Burnt Orange Report

Recap of the DNC Meeting - Part Two

By Byron LaMasters

Texas DNC member David Holmes has posted twice on his Yahoo Group recapping the events of the DNC meeting over the weekend. I posted his thoughts from the first day here, and this post is part two of his experience over the weekend. I know that I join many Texas Democrats in thanking David Holmes for his accessibility and responsiveness to the concerns of the grassroots throughout this process of selecting a DNC Chair.

I sent a message Friday describing the events of that day – I thought I would also comment on the rest of the weekend.

I should go backward first – to the Thursday night gala to say goodbye to McAuliffe. It was a very nice event.

The highlights of the evening were Al Franken, John Kerry and Bill Clinton, with two out of the three being motivating or entertaining at least.

The rest after the jump.

Al Franken was his normal funny self – the best part of his emceeing of the evening was a terribly off-color riff he went through with the deaf interpreter – he spoke in third person to give the impression that the interpreter was ad-libbing and talking bad about Franken, saying things like, “Al Franken hates deaf people. When the event is over let’s kill him.” Maybe you had to be there...

Bill Clinton was his normal inspiring self. He gave a captivating speech rallying Democrats to move forward from the election and truly, subtly paving a pathway for Hillary in ’08.

The awkward moment of the evening – and not only for me – was John Kerry. While his speech was fairly flat and received with polite indulgence by the crowd, it was not until I saw clips of it the next day on CNN that it registered what I heard him say:

"This great party of ours doesn't need a makeover," Kerry told the dinner, adding he came "within inches" of winning the presidency. "This great party of ours doesn't need some massive shift."

In an attempt to give him the benefit-of-the-doubt, I first thought that perhaps he meant that we don’t need an ideological shift – that we need to remain who we are. If that was the message, however, he did not declare it very clearly for the discussion of the last several weeks has been one of reforming the party. Either he has not heard the discussion of the need for infrastructure reform or he was disagreeing that it is needed.

The speech was ill-conceived and out-of-touch. Surely, he will not run again.

Saturday the election of the DNC officer positions was held. Dean was elected by acclamation and gave a speech regarding his vision for the Party.

There was strong contention among the Vice Chair candidates and in the end a strong slate of officers was elected. I am confident they will all work well with Chairman Dean.

The weekend was an energizing set of events that left me convinced that the party is on the verge of great and positive change that will lead to more Democrats being elected in both state and federal elections.

I hope you were able to see some of the event on CSPAN.