Welcome everyone to my new GA 10th CD Clinton Pledged Delegate site! Thanks for visiting!  Please check out My Convention Events page to follow my days at the Convention.  Read My Convention Blog for daily comments on the days activities. Visit My Campaign 2008 Photo Gallery to see photos of the events and activities at the Convention.

A Party United

A Party United

Signs of the Time

One of the most fascinating occurrences on the flloor has to be the orchestration of the Floor and the Signage.  My parents were “political junkies” so I can remember watching the convention for most of my life.  The different types of signs and the perfect timing of each sign change has always fascinated me.  I wondered how so many people could be in sync.  Now I know and it is a great undertaking.  Each night, our Floor Page, Greg, recieves a call that tells him which signs are coming and the specific moment that those signs should be raised or kept down.  Imagine over 4,000 delegates in formation raising the right sign and the right time.  As a 4th Grade Teacher, I have decided to never complain about how my students follow  and sometimes forget my classroom rituals and procedures. You haven’t seen organized chaos until you are on the floor trying to remember which sign goes up and what time.    The Georgia Delegation should be commended for doing a good job with sign distribution and coordination.  That’s the other glitch, the signs have to be distibuted also in a quick and quiet manner to stay in sync with the producers cues and notes.  Here are some examples of the signs for the past two days.

Celebrating Democratic Women

Rosalynn Carter

Taking It To The Floor: An Introduction

My name is Kimberlyn Carter and I am the Floor Reporter for the Georgia State Historgraphy Team under the leadership of Dr. Jelani Cobb, Delegation Historian.  I am the 8th Congressional District Obama Delegate and a First Time Delegate to the Democratic National Convention.  My reports, updates, and commentaries will represent a diverse view of floor events and other events connected with this historic convention.  History does not tell its own story; it needs our help.  This is an open invitation to other members of the Georgia Delegation to join with us and document this momentous time in our nation’s history. 

Day 2: Snapshot Outside the Hall

Hillary Clinton gave one of the most amazing speeches in DNC history last night. I’m a history professor and the Harriet Tubman reference was all I needed to get to my feet — along with 10,000 other people. Mayor Shirley Franklin gaveled the convention into recess and that mood carried over as we exited the Pepsi Center. As the crowd of delegates and media streamed out of the building afterward, James Beverly and I literally ran into two Clinton delegates from New York. In the ensuing conversation we all agreed that the speech was phenomenal but the conversation quickly moved in another direction: do you think the speech will encourage holdouts to support Senator Obama in November. The two were quiet for a moment but the response was more that educational.

Part of the problem, they said, was that they had been at the convention for two days and we were the first Obama delegates to reach out to them. More than the speech, it was the individual contact, asking questions as opposed to delivering orders and open dialogue that would determine whether or not the convention succeeded in uniting the party. At the end of the day, they will probably be right. It will not be about any single candidate or any single speech, but an aggregate of those interactions among Democrats.