We recap Day 3 in Denver and look ahead to what is likely to be complete chaos tonight for Obama’s acceptance speech at 75,000-seat Invesco Field:
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
This is our last TPMtv episode from Denver so it’s a good time to ask you for your feedback. Today’s show was shot using our standard camera and upload process, but for much of the week, as I hope you’ve seen, we’ve been experimenting with using a camera phone and streaming video live or almost live via qik.com. We want to know how you liked those videos: Was the low resolution annoying? Did the speed and immediacy of the videos make up for the lower video quality? Was the content of the videos themselves what you were looking for?
We’re very excited about the potential for this new technology and what it allows us to do, so we’re very interested in hearing from you about this week’s experiment — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Life expectancy has to be higher here in Denver. Everyone is lean and fit and looks like they just finished mountain biking, are on their way to yoga class, and might end the day with a run.
The other striking thing about the city is the number of dogs. There must be a city ordinance requiring all residents to own at least one dog. I’m not talking roving bands of stray dogs here, just everyone on the street with a leash in hand, and dogs that look very accustomed to hanging out in coffee shops, chilling in the shade of sidewalk cafes, and in general being part of the life of the city.
New South Carolina GOP ad focuses exclusively on McCain’s POW past as response to criticism of number-of-houses flub.
Karl Rove: Hurricanes like Katrina and Gustav just won’t give us Republicans a break.
We’ve yet to have the McCain campaign return our calls about campaign advisor John Goodman’s suggestion that everyone in the USA actually does have health care insurance in the form of access to emergency rooms where no one in need of immediate medical care can be turned away. But they’re now telling TNR’s Jon Cohn that he’s actually not a McCain advisor.
Really?
Needless to say, we did some looking around before we put up our feature story.
On August 18th, the Dallas Morning News referred to Goodman as “a health policy adviser to McCain’s campaign.” Yesterday, on the 27th, they referred to Goodman as a McCain advisor “who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy.”
Policy wonks can sometimes puff themselves up by giving people the impression they are advisors. Or a paper can get it wrong. But much more telling is the July 30th OpEd Goodman wrote (sub.req.) in the Wall Street Journal in which he is identified as “an unpaid adviser to the McCain campaign.”
Given the Journal’s role as the forum of record for statements of Republican campaigns and Republican policy wonks, there’s simply no way that representation did not have the McCain campaign’s sign-off.
I’m still curious to know more about what role he played in crafting McCain’s health care plan. As the Journal states, he is an unpaid advisor rather than a member of the campaign staff. And I have no doubt they now don’t want him as a named advisor. On that I don’t need convincing. But I’m afraid, just saying he’s not an advisor won’t cut it. Absent some good explanation of why he has repeatedly been identified in the press as a McCain advisor, he and his claims about emergency rooms as de facto health care insurance are all theirs.
Late Update: My old friend Jon Cohn doesn’t like getting fibbed to by the McCain camp. Jon got in touch with the reporter from the DMN who has the goods.
Ben Craw and I just arrived at Invesco Field in Denver, site of tonight’s acceptance speech by Barack Obama. We were lucky enough to have grabbed the last couple of seats available in the press box.
An hour before the day’s official convention schedule kicks off — and six hours before Obama is scheduled to speak — a scattering of people are already in their seats above the field. Delegates are filing in. They are seated on the field itself. It’s a bright, sunny, not-too-warm day here, but that’s a long time to be baking in the sun.
I hate to even comment on the set prepared for Obama for his speech. The ridiculous right wing meme that the set is a Greek temple to Obama is too mindless to deserve comment. The set looks like nothing so much as the East Colonnade of the White House.
The demand for press access to this event is so great that we’re apprehensive about losing our seats here in the press box. We have seats available in the stadium itself as well as some access to the field itself.
We’ll be bringing you reports as we are able, including video as the day unfolds.
Times to report Bush and sidekick haven’t spoken since May.
Hmmm, wonder who would leak to the Times that McCain and Bush aren’t chummy anymore? Have to put on my thinking cap for that one.
(ed.note: Alternative title for this post “Exile in Sidekickville”.)
TPM reporters score prime Invesco field press seats, pledge to die before relinquishing them.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the convention to order. Most of the delegates have taken their seats on the field now. The stadium is filling up.
If it wasn’t obvious yet from the banal observations of this post, this is mostly a long afternoon of waiting for the main event.
I really don’t envy the TV guys who have to fill all this airtime.
Late Update: No Bruce Springsteen and no Bon Jovi. They’d been reported to be among the performers slated for the evening. Instead we have Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, will.i.am, and Michael McDonald. This is devastating news for TPMtv’s Ben Craw.