Brian got a GREAT response from the crowd - tremendous demonstration of support from the floor.

Several people said it was the best speech of the convention. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it was pretty good!

Brian gets it. He understands what's going on this year.  

Great Speech.  
I wish I could have been there for this speech.  Brian's growing into his role as gubernatorial candidate nicely.  If he keeps on knocking them out of the park like this, then he'll be well on his way to securing the party's nomination.  

I heard from friends (even a RCD supporter) that the crowd reacted much more positively to Brian's speech than Creigh's.  This is merely anecdotal.  Can someone who was in the room shed light on this?  Unfortunately the WAPO's very own Tim Craig missed both speeches and wasn't able to expound much beyond giving his insight that there were more Brian stickers in the crowd.  

And has Peter Jackson posted Creigh's speech yet?  

I was in the room and right at the front for both snapping pictures, so I got a good view of the crowd reactions.

I would say the crowd reaction to Del. Moran was more vocal, but it is incorrect, IMHO, to say that his speech was better. My sense was that Moran's organization was more ubiquitous. Before his speech, plenty of people were distributing Moran signs to the crowd. And I didn't look too closely, but I would be curious to know which district was sitting right up front there. The Fifth District was off in the hinterlands.

In contrast, I noticed a few hand-drawn Deeds signs, and there were not volunteers out in force, at least that I could see.

I would also add that later in the day, at the DLOV reception, both Deeds and Moran made remarks to a crowd of 50 or so people. In this setting, Deeds was much better than Moran, IMHO. That said, I had never seen Moran before, so the only thing I had to compare him with was his earlier set speech to the Convention, which was certainly good.

Also, I didn't see every speech (missed Webb and most of Kaine, although Kaine's remarks at DLOV were excellent), but to be honest, none really stood out -- all were very good.  

I haven't heard anything about the two unpledged add-on delegates, but here are the rest:

DNC members:
Doris Crouse-Mays
Mame Reiley
Frank Leone
Lionell Spruill

Presidential electors, at large:
Michael Khandelwal
Sophie Salley

Obama PLEOs:
Pixie Bell
Louise Lucas
Yvonne Miller
William Euille
Frank Hall
Dwight Jones
Henry Marsh

Clinton PLEOs:
Rachel Rifkind
Susan Rowland
David Slutzky
Jim Turpin

Obama at large delegates:
Abbi Easter
Margo Horner
Gaylene Kanoyton
Amy LaMarca
Judy Rasmussen
Chrisi West
Anthony Burfoot
Mark Federici
Mark Goodwin
Bob Hovis
Mark Keam
Mark Sickles

Obama at large alternates:
Grindly Johnson
Scott Surovell

Clinton at large delegates:
Charisse Glassman
Irma Mitchell
Vivian Paige
Dan Moldover
Venkat Murthy
Walter Wise

Clinton at large alternate:
Alison Umberger

Congratulations to all of the Delegates!

and reflected a throwback to the times of backroom deals in smoke filled rooms.  We were presented, at the last minute, with a letter supposedly from Obama supporting a "slate" of delegates.  Trouble is, those names were obviously recently typed onto this letter in the upper left corner, and one reason that is clear is because, I am told, they did exactly the same thing with the same letter at one of the CD conventions.  Individuals running WERE NOT ALLOWED THEIR ONE MINUTE, or even one second, to speak. Not sure why we were there except to hear some speeches, which was fine, but the selection WAS supposed to be part of it.  This happened at both the Clinton and Obama caucuses.  Everyone I spoke to felt the same way, and we're thinking that some official protest might be appropriate.  Yesterday, however, was much better - spent the day on Virginia Beach.  

I spoke with at least ten delegates sitting near me during the Clinton caucus, and many other Clinton and Obama delegates at the parties afterwards. Every person I spoke with said the same thing: They all said they thought it was de facto a back room deal that was intended to prevent election of non-slate candidates. I think that view was much too harsh and unfair to the leadership who tried their best to strike a balance bewteen democratic fairness and practical expediency, but the fact that so many people felt it was a "back room deal" is a real concern to me.

The rules committee also considered an offered amendment to the original convention rules that would have given each At-Large delegate candidate an opportunity to speak very briefly in their own behalf before the full convention voted. The offered amendment was defeated by a substantial margin(I don't recall the exact margin). I think the reason that most Rules Committee members who voted against the offered amendment was the number of At-Large candidates and the problem of even one minute per candidate consuming so much time, so in order to treat all individual candidates "equally" (not how I'd define equal treatment) no candidates were allowed to speak on their behalf before the vote. The unfairness of this less than democratic process was further compounded by the fact that the names of the slate candidates weren't shown on the ballot that we were given, so without knowing who was and was not a slate candidate the large majority simply voted for the slate because about the only information delegates had to giude them was the fact that two women and two men were slate candidates and were understood to have the party leaders' endorsement.

Even more basically, I spoke with dozens of delegates before, during and after the convention and not one person I spoke with supported the slate concept. The obvious reason given for opposition to continuation of the slate concept was that each candidate should be elected on his/her own individual merits. Over the next year I will be pushing very hard for Rules and Bi-Laws amendments that would prohibit slates entirely, in the interest of making the Democratic Party processes more democratic.

Nothing I have said should be interpreted to mean that there was anything in the least negative about any of the slate candidates. To the contrary, I was and always will be tremendously inpressed with their exceptionally high level of qualifications and long-term hard work, dedication and service to the party and our core values. But we do need to eliminate even the perception of undemocratic aspects of all of our party election processes. To do otherwise will only discourage new party members, as well as long-time party activists, from doing the hard work that is needed to turn Va. and the country blue and keep it that way.

Back to the basic point made by hcc in va: Given that the convention proceedings were already running far behind the planned (albeit, a bit unrealistic) program schedule, I can't see how adding another 30 minutes or so to a schedule that was already nearly two hours behind could have been unreasonsable. I think the importance of assuring a truly democratic process far outweighs the very minor inconvenience of extending just another half hour a five hour planned schedule that ended up being closer to seven hours.

Next time we need to make sure that our leadership gets the priorities right. It seems to me that failure to give adequate priority to a more democratic process is a failure of leadership. And we the grassroots rank-and-file participants bear the greatest responsibility for improving the process. And most importantly, we the dedicated grassroots have the power to cause the improvements. But we can't make this happen unless we also participate in the process. Our passion, dedication and our hard work for candidates and causes has to be combined with direct participation if we are to reach a fully democratic process. In this context, please don't forget that the problems we have described here are largely the result of indequate time spent on advance preparations that in turn was the result of insufficient numbers of volunteers to help with very time consuming hard work involved in developing procedures and rules, and then implementing them. So far as I can determine, no one intentionally set out to have wrong priorities nor to deliberately subvert democratic principles simply for political and practical expediency. But without full participation from us the resulting flawed process was almost inevitable.

We can do better, and I am confident that we will.

                          T.C.

So far as I can determine, no one intentionally set out to have wrong priorities nor to deliberately subvert democratic principles simply for political and practical expediency.

If you check, Tim Kaine's Moving Virginia Forward PAC controlled the process in a purely political "back room" manner.    

You are correct that

failure to give adequate priority to a more democratic process is a failure of leadership

and Tim Kaine is the ultimate leader of the DPVA and from the environment on he has proven his method is not to work in a democratic manner but in as an authoritarian, do it my way manner.  This should exclude him from any VP consideration  

TC - you are correct that the ballot didn't list the names, but everyone in the Clinton caucus was provided with a copy of the members on the slate. I can't say what happened in the Obama caucus as I wasn't there.

The issue for me with the slates was that there were so many first-time attendees to the convention for whom the idea of a slate was foreign. I think the problem was a communications one. Had folks been aware of slates - how they are used, how they are put together, the fact that any group can file a slate - I think there wouldn't have been nearly the same amount of concern.

There is a danger in not having slates, though, that I think is being overlooked and that is that without them, we could easily end up with a slate that doesn't look like Virginia. Plus, I don't know that I, as a grassroots worker in Norfolk, have any way to really know how much work a grassroots worker in Bath County, did for the campaign.

Finally, I only received a couple of emails from folks who were running for one of the at-large Clinton seats. (Interestingly enough, I got one email from a candidate for an Obama at-large seat.) This information was available on the DPVA website yet few availed themselves of it. Perhaps people didn't know it was there (another communication problem).

Doesn't this convention happen only once every FOUR YEARS?  To say that there was not enough time to prepare properly for this strikes me as not totally credible.  Also, the whole procedure seemed blatantly out of step with precisely what our Presidential candidate stands for, viz., to NOT have "politics as usual," which is exactly what this procedure was.  And I would like you to address my point re: the cover letter - was the Obama campaign really aware of the qualifications of these candidates and/or did they give you carte blanche approval in advance of the slate choice?  Because it was pretty obvious that the slate candidate names were typed on the cover letter after the letter was written, it was not part of the letter text itself, it was in the corner.  And those party leaders should give more consideration to the fact that we did not spend our own money just to hear them speak, but to do the business of candidate selection.  The 10th congressional caucus in Leesburg was much more to the point - even though it took multiple ballots, we did get to hear all the candidates, take notes, and vote our choice.  I did get numerous emails ahead of time from those running for Obama delegates, so that helped, but in person statements are much better.  Looks like this conference either requires more than one day, or should be scheduled to start earlier and end later.  

As to comments below re: Tim Kaine running the show, that is disturbing if true, and also, I listened carefully to thpress questioning him whether he would accept a V-P slot, and clearly he did not rule that out - now correct me if I"m wrong, but if that happens VA will then have a Republican Governor, viz., the Lt-Governor, would it not?  That would be reprehensible.

Dr. Keith Hummel's speech is up on VirginiaDem

to say that this is from

...the Democratic Political blogs, thank you Mr. Moran for a great speech and for stepping up now when Virginia needs to continue the growing tradition of strong, Democratic leadership.

There are blogs elsewhere that don't support Brian Moran, and there are also a lot of other blogs besides this one period.

I thought I would just speak up for those who aren't a part of the congratulations. His speech was ordinary. He needs to work on his speaking style, and work on connecting better with people. Why all the hype already?

Creigh Deeds is going to do what Creigh Deeds does, which, last time I looked, meant surprising everyone in 2005, and gaining notoriety and acclaim from all over the country. If 3 more people in each political subdivision in the Commonwealth had voted for Mr. Deeds, he would be our Attorney General right now. And yes, he deserves the same scrutiny as Brian does.

Cheerleaders in the audience don't happen by accident. I was there, as press. I saw the organized placement of signs, and I also saw the refusal of signs by entire congressional districts.

Mr. Moran is a nice enough guy and, while I remain uncommitted at this point, 18 months before the election, I will be looking at both candidates along about Thanksgiving or so. I can think of no better way to celebrate the election of Barack Obama and Tom Perriello than looking over plans for taking back the House of Delegates, and electing a quality governor, just as we have the last two elections.

I think we are doing a great disservice to ourselves and our country by focusing on petty straw polls and other false indicators of the political climate in January 2009.

Instead, we should be taking maximum advantage of this opportunity to run up the score and ensure ourselves quality leadership for a generation to come.

RK hasn't endorsed anyone, and really has no skin in this race.

It was notable that Brian Moran actually thanked the blogs and bloggers.

He thanks us for what we do, it's only fair we thank him for what he's doing.

I'll just add that Creigh Deeds is a badass, and I really have no idea who is going to come out on top in next year's primary.