In case you missed it (or want to see it again:)

I’m not all that cynical usually, but I found myself getting there yesterday. Sitting there, watching the speakers on TV one after another praise Barack Obama the same way, I started getting cranky. It didn’t help that Wolf Blitzer was droning on and on in between and sometimes during the speeches, a situation I remedied by switching it to C-SPAN, which doesn’t have commentators at all. Good thing, too, because as I understand it, Claire McCaskill’s speech wasn’t televised on CNN any other network.

Watching all those speeches back to back reminded me that public officials aren’t necessarily very good public speakers. In fact, some of the non-electeds who had been given a speaking slot were just as good as those who had spent years in office.

Case in point: Michelle Obama. As she spoke, especially introduced by her mom in a short film presented before the speech, my cynicism melted away.  It was the kind of speech that hits you in the gut, telling you her story, the kind of story we all want for ourselves and for our own kids. A woman that came through hard work from a struggling family to a successful law career and raise a family of her own, a picture passionately presented by Michelle. How could you not tear up a little when hearing about her father, since deceased, struggling to make it every day to work at a city water plant while fighting multiple sclerosis?

As Michael alluded to on Friday, Show Me Progress was rejected (twice) in our bid for credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention. The credential for Missouri’s slot in the state blog pool went to Fired Up Missouri, and no other Missouri-based blog was credentialed in the general blog pool. You can read up on some of the controversy elsewhere; Matt Stoller, Kos and Pam Spaulding have some good roundups of different angles of controversy in the selection process. But I want to talk specifically about our own disappointment with the results.

When hotflash and I first talked about putting together a progressive Democratic community blog for the state, there was nothing like it in Missouri. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of good political blogs here. But most of the political blogs based in Missouri are narrowly focused on a city or region, or primarily comment on national news, or are nonpartisan newsy blogs. Fired Up Missouri was probably closest to the kind of blog we wanted to be a part of, in that they cover state political news, and one doesn’t have to be a frontpager to contribute something more than a comment. But while they do an excellent job of hammering Republican malfeasance, they don’t really cover Democratic politics in any meaningful way, other than to contrast them with their Republican opponents. On Show Me Progress, we’ve covered a peace rally featuring a famous wounded vet, the new party organizing system, an on-the-ground report on the Bush-McCain Challenge in action, a shakeup in the Democratic primary in the 2nd CD, a profile of a Democratic Party activist in Springfield and her successes, and coverage of the first Democratic Attorney General debate, to name a few. And that’s just in the past week. We also covered the state convention, our ward and congressional caucuses, not to mention myriad interviews with national, state, and local candidates. I haven’t seen any of that with Fired Up Missouri. With all due respect to Fired Up, covering Democratic politics from the bottom up is not something they do.

So that brings up the question of how Fired Up Missouri was chosen over us and why. In my own view, it’s not malign – it’s as simple as the Carnahans’ connections coupled with higher readership stats and a longer history. Judging by some of the other DNCC blogger choices, they wanted to reliably transmit their message to the largest online audience possible. They believe that Fired Up will perform well in that regard, though I’m curious to see how extensive the coverage actually is. (A higher readership doesn’t mean squat for getting out your message if there aren’t many posts.)

What the DNCC seemed to leave out of the consideration is what covering the convention means for us in the state blogosphere. Official recognition is nice, but I don’t really care about the pat on the head so much as the huge networking opportunity represented by all those party officials, electeds, and activists in one giant four day party. It’s also an opportunity for us to talk one-to-one with all of the above about how better serve Missouri through internet outreach, and to swap tips and contacts with our fellow bloggers. And yeah, the higher traffic would be be nice, too. To the extent that the national and Missouri Democratic Party wants an energized activist base, they would be better served by someone like us on the floor with the Missouri delegation.

To some extent, we will still be taking our bite of the pie. Blue Girl and hotflash are going to Denver, and I’m still mulling over whether I can afford it (I wouldn’t hesitate if we actually had credentials – it would be worth it). We may still be able to have access to the Missouri delegation outside the convention hall, and there will be a satellite media center for bloggers, also outside the convention center. And we might even be able to temporarily gain access to the convention center with borrowed or guest credentials. But we won’t be able to come and go as we please, we definitely won’t have floor access to our delegation, and the access we will have will be highly limited. It would be nice if the door were open to us, instead of having our own party throw up a big roadblock.

And I’m not talking about Texas or Ohio either.

Next Thursday, February 28th, in communities all across Missouri, Democrats will gather in caucuses to select delegates to represent us at the Congressional district level. The delegates at the congressional district meetings will choose the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August. (I know – it reminds me of winning spelling bees, too.) You can find out the process to become a delegate here, and the location of your caucus here. Doors open at 6:30 PM and close promptly at 7:30 PM. Those who arrive after 7:30 may observe, but will not be allowed to participate.

Just to be clear, these caucuses are not like the caucuses in places like Kansas and Iowa. They do not set the percentages of delegates to vote for a presidential candidate; that was decided by the state’s primary vote (Michael’s recent post explains this in detail.) These caucuses are the first step in deciding the actual people who will stand for a particular candidate in the national convention. They are also a place to meet and network with fellow local Democrats. Oh, and chances are that your local caucus will NOT resemble this one. It stands a better chance of resembling this one, but only if you can persuade the entire caucus to relocate to a bar. Good luck with that.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Tom Hughes at Democracy for America, calling on DFA members to become delegates for the Democratic National Convention, to be held next August 25-28 in Denver, CO. From the email:

Delegates participate in developing the national platform, and help chart a new direction for America and the Democratic Party. Let’s make sure our progressive voices are heard.[…] Want another reason to go? This is going to be one heck of a party. This is our chance to thank Governor Dean for his leadership. Our chance to make sure the Democratic nominee never forgets the success of the 50 State Strategy, grassroots organizing, and people-powered campaigns. This is our chance to keep moving the party forward.

Prompted by the same e-mail, a diarist at Blue Mass Group suggests organizing a bloggers contingent for the Missouri delegation.  Sound like a good idea in Missouri?

More below the fold.

Who’s that guy in the picture?

So why become a delegate? Isn’t the convention a tightly scripted TV show starring a select few prominent politicians and several thousand extras wearing funny hats? True, but aside from the ritual that the nomination portion of the convention has become, delegates also participate in developing the party’s platform AND get to network with other activists from around the country. Not to mention that on the (admittedly remote) chance that there is a brokered convention, delegates would help make history by deciding the nominee.

I don’t believe it necessarily makes sense to organize a bloggers contingent per se here in Missouri. We have quite a few political bloggers around the state, but we aren’t as tightly knit as the folks in Massachusetts, and I don’t really see a lot of ideological cohesiveness, either. What interests me more is opening up the delegate selection process. In one of my first posts on this site, I quoted internet activist Matt Stoller:

Civic participation is a key tenet of how we built our media and political apparatus. We are demanding low barriers to entry in the political system, a way for everyone to participate, and more open cultural structures, including business, agriculture, and government.

I don’t have any firsthand experience with the delegate selection process, and I’ve only heard a few accounts from friends and acquaintances about their own. You don’t see newspaper accounts or reports on the local news about the caucuses that select the delegates, either. The best way to cover it is to do it yourself. So for the next several months, I’ll be familiarizing myself with the Missouri delegate selection rules in preparation for the county conventions next spring. I’ll be blogging about it to ask for your support and report what I found. I hope that more than a few of you will join me.