Good point.
Angst aside, I just had an interesting discussion with Laura Flanders and a man by the name of Dan Slater who's the Vice Chair for the Colorado Democratic Party. We were talking on the eve to what extent the "change" that everyone's being hearing so a great deal of almost is in manifest at the assembly. And I have to say that my initial impression, having been in Boston in 2004, is for what cause surprisingly un-changed things feel. Howard Dean runs the DNC, we have the 50-state strategetics in place and the first black nominee in American history, and yet, for the most part, my brand is that this convention, during the time that perhaps other thing logistically frustrating, is just with regard to what you'd expect: the parties, the many different organizations and constituencies sponsoring events and attempting to drive home their message and, of course, the delirious designate by number of police dressed like something of a dystopic sci-fi movie. It's a salutary reminder that the Democratic party is a self-same old etc., and is therefore subject to a affectionate of painful inertia. Change comes slowly.
That said, beneath the superficies there are signs of a changing party. Obviously there's the presence of the Netroots, camped out mostly in the Big Tent at which place Google is serving free smoothies and offering back rubs. But though I haven't seen any large fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews on this (I've got an email into the DNC press shop), there are what feels like a lot of new delegates in attendance as well. I ran into two friends from Texas yesterday, both my age, who founded Texans for Obama in advance of Obama had even announced his candidacy and are now members of the Texas delegation. It's their first convention. Dan Slater said that the 80-90%(!) of the delegates in the Colorado delegation were first-timers, which he said was completely new and directly due to the party-building of the Dean DNC and the devotion around Obama.
So time there's nothing revolutionary happening in Denver (aside, of course from nominating the first black man for president) the Democratic party really has changed and is changing. Those changes aren't distinctly ideological at the moment (the party's abject has always been progressive, and to the left of the funders, lobbyists and career politicos), but regionally and demographically.
I'm hoping to get more more demographic knowledge of facts and revisit this topic later.
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