I’m at Netroots Nation (formerly Yearly Kos). Having attended California Democratic Party conventions, I find NN strikingly lower on b.s. and rah-rah and pitched at a much higher intellectual level. I’ve never been to CPAC, so I can’t do that comparison, but there’s remarkably little “red meat.” Absoutely nothing resembling a Coulter or a Limbaugh.
The evening session just ended had six or seven speakers, leading up to Bill Clinton. I’m easily bored and annoyed by political speechifying, but there wasn’t a single talk I would have preferred not to listen to. The tone was mostly serious and analytical, with no more than a decent minimum of collective self-congratulation.
Clinton was at his best, reminding me of why I was once a Clinton enthusiast. He made a strong argument that the netroots should push hard for the best possible health care bill, but that no bill would be the worst outcome of all.
If a video gets posted, as I assume it will, I’ll link to it. Well worth watching.
Worst news of the day: The Allegheny County Executive, who claims credit for turning around the Pittsburgh area economically with infrastructure investment and a concentration on manufacturing components for “green” buildings and who hopes to ride that claim to the Pennsylvania State House next year, has (with big help from the President) attracted the G20 summit to Pittsburgh, hoping to show the delegates a model of economic resurgence. So far, so good.
The bad news is that the anarchists are comming to town, planning, in the words of a sympathizer who spoke at one of the panels, “something massive” that will be “mostly non-violent.” Of course, some telegenic left-wing rioting would be a godsend to the teabaggers and their political sponsors right now. Since the teabaggers are not smashing any store windows, it’s going to be hard for the good guys to make the case that it’s teabaggers rather than anarchists who represent a threat to democratic deliberation.