She(la) Who Must Be Obeyed
August 28th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Living up to her reputation as the biggest diva in the U.S. Congress, Houston congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee woke up the Texas delegation breakfast this morning with a bossy, fire-and-brimstone speech that also served as an apology for her early support of Hillary Clinton.
“Some of us started on a different path,” acknowledged Lee, who was booed earlier this year at a speech at Texas Southern University for her support of Clinton. “But now we’ve got to get a compass, we’ve got to get a GPS, we got to get on the road because we’ve got work to do.”
While other speakers have struggled to maintain attention in the room of delegates milling around and visiting the breakfast buffet, Lee let the delegates know, as she took the microphone, she would have none of that. She ordered the room’s doors closed (the buffet is located outside) and demanded that people chatting in the back of the room sit down. Earlier, she had distributed campaign signs for the delegates to wave, prompting a lot of eye-rolling among the delegates. But by the end of the passionate speech — in which she invoked Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Moses — the audience was on its feet, waving the signs enthusiastically. Her message: Republicans will try to win through voter suppression, and Democrats should be prepared to fight back on election day.
