The Democratic National Convention: My Thoughts

I've been watching the Democratic National Convention. There's been full coverage on PBS--the Public Broadcast Station--and I liked seeing more than just the main speakers.

I don't usually pay close attention to politics. My brain just doesn't think that way. In fact, I try to avoid discussions of political, religious, or otherwise. However, my analytical side has reared it's ugly head.

Listening to the speakers was enlightening. Watching the reaction of the crowd was even more interesting. The cameras did a pretty good job capturing just the right image at just the right moment.

There were many pictorial moments, but I only want to mention two. The speech was enveloped in talk about education, child welfare, and family. The camera found the perfect subject. A little boy with a huge smile on his face. Now I don't know for sure but I felt the little one was being prompted off camera. His smile would get bigger when his eyes shifted to the side.

Another shot captured was a young man, different speech about the military, the war, and country. The young man had earrings in both his ears and he seemed distracted by something off to his right. But the camera kept going back to him.

The audience was full of a mix of races, age groups, and families. I thought that was awesome. It was a great idea to have the finale in the stadium and allow the public in. But as the commentators mentioned, it was not the first time it's been done. I couldn't imagine what the traffic was like afterward.

About the commentators, there was quite the mix there. I watched the convention on PBS, like I said, and I don't know if all the channels had their own commentators or not. However, the guys I saw in the studio were seemingly all Republican except for one poor guy. The Republicans would get in a discussion, then turn to the Democrat for his opinion and either brush him off or cut him off because a new speaker came to the podium.

I felt a lot of the general public, workers like you and me there to tell their story, speakers were fed their speeches. If they weren't, they were given a list of keyword phrases to use.

Is the Democratic slogan "More of the same with John McCain"? Boy that phrase came up umpteen times. Then there was placing all blame for everything bad on President Bush...Since when is all the power in the President's hands?

One big observation I made last night was the Clintons were not present. I knew Bill wasn't going to be there. Unless I missed seeing Hillary, I don't think she was there either. I tried to do some surfing to confirm my suspicions about her absence but all I found was she would be "on hand." What exactly does that mean? Was she there and I blinked when the cameras spied her?

Overall, I think the Democratic National Convention went well for the Democratic party. They had a lot of speakers I would have never thought of to include. The atmosphere was lively and the use of multimedia was extrodinary.