Democrats strove to keep their convention risk-free
8.31.08
Michael Smerconish
On the first night of my first Democratic convention, I went looking for a cold one. I'd like to say it was the altitude, but truth be told I just had a hankering for a beer. My heart was set on Coors (after all, this was Denver).
The arena concession stands had everything: Obama playing cards, Democratic mouse pads, and the usual array of campaign buttons and T-shirts. But no beer. Hoods covered the taps that would normally be flowing for Nuggets home games.
Four days later, when the final gavel fell, I understood the decision to reinstitute Prohibition on the concourse of the Pepsi Center. This gathering was a masterfully controlled event with the unstated goal of giving America - white America - a comfort level in electing the nation's first African American president.
No risk was overlooked, including the lubricating of delegates who might deviate from the script.
It was as if doctors gathered in Denver under the mantra of the Hippocratic Oath. The first rule? Do no harm.
The selection of Joe Biden set the stage. Sure, Senator Joe was chosen for his receding hairline as well as his foreign-policy bona fides - but also because of the appeal he has with white, working-class voters. They were this convention's intended audience, and nothing offered in prime time could alienate or offend them.
Both parties have fringe elements. The Democrats kept theirs under wraps. Missing was any sign of disharmony or the raising of the most controversial of issues.
Sure, there was media-manufactured discontent among former Hillary supporters, which got to the point where I expected her speech to be played in reverse for any evidence of dissatisfaction with Barack Obama. But to find legitimate controversy in Denver, I had to walk a half mile from the arena to a tightly confined space where the protesters gathered under the watchful gaze of SWAT teams.
Here were the usual suspects, an assemblage comprising people who Philadelphia Democratic strategist Ken Smukler told me resembled "the guys who get to a college campus and never leave." They were the ones pushing an agenda that dealt with abortion, guns, gay rights - but those issues never made it to prime time.
Meanwhile, the scant minutes the networks devoted to this convention in their prime-time broadcasts were dedicated to stirring the emotions of Middle America with an ailing Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama with her daughters, and Joe Biden with his mother.
More than a decade ago, Pat Buchanan came under fire after he stood before a GOP convention and described the recently concluded Democratic gathering as a "giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden - where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists - in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history."
(By the way, Buchanan stayed in the hotel room next to mine in Denver, and when I reminded him of his words, he was quick to remind me that they were initially well-received until the media turned the tide.)
I have been to three Republican conventions, including one as an elected alternate delegate. So staid were the Democrats in Denver that if you dropped me into the concourse and removed the signs, I would have had a difficult time telling it wasn't a Republican event.
Except, of course, for the skin color of the participants. Which, I think, explains the way in which this event was structured.
Missing in prime time were Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Plenty of African Americans spoke in peak hours, but none who run the risk of stirring the pot. Mentions of race were few, and even they were offered in a dignified manner in reference to the historic nature of the Democratic nominee.
The honoring of the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech presented the African American experience in a much more benign way than having the controversial civil rights leaders taking the stage. The entire process, it seems to me, was calculated to give a comfort level to a country that stands poised to elect its first African American president.
If that happens, it could also be a first for many states to elect an African American statewide.
The Keystone State might well determine whether Obama is elected president, yet Pennsylvania has never elected an African American to a statewide office of consequence. No governor. No attorney general. No state treasurer. No auditor general. No U.S. senator.
There is no majority or plurality white district in Pennsylvania that is represented by an African American in the legislature.
Democrats know what they face. Maybe it explains the mood in Denver that caused Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson to call them the "worrywart" party.
"The Democrats have a habit of inventing things to worry about and finding things to obsess about and being depressed when they ought to be happy," Robinson said to me. "I mean, this is a Democratic year - relax, you're on top for a change!"
Well, the party is surely on top, but the top of the ticket is not where it should be. Obama should be well ahead of John McCain, given the mood of the country and his attractiveness as a candidate. Would the race be as close if Biden were leading the ticket? I doubt it. And the elephant in the room, sadly, appears to be race.
So, is Middle America ready for Barack Obama? Now headed for St. Paul, I remain thirsty for that answer. But no poll will be able to tell us. We will know only after we scrutinize the election's results in nine weeks.
Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in The Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. He can be heard from 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via the Web at http://www.mastalk.com.