Special Guest Post and Report from Alexandra Svokos

Hello from the Mile-High City of Denver, Colorado! The 2008 Democratic National Convention is under way out here and so far it’s been pretty wild. Last night was the first night of the convention, held at the Pepsi Center. To get to the Pepsi Center, busses are provided to transport people from their hotels. Oh yeah and Maria Shriver, Arnold the governator’s wife, is staying at the same hotel as me. We looked at each other. Whatever. SO my family and I got on the bus, and it took about forty-five minutes to get to the center. I met an interesting delegate from Utah on that bus. She was wearing a shoulder puppet of Uncle Sam that she had made herself and was hence interviewed by the AP, Reuters, CBS, and a Spanish station. Cool, but kind of insane also.When we finally got to our suite at the convention, Nancy Pelosi was speaking. She continually made the point that “John McCain is wrong” and the crowd chanted it with her.

A video was shown with former president Jimmy Carter. After the video, Carter came onstage and walked around a bit as the crowd cheered and Georgia on My Mind played. Next, Barack Obama’s little sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, came on stage, gave that little Hawaiian hand gesture thing, and made a speech about her brother and how much he loves America.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. began by saying that Dr. Martin Luther King is looking down at Denver and seeing that it is the first political convention to take place in sight of a mountaintop. He talked about Illinois for a bit, how “Illinois is America.” I didn’t know that. He connected President Bush to John McCain saying that “we need someone who can heal the wounds of the past eight years.” He ended his speech mentioning that mountaintop again and the freedom that rings from it.

After that we decided to venture onto the floor. We walked past the governor of Colorado and found the CNN station and stood staring at Anderson Cooper for a good twenty minutes. Turns out he is as pretty in real life as on TV. Some lady kept yelling for everyone to move but “the security guy we had had to go cover Mrs. Obama.”

Anyways. Caroline Kennedy opened a tribute for her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy. She entered the stage to Sweet Caroline, which is apparently about her, and said that “I have never had someone inspire me the way people tell me my father (President John Kennedy) inspired them, but I do now: Barack Obama.” After she spoke a video by Ken Burns was shown about Ted Kennedy. He came onstage afterwards and talked about how great he finds Barack Obama. He used the word “new” and variations of it quite a few times. “This is the cause of my life: new hope.” Kennedy said that some people think that Barack is too positive, too ambitious. But when John Kennedy wanted to reach the moon, “he didn’t say it would be too far…and today an American flag still marks the surface of the moon…We can do it again.” Despite having brain cancer, Kennedy announced that he would be there in January to see Obama become president.

The keynote speaker that night was Michelle Obama, Barack’s wife if you don’t know. My family and I wanted to be able to see her, so we tried to get off the floor and back to the suite. It was a madhouse. Seriously, it was like a giant slow moving mosh pit with people pushing and shoving to make their way through.

Some people had cameras, some had wheelchairs, one woman was pregnant and everyone was stuffed together. If it wasn’t for all those stuffy high school dances I’ve been to, I would have really flipped out. We managed to force our way to a staircase somehow as Celebrate Good Times played but lost a sister along the way. It’s fine. Back in our suite I was told that Kal Penn, Kumar from Harold and Kumar, Susan Sarandon, and John Legend were down on the floor. Penn is actually a volunteer and was allegedly very sweet. It’s my mission to meet him by the end of the week. One guy in our suite ran in waving his camera announcing that he had met Ken Burns. Exciting!

Michelle Obama was introduced by her brother, Craig Robinson – not to be confused with Craig Robinson who plays Darryl on The Office and was recently arrested for drugs. He talked about their childhood and that Michelle had memorized every word to every episode of The Brady Bunch. Robinson said that they would stay up at night to talk. “She always talked about the kids that were getting picked on in school, or the people having trouble in the family. I didn’t realize it then but I do now, those were the guys she was going to dedicate her life to.”

Michelle came out wearing a pretty blue dress that was pretty unconventional. It wasn’t a suit or anything, just a dress she looked good in. Good choice. She was very nervous about this speech and had cancelled some of her meetings that day due to nerves. Nevertheless her speech was really inspiring and awesome.


She talked about Barack and his mission to make the world “what it should be” rather than “what it is.” She said that people know what the world should be. “You do what you say you’re gonna do. You treat people with dignity and respect even if you don’t know them…We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like.” Michelle talked about her dad’s struggle with MS. She said that he never complained about it, he just woke up an hour earlier to get dressed and go to work.

Her dad’s determination was the same as people’s across America to make the world as it should be such as “the military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table” and “people like Hillary Clinton…” – the crowd erupted into one of the loudest cheers of the night – “…who put those eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling.” As her speech came to a close, Michelle said that “after all that’s happened these past nineteen months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with nineteen years ago.”

“One day they (Obama’s daughters) - and your sons and daughters - will tell their own children… how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears.” Hey, that’s us! We’re going to tell our kids about Obama! And of course, in conclusion, “let us stand together to elect Barack Obama President of the United States of America.” Obama’s two young daughters joined their mother on stage and – oh boy – Barack Obama himself showed up on the screen. He came live via video streaming from Kansas City. “Now you know why I asked her out so many times,” he said about Michelle, “you want a persistent president.” His daughters were adorable. He asked them how they thought their mom did and the younger daughter replied “I think she did good.” Me too. She really is a classy and smart woman.

More from Denver sometime in the next 24 hours, Popsense reader!