Second-to-last night is over and done...your closing thoughts?

Biden's speech began with lovely tributes to his family, including his mother, of whom he said:

My mother's creed is the American creed: no one is better than you. You are everyone's equal, and everyone is equal to you.

Biden ends by using his authority on foreign policy to detail how Obama's foreign policy judgment has time and again been correct while McCain has been wrong. Biden's foreign policy judgment will not be substituted for Obama's; instead, his credibility will be used to affirm Obama's judgment.

John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right -- again, and again, and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong and Barack Obama has been proven right.

And here comes Obama, introduced by Biden's wife Jill.

Joe Biden has been nominated and Nancy Pelosi informs us he's accepted.

The video and son Beau's introduction have really focused on Biden's remarkable story of commitment as a father; earlier, Quincy Lucas, an advocate on domestic violence issues, delivered a nominating speech focusing on Biden's longstanding work on the Violence Against Women Act.

Finishing, Beau Biden alludes to the fact that he will be deployed to Iraq this fall, asking the crowd to "be there for my father; be there for Barack Obama."

And now Biden is on...

Take the poll and use the comments to tell us how you made your choice.

It's still not even primetime coverage time, but the real political junkies are tuned in and chatting away...

I've already written about the experience of walking into the convention hall. So what happens next?

In the New Hampshire delegation at least, people are settled in. A bag of popcorn and a pack of gum get passed around, and in addition to talking about politics, people reminisce about, say, being teenagers.

We'd seen Dana Delaney and Anne Hathaway in the security line coming in, but that was from a distance. Sitting with the delegation, Matthew Modine comes by to promote his Bicycle for a Day project.

But mostly signs are the business of the day. Orange- and yellow-vested people pass out the signs for each speaker, and the delegation's page (a teenager doing a truly impressive job) gets telephone instructions and gives the cue for exactly what line should trigger sign-waving. Wave after wave of signs comes through -- these things had better be post-consumer recycled -- and the page is in a constant struggle against people jumping the gun. This is a particular problem when Hillary speaks, because as soon as people have those signs in their hands they want to be waving them.

And as for Hillary? Yeah, they loved her. There may have been chit chat during the earlier speeches, the sense that occasionally people were listening less to the content than to intonation so they wouldn't miss an applause line (and anyone who could sit through like 6 hours of speeches at one stretch paying total attention should feel free to judge them for that). But not during her speech.

One of the great things about the existence of the state bloggers at the DNC this year is that in contrast to all the stupid traditional media narratives about disunity, we have reporting from people seated with the individual state delegations, giving their takes on the crowd response.

I was with the New Hampshire delegation last night, and I can say that there was not one sign of disunity there despite the primary having been so heated. The same people who were in tears as Hillary Clinton began speaking and roaring with applause constantly throughout her speech were enthusiastically waving Obama signs and chanting his name throughout the entire evening.

Here are some other reports from bloggers sitting in the middle of the crowd of delegates.

Calitics:

If there was any doubt that we would get a barnburner on unity tonight from Hillary Clinton, put that to bed. The California delegation went crazy for Clinton, waving Hillary signs that were distributed just ahead of Chelsea's introduction and even holding a few homemade signs like "18 million cracks". Obama/Hillary/Unity signs are spreading through now.

Goldy:

A stunning lack of disunity... that was my immediate reaction watching the crowd respond to Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention.  No doubt there are Clinton delegates who remain unconvinced, and no doubt many will cast their ballot for Clinton come roll call, but if folks were expecting any drama tonight, they’ll just have to make due with the uplifting kind.

Accustomed to watching conventions on TV I almost feel as if I’m missing the show sitting on the floor in person, so I’ve no idea how Clinton’s speech came off to the millions of Americans watching, but she was a hit here in the building.

Turn Maine Blue has pictures of the sign-waving crowd.

Blue Hampshire blogger Mike Hoefer got an important piece of PDMA (Party Disunity My Ass): Kathy Sullivan and Mary Rauh, New Hampshire state co-chairs of the Clinton and Obama campaigns, respectively, address the traditional media's insistence on pushing the myth of disunity.

My grandfather was a politician. Not a governor or member of Congress or anything like that, but it's how he made his living for most of his adult life -- he was sheriff, treasurer, probate clerk. He died before I was born, but to the end of her life my grandmother identified strongly as a political wife.

About a month ago, as I was talking to my parents about my plans for Denver, my mother said she'd always wanted her father to get to be a convention delegate, but he never had. That was in my mind last night as I walked into the hall at the Pepsi Center to find the New Hampshire delegation -- some combination of regret that he never got to be there and pride that I was, but in this new role that we're all inventing together. (Update, realizing this is a bit unclear: I'm not a delegate, but was there as a state blogger for Blue Hampshire -- so I got to be an extra part of history since this is the first time they've had this kind of blogger access to delegations.)

But I wasn't prepared for the incredible surge of awe and emotion that hit me when I stepped into the hall at the top of the stairs and looked out. It was unbelievable, looking out at the people and the signs and the lights and knowing what they, what we, were all here to do.

The history being made here in so many different ways is worth taking a few moments to appreciate in the cheesiest, most awestruck, and cliched way you can personally muster.

Walking around the vicinity of DNC-related events, there’s one thing I have been unable to escape: Free condoms.

Planned Parenthood is distributing pink-wrapped "Protect yourself from John McCain" condoms with a series of 10 fun facts about McCain’s positions on women's health. Collect all 10!

Inside the initial convention perimeter you can go to the Trojan display, where you can go into an inflatable dome and watch a brief movie in which pigs on a roller coaster crash into facts on safe sex such as  (yeah, it’s a little weird), participate in a condom race, read educational materials, and, of course, be handed a wide assortment of condoms by everyone you run into.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of PUMAs, the most visible protesters are opposing abortion, with the mixture of fury-inducing lies and pity-inducing unhingedness that you often find in aggressive anti-abortion forces. It was pity-inducing to the point that I’m not posting video I shot, because it feels exploitive of a very sad woman – but then you hear the ridiculous claim that Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion person on, like, the entire earth, and the pity is mostly replaced by anger.

Who do you think is doing more to reduce abortion (never mind sexually transmitted diseases and general angst), the people handing out condoms or the ones screaming into bullhorns?

Update: Check out kath25's diary John McCain: No Choice for Women

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On our way for brownsox to interview Kentucky Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford (an interview brownsox will be posting on soon), our attention was drawn by some people standing through the sunroof of a Hummer with slogans scrawled all over the windows, shouting "if not Hillary, then McCain."

Here's the thing: Neither of us gives the PUMAs any credit for their politics, their common sense, their PR strategy. But alleged Hillary Clinton supporters in a Hummer? This smacks of Republicans out to sow stories of Democrats divided, Clinton supporters so against Barack Obama that they want to drive around in the most environmentally harmful vehicle they can, making loud screaming idiots of themselves.

Whichever, they were idiots -- they were also the only even alleged PUMAs I've seen in a day of walking around the streets of Denver.

Update from brownsox: So, the RNC (yeah, those guys) sponsored a PUMA party of sorts tonight in Denver, featuring real live PUMAs on hand.

Initially, I very much wanted to go, having been one of roughly 17.5 million supporters of Hillary Clinton who is now solidly on the Obama /  Biden express.

I'd gone with the noblest intentions of mockery. I figured such an event, aimed surely at disrupting the convention and receiving free media coverage, surely deserved to be disrupted itself, or at least Rickrolled or something. But when I got there, I found little to mock.

They had a private party in a small room of a generic bar, and truly, it was the room of the damned. There was a smattering of actual PUMAs, outnumbered perhaps 3 to 1 by genuine McCain Republicans looking to create a press event, noshing on thoroughly unappetizing appetizers, and taking advantage of a theoretically open bar and the open hearts of a few unrelenting Clinton fans, so thoroughly crushed by the loss of the candidate in whom they believed so strongly, that they were willing to present themselves to the world as a Democratic joke and a Republican prop.

I felt sorry for the PUMAs, to be perfectly honest. Their personal frustration and misery had now become a punchline in their own party, while the GOP gleefully exploited their frustrations as long as the news cycle would permit them.

I'd wanted to mock the PUMA party. Even I, an ardent Clinton supporter, had wanted to mock them.

But upon leaving, the only feelings I could muster were an odd blend of pity and discomfort. When you truly fall in love with a political candidate - a mistake in the first place, as many of us can attest - it can be the hardest thing in the world to let go of that feeling.

It doesn't give me any joy to see these people exploited by Republicans. It doesn't give me any joy to see the traditional media continually running stories about Clinton supporters (meaning all 12 of the PUMAs, I assume), standing in the way of party unity.

It gives me no joy to see the PUMAs presented as anything but what they are - the smallest of minorities, who have had their hearts broken to the point that they are no longer capable of seeing reason.

That said, I couldn't resist screwing with the actual Republicans a little bit. So when one of them (wearing a McCain shirt proudly) handed me a "Nobama" sticker, I pocketed it with alacrity. I then reached into my pocket and said, "I have something for you, too".

I withdrew a pink condom that Planned Parenthood had been giving out that morning, on which the back of the wrapper announced proudly, "Protect Yourself...From John McCain".

I smiled at him. He gave me a quizzical "what do I do with this?" look, then shrugged his shoulders and accepted it.

I mean, I'm sure he could think of something.

Nancy Pelosi is still onstage, but here's some fresh thread for y'all to keep the conversation going.

Denver is kind of surreally aimless-feeling. There are people in the streets, but restaurants and stores are mostly empty -- I heard a restaurant manager explaining that he had staffed up expecting a major rush, only to find that his regular patrons are working from home to avoid crowds, and the convention-goers are at events.

For a block or so around the initial security perimeter, there are few people, then little knots at the gates where you flash a convention credential and go on in. The sound of anti-abortion protesters with bullhorns drifts down an empty block or two. In the middle of the day, the perimeter provides for acres of nearly-empty space around the Pepsi Center, which by tonight will be jammed, the center of the political universe. There's little signage to know where to go, so I followed the trickle of people past a Trojan condom display (more on that later). There's a more extensive security stop -- they pull a water bottle out of my bag and tell me to take a drink out of it if I want to keep it.

For all the security, the throngs of cops and Secret Service, for all the reporters (John King standing outside the "CNN Grill"; interviews being filmed; press badges everywhere you turn) and the political celebrities (I saw Madeleine Albright, and talked to a couple who'd seen Biden), despite the very occasional protester (or maybe because of their occasionality), there's as yet little sense of the historic levels of interest in this convention, the excitement we know will be building through the week. Everyone's here, but there's still a sense of waiting.

As we all know, this November brings major opportunities for Senate pick-ups. And if we get enough Democrats in the Senate, there's a lot of legislation we might be able to get passed that seemed like pipe dreams just two years ago. That's precisely one of the reasons some business groups will be fighting tooth and nail to prevent Democrats from picking up Senate seats.

The Employee Free Choice Act is one of the most important such bills -- and practically every competitive Senate race is being targeted by anti-union groups with millions of dollars in funding from undisclosed sources:

The two groups, which will not disclose the sources of money behind their campaigns, may spend as much as a combined $50 million by November. The extent of the media effort has sent Democrats scrambling for ways to respond to what they call misleading advertisements without getting thrown off their own message. Party leaders are also sharply critical of the secrecy behind the spending.

"The fact that these expenditures are not only so large but are undisclosed is extremely troubling," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who said the groups "are trying to influence the elections with millions of dollars that the public can’t trace."

These groups (which I've previously written about here) have already gone on the air with millions of dollars in ads against candidates whose names will be familiar to you: Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Allen, Al Franken, Mary Landrieu, Jeff Merkley, Mark Udall, Bruce Lunsford, Ronnie Musgrove.

In fact, to prevent this bill, Wal-Mart has already engaged in the kind of abuses that it is designed to prevent. At the beginning of the month, the Wall Street Journal reported that:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
--snip--
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

The AFL-CIO, Change to Win, American Rights at Work, and WakeUpWalMart subsequently filed an FEC complaint arguing that Wal-Mart's actions constituted illegal electioneering. But whatever the ruling from the FEC, there's no question that by going this close to the line of legality, Wal-Mart showed just how terrified they are of the Employee Free Choice Act.

So what's the fuss about? The main components of the Employee Free Choice Act include requiring certification of a union once a majority of employees in a workplace have signed up for the union. As laws are currently enforced, after a majority of employees have requested a union, employers can force an election.  This may sound democratic enough, but in fact it allows employers to use their power over workers to campaign against the union, often harassing and firing union supporters in the process. As labor scholar Gordon Lafer writes:

For an election to be "free and fair," both sides must have equal access to media and the voters. But not under labor law. Anti-union managers are free to campaign to every employee, every day, throughout the day; but pro-union employees can campaign only on break time.  Furthermore, management can post anti-union propaganda on bulletin boards and walls — while prohibiting pro-union employees from doing the same.  By law, employers can force workers to attend mass anti-union propaganda events.  Not only are pro-union employees not given equal time, but they can be forced to attend on condition that they not ask any questions.  Recent data show that workers are forced to attend between five and 10 such one-sided meetings. If, during the 2004 presidential campaign, the Democrats could have forced every voter in America to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 (or if the Republicans could have forced everyone to watch the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth video), with no opportunity for response from the other side, none of us would have called this "democracy."

To put this in further context, under the system we have now 30% of employers illegally fire workers during union organization drives; 23% of workers in majority sign-up elections, the kind the EFCA would allow, "report management coercion to oppose the union"; and 46% report similar coercion in what Wal-Mart and their allies would like you to call "secret ballot" elections.

The bill also prevents employers from dragging out negotiations on a first union contract by creating provisions for mediation and arbitration, and strengthens penalties on employers who fire union supporters. Such firings are illegal, but the current penalties are too small to serve as effective deterrents -- if a fired worker wins their complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, a process that may take years, they are awarded the difference between what they ultimately earned in that time period and what they would have earned had they not been fired. That means that someone who is illegally fired and goes out and gets an equivalent job may get almost no money. There is therefore very little disincentive for employers to illegally fire union-supporting workers.

That the Employee Free Choice Act will afford workers greater freedom to join unions would doubtless be reason enough for Wal-Mart and other anti-worker corporations to oppose it. And it should be reason enough for us to support it. But if, despite being a Daily Kos reader, you're not a big fan of unions (and if that's the case, shame on you), I'll refer you to Trapper John's appeal to your baser interests:

I'm writing today for those breeds of Democrats who -- for whatever reason -- just don't care that much, or at least that passionately, about labor.  I'm writing for folks like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln -- two good Democratic senators who have yet to commit to voting for EFCA.  I don't want to appeal to your better angels and try to convince you that EFCA is a civil rights bill, or that its passage is a moral imperative. No -- my message is simple, and is an appeal to your baser instincts: Passing EFCA will get more Democrats elected.

That's right.  Put aside, for the moment, the many, many reasons that passing EFCA makes sense from a policy perspective.  EFCA is a political winner for Democrats.  Why?  Because EFCA will increase the number of union members in the US -- and union members (and, for that matter, non-members living in union households) are more likely to vote Democratic than non-members.

We have no way of knowing whether the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the "Employee Freedom Action Committee," and other corporatists are more opposed to Democrats because they would pass the Employee Free Choice Act, producing more union members, or are more opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act because it would produce more Democrats. Whichever it is, we have to be prepared to counter their tens of millions of dollars of advertising and their employee intimidation aimed at defeating Democrats this November.

KStreetProjector and Atrios have both pointed to one of the things liberals should really be cheering about Joe Biden being on the Democratic ticket: The man is one of Amtrak's biggest supporters.

That support comes in several forms:

Biden commutes to work each day on Amtrak and has been a strong supporter of the beleaguered rail service.  He is an original co-sponsor of the Amtrak Reauthorization Bill (National Defense Rail Act), S.104, introduced on January 7, 2003.   Introducing an earlier version of the bill with Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) on March 6, 2002, Biden stated, "For 30 years, I have witnessed Congress dangling a carrot in front of Amtrak's eyes, funding it just enough for it to limp along.  And I'll tell you, this has to stop.  Now is the time to commit politically and financially to a strong, safe, and efficient passenger rail system."   Biden has been particularly concerned with rail passenger security, and has, in the words of communications director Norm Kurz "worked furiously" to secure funding for Amtrak to upgrade its tunnels, hire more cops and bomb-sniffing dogs, build more fences, and add lighting to terminals.

Amtrak president George Warrington presented Biden with a "Champion of the Rails" award in June 2001 and the American Passenger Rail Coalition (APRC), a national association of railroad equipment suppliers and rail businesses, presented him its "Rail Leadership Award" in March 2002.

Moreover, his younger son is on the Amtrak board, and in that capacity is a major advocate for the railroad.

Especially in this moment when rising gas prices have set Amtrak ridership records, having one of the rail service's supporters handed a bigger soapbox creates a real moment of potential. This country needs more public transit -- more miles of service, funding to repair and upgrade equipment (train tracks in particular need work, but Amtrak's cars also need refurbishing or replacing in many cases -- and can you even imagine how many people would opt for Amtrak over the New York to DC shuttle if Amtrak had wifi?), and, as Atrios tirelessly points out, we need public transit to become an organizing principle of new development of residential and commercial areas. This is one of the most important components of improved energy policy. (And, like Atrios, I think it's a path to improved quality of life as well.)

Let's hope Biden is able to move things forward on this one.

John McCain to George W. Bush, in 2000:

In other words your position is you believe there’s an exemption for rape, incest, and life of the mother, but you want the platform that you’re supposed to be leading to have no exemption...

It doesn’t have the exemptions in it and you know that very well...

Read the platform. It has no exceptions...

In 2007:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News Saturday that he still wants to change the GOP's abortion platform to explicitly recognize exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

McCain reaffirmed his difference with party doctrine on permissible abortion exceptions after speaking to the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner in Des Moines.

And today:

But now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the McCain camp is making it clear that he has no plans to push for changes to the platform.

McCain's decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble."

Gosh, it's almost like the man will say anything to get elected.

No, really.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

Granted, McCain has a lot of houses, but even the highest estimates are like a dozen. That's not some ten-digit number like 1,537,993,625 (which anyone would have trouble remembering) where if you transpose the five and the three it's a major misrepresentation.

Is McCain's memory really that poor, and if so, what does it say about his ability to be president? Or is the number of houses he has such an unimportant question to him that it's not worth remembering? That he has a house everywhere he goes, so why bother singling them out to remember?

Or maybe it's a politically inconvenient question and he knows most reporters will give him a pass.

Matt Yglesias has another possibility:

When one of your homes is really a combination of two different luxury condos the metaphysical status of your property comes into question. You’d really need to ask a trained professional mereologist to resolve the issue and can’t expect McCain to speak to it personally.

(h/t Atrios)

News of her passing unfortunately complicated by premature reports, several media outlets are now confirming that Ohio Democrat Stephanie Tubbs Jones died this evening.

From the New York Times:

Considered a liberal, Ms. Tubbs Jones was a co-sponsor of legislative efforts to broaden health care coverage for low- and middle-income people and of programs supporting the re-entry of convicts into their communities. She was also the author of legislation requiring certification for mortgage brokers and stiffer penalties for predatory loans.

In June, Ms. Tubbs Jones voted against emergency supplemental financing for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I feel it important that we have a plan for a timely redeployment of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan before we continue funding what has become a seemingly endless war," she said at the time.