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State Bloggers Bring Color To Scripted Nomination Process In Denver

The Democrats have just ended their pro-forma roll call vote at the 2008 national convention to nominate Barack Obama as their presidential candidate. Some credentialed state bloggers who sat on the floor of the Pepsi Center in Denver along with their delegations made the otherwise routine process a little more interesting by filing their chatter […]

The Democrats have just ended their pro-forma roll call vote at the 2008 national convention to nominate Barack Obama as their presidential candidate. Newyorkrollcall

Some credentialed state bloggers who sat on the floor of the Pepsi Center in Denver along with their delegations made the otherwise routine process a little more interesting by filing their chatter with state officials.

For example, Calitics blogger David Dayen filed constant updates throughout the process, and it helped to explain what was going on.

California, for example, passed on its roll call vote. Dayen blogged that decision with a an explanation from California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres.

"A lot of the superdelegates never checked in with their vote with him ahead of time. He's legally required to go to their delegated proxies for a vote, and a lot of them didn't know about the voting either, so he would have had to announce significantly less votes than the 441
California is granted. Anyway, that's what he told me," writes Dayen.

But then there were other tid-bits that provided a small window of color:

Clintonnydelegation_2
Right next to me, Bob Mulholland and some CDP staffers are frantically tabulating votes from Representatives and their proxies.
So that appears to be the reason for the pass.

UPDATE: Gasbag emeritus David Gregory is chatting with Boxer and Torres right now. I'm sure that, after the explanation, Gregory will claim that the pass was because of disunity and Democrats who hate one another.

UPDATE: Word is that New York will ask for a voice vote and Obama will be put in by acclamation.

... and later:

let me update. Apparently it was 273 for Obama, 166 for Clinton, with two superdelegates not voting, one of them DiFi, who isn't here.

...the fact that California was the only state of the ones that went through the roll call that had to pass because they didn't have all the votes cast... well, the word "disorganization" comes to mind.
Of course, it's also the largest delegation, so it's maybe understandable.

And for her part, Casey Ann, a credentialed state blogger on the floor from Mississippi, reported:

Right after the roll call started, there was a huge fracas going on in the Mississippi delegation, because they'd been told they would not get to announce their votes. They were furious and started complaining loudly. Other states must have done the same, because the initial plan was changed. The yielding did not start early but instead the roll call went on to New Mexico.

So it wasn't all easy fun and smiles, "as seen on TV," but the usual chaos (in some cases) when it comes to organizing votes -- even when it's scripted.

More later.

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