Hangin' at the Democratic PARTY

Here I am at the Missouri State Democratic Convention in Columbia, Missouri, blogging from an overpriced hotel restaurant with crumbling '70s decor, lamenting the fact that my hash browns are soggy and my eight dollar breakfast includes nothing to put in my coffee but partially hydrogenated soybean oil with corn syrup solids.

My husband and I, who are both pledged Obama delegates to the Missouri State Convention, arrived last night to discover the largest collection of liberal bumper stickers we had ever seen in one parking lot:

Seriously, EVERY car had at least one sticker.

Because we're parents of a (four! FOUR! *SOB*)




four-year-old, we of course showed up about an hour later than we'd planned, but just in time to crash the fringes of a paid dinner party we were too poor to spring for we arrived too late to attend that had trickled out from a convention hall into the hotel lobby.

We ran into a bunch of delegates from our own Fightin' First Congressional District, as well as some great people from the Second and Third Districts that we knew from Obama campaign emails and meetings. We also happened across Russ Carnahan and Clint Zweifel. (No pictures of them yet. Sorry. Will attempt to rectify.)

The Obama afterparty was dominated by people from the east side of the state, as demonstrated by the choice of pizza:


And the fact that everyone kept asking everyone else where they'd gone to high school.

Interestingly, there were a ton of delegates there who had graduated high school in the year 1998, including, of course, my husband, myself, and these guys:


Perhaps this abundance of High School Class of '98 members getting involved with the delegate process to make SURE their votes count has something to do with the fact that we all voted for president for the first time in the year, ahem, 2000?

(Notice to the Supreme Court: We're after you next.)

Anyway it was inspiring to see that so many 20- and 30-somethings are participating in the delegate selection process, many of them for the first time.

I've been passing out MOMocrats cards to everyone willing to talk to me, and I'll be blogging a recap of the whole convention for MOMocrats as soon as we finish our Mother's Day "Dreams of a Mother" Series.

And now I'm off to try and find Senator Claire McCaskill, to see if I can convince her to write a guest post for MOMocrats.