I Just Got Back From the Maine State Convention!

If you were there too, I was the Kennebec county delegate who wore BOTH Obama and Hillary buttons. My reasoning for doing this was that I wanted to be a voice for unity and, in my own way, raise my middle finger straight and high to wolf blitzer, chris matthews and their ilk who say that as a white middle class and middle aged man, I'm going to throw all of my convictions away and vote for Mr. more of the same mccain.

Dick Durban made a great Keynote speech on Saturday night. He told of his conversation with Obama when he encouraged him to run by saying "sometimes you pick the time and sometimes the time picks you". He also spoke very highly of Hillary and the other candidates.

Tom Allen and Tom Ledeu both spoke on behalf of their candidacies to oust susan collins. Both are good men but clearly Allen is the stronger and more electable candidate.

Our 6 contenders to succeed Allen in congress were all good but I became more convinced that Chellie Pingree is our girl. I am also impressed by her daughter Hannah, who will likely be Speaker of the Maine House next term. She is only 30ish, but I believe I may see a future Governor in her.

I am mostly pleased with our slate of delegates to the convention for both candidates. I was inspired by a young African American man who spoke for himself as a delegate by reciting a poem he'd written about being racially profiled. I was disappointed that an Obama delegate was selected who seemed to be relishing the idea of a floor fight and had boasted of having "gone toe-to-toe" with the Clintons before at the 92 convention (which was essentially a very unified affair). I hope the other delegates keep him in line.

We had delegates selected ranging from a high school senior to the former mayor of Portland.

As the caucus results dictated, there were 15 Obama delegates and 9 Hillary delegates. Most of the superdelegates seem to be breaking for Obama (but that's just my impression).

Of course, CNN or MSNBC will probably say nothing of this convention. Unfortunately, it won't be because we're a small state or because of Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. It'll be because it was a very harmonious, unified and civil convention, AKA the Democratic story they DON'T want to report!

My 2 cents.

PEACE!

Sounds like it was a good time.

Registration was much smoother than in Portland in '04. Much improved!

Platform discussion went much better than in the past.

The Alternate upgrade was a confusing mess but that was because of the numbers of people arriving on Saturday morning during the two-hour registration window. The Party kept telling delegates and Alternates to get there early and not to wait until 9am (the close of registration) to show up. But people still waited until the last minute. Technology fell a bit short when an upload of information as to which delegates had checked in failed to load. It was handled fairly promptly and the Credentials committee actually handled it calmly and proficiently. It was tough on the alternates, though, who had been stuck in rooms all morning.

County caucuses are traditionally a bit discombobulated because of the need to tally the Presidential preference forms in order to get the delegate allocation for the candidates. The idea to use bar code scanners was an excellent one but they didn't work in all caucuses (even though I know they were all tested beforehand) so that slowed things down as they all had to be manually data entered.

Meeting with people was great. The floor speeches were terrific. The number of people attending was awesome.

Maggie Allen and Sam Spencer were elected DNC woman and man. Twenty-four delegates were elected to go to Denver. They are ethnically diverse, age diverse, and gender diverse. I didn't get all their names but the Add-On delegate appointed by the Party Chair is an Obama supporter.

I loved it. People were patient and really seemed to be enjoying the proceedings.