama as you can be.) The host asked several really good questions and I felt that Congressman Perlmutter and I did a pretty good job talking about the differences Colorado voters will face between John McCain and Barack Obama.

After the show, we went over to a lunch for Western states delegates, and then headed over to the Pepsi Center because of the need to be there earlier than normal.

Tomorrow is the big day. I know many of you will be there — I hope to see so many of you, and I’m so glad that many Colorado Democrats will have a chance to be a part of history. Invesco Field has never seen a Super Bowl, but this may very well be even better than any Super Bowl!

See You There!!!

This morning, we had our first Delegation Breakfast. We’ve had delegation breakfasts at each convention, but this was something more. To start, the room was at least twice as large — perhaps three times as large — as the rooms where we held our breakfasts in Boston and Los Angeles at the last two conventions. And we filled the room — Colorado’s delegates were only a part of the crowd.

We had some great speakers this morning. We heard from Senator Salazar, as well as Reps. Salazar and Perlmutter. Senator Salazar was bursting with pride at being the host Senator at this convention. We heard from several other speakers, as well, including a great speech from former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Gov. Siegelman was targeted by the U.S. Justice Department and Karl Rove because he was a Democrat in the South they couldn’t beat legitimately. He was even thrown into a maximum security prison before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered his release, with the comment that he was likely to win his appeal.

Siegelman did a great job keeping the crowd energized by his compelling story. He was introduced by CDP Political Director Billy Compton, who got his start when Siegelman hired him out of college in Alabama.

It was a great morning to be a Colorado Democrat. And I’ve seen a list of some of our speakers in the days to come, and it is only going to get better!

—————-

Last night, after we left the star-studded Green Concert at Red Rocks, we headed back into the heart of Denver for the evening soiree for the Young Democrats of America and the Colorado Young Democrats. We arrived just in time to hear CYD President (and Colorado delegate) Crisanta Duran energize the crowd and introduce the YDA President. We also heard an excited and inspiring speech from Congressman Jeff Merkeley — the club was certainly “jumping” with YD energy.

Today, there are a number of events we’re headed out to do before we go over to the Pepsi Center this afternoon. As always, I will try to write to DemNotes as I can. Note that it appears if I post from my cell phone, you won’t get DemNotes via e-mail, so you might want to check online at www.DemNotes.com for the latest reports.

“Are You Ready to Get This Party Started? That has two meanings this week!”

And thus, the Flobots truly defined in short and simple terms what this week is about.

Oh, yeah. Let me first explain who the Flobots are. The Flobots are a musical group dedicated to civic action and making change in America. They’re a Denver band that is sweeping the nation. And important to this discussion, they headlined the Media Party that kicked off the 2008 Democratic National Convention tonight.

Brandy and I have been listening to the Flobots for a couple of months now, but seeing them in concert was truly revolutionary. They challenge their audience to get involved — to become activists. They’ve even started a nonprofit organization whose goal is to engage youth and register them to vote across American.

Tonight, approximately 15,000 members of the media joined together to enjoy the opening event of the National Convention at Elitch Gardens. As a member of the Host Committee Board of Directors, I was lucky enough to join the crowd at Elitches. Beyond the amazing concept of being able to ride the Mind Eraser without any line, the evening was truly a night to celebrate Denver’s week in the limelight.

Senator Ken Salazar kicked off the night as we enjoyed traditional Native American dances. Then, we heard a few words from Governor Ritter and Mayor Hickenlooper before the Flobots kept the energy of the night moving. The evening ended with a fantastic three-level fireworks display that was, in a word, breathtaking.

The day began over at the Convention Center, where we attended the Rules Committee meeting. Brandy is one of Colorado’s representatives to the Rules Committee. The Committee rather uneventfully adopted the permanent rules that will govern the National Convention this week. The Clinton and Obama campaigns worked hard to ensure that both sides were satisfied with the outcome. The Rules Committee also adopted a proposal to create a commission to review the timeline and caucus / primary process for the nomination, which will start up next year. I had some discussions with campaign officials out of concerns that out of state interests would attempt to dictate how Colorado runs our caucuses; I’m confident we will have our voice heard when this Commission forms next year.

After the Rules Committee, we headed over to the Grand Hyatt to check in to the Colorado delegation hotel. Interestingly, this is also the DCCC hotel, where many members of Congress are staying. Security here is rather tight; it is a rather surreal experience.

On the way over to the Media Party, we stopped at a reception for State Party Chairs, Vice Chairs and Executive Directors at Tamayo on Larimer. It was great to see so many of our colleagues — they all seem to be enjoying their stays here in the Mile High City so far.

Tomorrow, there are a lot of things going on, including a couple of Colorado Delegation events. I also may have to do a walk-through of the Pepsi Center, missing the key Colorado reception. As with tonight, I will try to write when I can.