| Ed. note: This is part of today's ongoing look back at the TDP Convention. It has been almost a year and a half since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared their candidacies for president. In that time, supporters of both Obama and Clinton became extremely passionate and attached to their respective candidate. The passion that may have come to an apex on the night of March 4 was still evident this past weekend at the Texas Democratic Convention in Austin. For the Clinton delegates, whose candidate announced she would concede on Thursday and made her concession speech during the convention itself, there were a lot of mixed emotions. Certainly, though she had begun the race as the absolute front-runner and failed, there is little doubt her candidacy accomplished something. It brought universal health care to the forefront of the domestic debate, broke down many barriers that had been placed before women candidates and helped create one of the largest instances of participation and activism in Democratic Party history. The party building benefits of the Obama-Clinton primary will be felt in Texas and across the nation for years to come. As I walked around the convention, no matter how many Clinton buttons and t-shirts I saw (and there were a lot considering she had dropped out of the race), there was still a sense of unity. Many Clinton delegates I spoke with (including myself) looked, perhaps naively, at the State Convention as the last time Democrats would be divided. "Right now, we're still Clinton and Obama. Pretty soon, and I hope really soon, we'll all just be Democrats again," a Clinton delegate from Nueces County told me. Even the most hardcore Clinton supporters, like Guillermo Mirna of El Paso, who I wrote about on Friday when he interrupted the Mexican American Democrats caucus with his cries of "No surrender!" recognized the need for Democrats to unite. "We are Democrats," Mirna said on Friday. "We need to elect a Democrat, but we also need to have a voice that will be heard," alluding to his hope that the Obama campaign will do more to reach out to Hispanic voters. The only Clinton delegate I met all weekend who emphatically said they would not vote for Barack Obama was Mike Kupka of Denison, who I also wrote about this weekend. But even Kupka, who you probably noticed carrying around a sign that read (and I'm not making this up) "Small Town, Gun-Toting, Religious Democrat, Bitter About Obama," could envision a scenario where he could vote for our nominee. "I will vote for him if he puts Hillary on the ticket," Kupka said. "If he doesn't, I'm a pure down-ballot Democrat." The good news is Kupka is the only person I met who was eager to talk about their opposition to Obama. The bad news is that there are certainly others. But there is a lot of time between June and November. I am confident that Barack Obama will do what he needs to do to bring close to 100% of the Clinton supporters into his column this November. Anyone who was on the convention floor when loud chants of "United We Stand" emerged from smaller chants of "Obama! Obama!" and "Hillary! Hillary!" can't be too worried. After all, we're Democrats and while we might have our disagreements we will surely unite for November. This year, with so much riding on this election at every level of government, our complete unity has never been so important. What is your story of party unity (or division) from last weekend's convention? |
