The Texas Observer

To her surprise, Arlington delegate Shandra Jackson was one of four women chosen to participate in an economic round table Tuesday morning with Michelle Obama.

Also on the panel were four female governors: Ruth Ann Minner (Delaware), Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Janet Napolitano (Arizona), Christine Gregoire (Washington), and surprise guest Joe Biden.

“I have no idea how they made the selection,” the 34-year old paralegal said. “They called Friday and asked if I was interested, and I was told I couldn’t say anything until Sunday.” She kept the news a secret from even her parents, Cecil and Carolyn Jackson, as well as her hairdresser, who jokingly told her to “give Michelle my business card” when Jackson had her hair cut before she left.

Jackson said she had to quell her excitement and was thinking to herself, “If you only knew!” On 8:30 on Sunday night, a few hours after landing in Denver, someone from Michelle Obama’s office called Jackson to let her know she would get to participate in the round table.

A single mother who had never had an interest in politics before, Jackson got involved with the campaign because Barack Obama gave her a “wake up call.” An arachnoid cyst and then an aneurysm in the left side of her brain also contributed to her awakening. She got involved for the first time in February, when she attended precinct captain training.

When asked whether she would remain in politics after the convention, Jackson smiled and said that she was unsure but that Obama had “truly inspired” her to get involved not just with politics but with other community services. Perhaps the greatest testament to the “change we can believe in” credo was Jackson’s newfound attitude about the impact the Obama campaign and the convention itself made on her outlook in life.

“I came here one woman,” Jackson said, “and I’m leaving a different one.”

Clinton delegates from Texas were none too pleased this morning. They expressed frustration after they were informed at the delegation breakfast by state Chair Boyd Richie that they would have to cast their votes on paper ballots before tonight’s anticipated roll call.

Richie said he was notified at around 9 pm last night that the DNC was requesting delegates vote early so they would be ready when it came time to vote from the floor. A Clinton supporter, ever suspicious, stood up at the breakfast and demanded that an observer oversee the ballots. Richie retorted that every ballot would be signed by the delegates themselves and copies would be made for everyone to review, adding, “we’re not relying on electronic voting machines here, folks.”

Nevertheless, an agreement was reached so that the Clinton delegates would have an observer in an effort to stymie any sort of conspiracy theories or resentments. (Let’s hear it for party trust and unity.) Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor, declined the option to have a poll watcher on behalf of the Obama delegates.

The level of frustration within the Texas delegation may be partly due to the many first-time delegates who are unfamiliar with the process.

Adding to the Texas delegation’s troubles, state Sen. Mario Gallegos (D-Houston) had to be hospitalized Tuesday night in Denver for a bacterial skin infection. Gallegos, a Clinton delegate, underwent a liver transplant in 2007 that nearly prevented him from casting the key vote needed to stop a Voter ID bill.

Richie, after leaving the delegation breakfast, took a ballot to the hospital for Gallegos to sign. Gallegos is being treated with antibiotics and is expected to be released Thursday morning.

The protests in Denver have been mostly peaceful and quiet so far (though rumor has it that may change tomorrow before Obama gives his acceptance speech). We Are Change, a social justice organization that questions the truths around September 11, protested peacefully off of Welton Street behind the Colorado Convention Center on Tuesday, with the capitol building in the background.

Michelle Obama catapulted herself into Barack’s rock-star league with her prime-time speech last night. Today you get the feeling that perhaps Hillary delegates have taken her on as their surrogate female candidate. At the Women’s Caucus today, “Michelle” was the buzz word. She garnered more raucous cheers than Hillary Clinton when her image came on the jumbotrons.

The Lifetime TV network had set multi-colored plastic tambourines on every chair, which turned into audible girl power. Caucus-goers welcomed iconic women like Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), activist, strategist and just plain mesmerizing speaker Donna Brazile, and Cecile Richards, daughter of Ann Richards and current president of Planned Parenthood.

There is still — still – that lingering roll call vote when Hillary’s name will be placed in nomination, which became the inevitable emotional elephant in the room. Brazile was greeted on stage with a standing ovation. Hundreds of trembling tambourines shot up into the air. With wide eyes, Brazile declared, “Last night I signed my name to put Hillary Clinton’s name in nomination.” Tambourines went rattling, and just when it seemed to be Hillary ‘08 all over again, Brazile plunged forward saying, “I did it because Barack Obama understands that a united Democratic party is a victorious Democratic party.”

Women have one instinctive reflex that ultimately binds them together. It goes beyond themselves and dissolves party lines. Their children’s — or unborn children’s — future is, as Michelle Obama drove home last night, their stake in this election. This means placing importance not only on children’s health insurance and education funding, but electing a president who preserves women’s reproductive rights.

When DNC Secretary Alice Germond took the stage, an anti-abortionist priest suddenly walked on to the floor in front of her, saying, “Ladies, let’s not forget about abortion.”

Before he could get another word out, women leapt out of their seats, tambourines flying, shaking their dissent into the air. Germond eloquently added to the din, shouting “Thank you women, thank you women!” over and over again. The crowd then began chanting “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!”

As police escorted the priest away, to the chanting of Obama’s name, it became clear that when it comes to their most important rights, unity is alive and well with women Democratic voters. And while it’s easy to think that they were chanting “Obama” because of Barack’s 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL, perhaps we should recognize that, in some small part, the women were chanting for Michelle.

At the Rural Council Caucus this afternoon, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see tumbleweeds blow through the mostly empty Four Seasons Room at the Colorado Convention Center. The room looked as though it could easily hold the alleged 400 delegates here representing rural communities. We’ll never know because so few of them showed up.

A modest crowd of about 40 people gathered around the podium, where Todd Campbell, Obama For America Rural Vote Director, proselytized about the importance of outreach to rural voters. Obama’s campaign is coming off of a corn syrupy sugar-rush, having been endorsed by the American Corn Growers Association just last Friday — the first agricultural group to endorse Barack Obama. But this only planted the question: does rural America care?

Democrats once dominated rural areas all through the South, the Midwest, and Texas. Those days are long gone, though you can still occasionally find unreconstructed Yellow Dog Democrats wandering the floor of state and national conventions. Democrats have talked for years about trying to win in rural areas; they opine about how their populist message should play well. (This afternoon, there was a lot of talk about John McCain’s voting history. He has consistently voted against farm bills, starting with a no vote in 1985, when he was still a member of the U.S. House. He voted against farm bills twice more in the Senate in 1996 and 2002, and was a no-show for a vote in 2007.)

But Democrats have largely ceded rural areas to Republicans, especially in national and statewide races. The modern Democratic Party is, for the most part, an urban one. That’s not a bad thing. As Rural America loses population, its political influence dissipates as well.

The decline of the farmer was never more evident when, at the end of the caucus, the council opened the floor to questions. David Harper, a row cropper and pasture farmer from Hartsville, Tennessee, stood up to ask if Obama had bothered to engage the Farm Bureau, a non-partisan organization that looks after the interests of its members while simultaneously offering them insurance. Campbell’s roundabout answer was that the Obama campaign intends to reach out to as many rural organizations as possible. Hartman then turned to the audience and asked, holding his hand up, “Are there any farm owners here?” One other hand crept up, belonging to an elderly woman with gaunt, weathered skin stretched across her cheekbones. Hartman turned back to Campbell at the podium and said “That’s rural America…and I’m real concerned about that.”

The question is, how concerned is the Obama campaign? If party leaders are serious about winning in rural America, it will take a lot more than passing pork-loaded farm bills and dispensing happy talk at national conventions every four years. If today’s caucus was any indication, rural Americans, apparently, didn’t get Barack’s text message. They’re not signing on to MyBarackObama.com and watching inspiring YouTube videos on their iPhones. If they’re here in Denver, their priorities lie elsewhere.

Leave it to a free-spirited lyrical giant like Dave Matthews to best sum up the sentiment at the DNC Welcome Concert Sunday night at Red Rocks Amphitheater just outside of Denver. “It’s nice to be in a place where people are talkin’ a whole lot of sense,” Matthews said, perched on a stool, holding his guitar and staring up into skies that threatened rain. Dave Matthews — just Dave Matthews, not the fifteen-man Dave Matthews Band known for its legendary sold-out shows at Red Rocks — was the final performer of the welcome concert, following Sheryl Crow and Georgia-based Sugarland . Matthews was accompanied by guitar master Tim Reynolds, who never sang or spoke a word, but tore into his guitar solos with, ahem, a fierce urgency of now.

The audience waiting for the DNC Welcome Concert to kick off on Sunday night at Red Rocks.

The theme of the concert was meant to reinforce Denver’s commitment to host the “greenest convention ever,” and Red Rocks — an amphitheater carved into the mountainside seemingly by Mother Nature herself, and known for its sweeping vistas of downtown Denver and the surrounding Rockies — was the ideal setting. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who opened the ceremonies, got a warm welcome from locals and out-of-towners alike and was followed by Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth and organizer of the event.

One of the more impassioned speeches of the night came from environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who pointed out that Red Rocks was built during the Roosevelt administration. Labor was provided by the Work Projects Administration. That was a time, Kennedy said, when government was “competent and idealistic.” He railed on the Republican environmental and economic policies of the last seven and a half years, saying that they have “treated our planet as if it is a business in liquidation.” Kennedy recalled his teen-age trips to Europe, when America was respected for its moral code. He said that the country had been built and managed by “disciplined, restrained and visionary leadership,” all of which has since been washed away by events like Katrina and bloodshed in Iraq. “That to me,” Kennedy said, voice reverberating across the craggy sienna-colored boulders, “is the bitterest pill to swallow.”

A baby grand piano waited patiently center stage for most of the concert, and near the end, with lightning striking on the horizon from nearby storms, Dave Matthews settled in front of the ivories and mumbled, “This song was heavily influenced by our current president.” As Matthews began to play “Out of My Hands,” a simple chord progression drove home haunting lyrics: Our finest hour arrives, see the pig dressed in his finest fine, all the believers stand behind him and smile, as the day lights up with fire.