Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Democratic Convention Roll Call

Rob brought this issue up in the comments to last night's convention post, but the traffic has likely shifted from there and the roll call is certainly worth its own place. Here are a few things I've been able to dig up regarding the process.

1) DemConWatch has it that the floor vote will be a truncated affair. The voting will take place beforehand.

2) In fact, jack-of-all-trades, Seth Masket, who is a delegate, a blogger and a political scientist confirms that the Colorado delegation voted this morning at the delegation breakfast.

What we'll see tonight is a part of the deal hammered out between the Clinton and Obama teams. We'll get a limited number of states announcing their results and then they'll move on. I'd guess the New York delegation plays a prominent role.

Regardless, the roll call will take place between 5 and 7pm ET, so C-SPAN will be where I'll be able to catch it. I don't know what the cable news outlets have been doing (gavel-to-gavel coverage?). Bill Clinton is on at 9pm and Biden follows during the latter half of the 10pm hour.

[See the full schedule of the night here.]


Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (8/27/08)

The Links (8/27/08)

Some Good One-Liners Tonight at the Democratic Convention

8 comments:

Jack said...

Not sure if this is what you were asking:

C-SPAN has been doing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the convention and has covered pre-convention activities whenever possible. I have no idea about the other networks.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, C-SPAN is all I have access to. I was wondering how the other cable networks are doing it.

The roll call was interesting. The Florida and Michigan delegations were moderately excited upon their introductions.

Jack said...

Would have been interesting to hear the little speeches of the other states that did not get to make them.

But what Clinton did will get a tremendous amount of positive press coverage. It was surely a symbolic, planned gesture (as was Illinois yielding to New York) but symbolism is worth quite a bit, especially when the media focuses on it, as I'm sure it will.

Anonymous said...

There was, despite the assurances from Clinton herself that all votes would be counted, a less than democratic feeling to that move toward affirmation. Sure that's what primaries and caucuses were for, but still. Obama was ahead 4:1 in the delegate count at that 2/3rds mark anyway.

I didn't realize Bill Clinton only had 15 minutes tonight. Limited by the topic and time. Speaking of which, I'll be interested to see how long Bush speaks next week in St. Paul.

Jack said...

The "less than democratic feeling" will be mitigated by that assurance and is far less important than the positive media coverage that surely will result, and the powerful symbolism of the gesture.

And I'm going to disagree with the folks at 538 - I think Clinton's speech was excellent in every way.

Anonymous said...

Agreed.

Clinton's speech last night or her statement today during the roll call.

I've been working the GOP rejection of the Ohio Plan today, so I'm behind on the coverage. What's the topic of discussion over at 538?

Jack said...

I believe it was Bill's speech I was referring to.

Anonymous said...

Ah.

And now we see why Hillary was Hillary and not Clinton during the primaries.