We didn’t see a single call girl in San Diego this weekend. (The ophthalmologists sharing the Convention Center were probably totally bogarting them.) And the only time the drinks were flowing as they should have was when the Morongo tribe was paying. (Anybody with a lick of sense knew that the Indian “hospitality suite” Saturday night would be the place to be—competing as it was with the California teachers’ dessert party, where we did see Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga talking labor with my new hot fireman boyfriend—um, John, maybe?—and Jack O’Connell and Bill Lockyer’s ice cream social, where they served only coffee and tea.)

What I’m saying is, the California Democratic Convention was neither slutty nor sodden, and, since I usually go to the GOP affairs, this was a startling turn. Even more startling, while the casino folk had the good manners to drench us in Sapporo and Sapphire gin, their considered choice of music was some lite-jazz Muzak, while down the hall at Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s Old Time Hootenanny (for serious!), which should have been a sardonic good time (Old-Timey! And hootenannyish!), it was one dude playing protest dirges, and the fluorescent lights stayed on.

Who—who?—would take away the pain?

Yoo-hoo! Mayor Newsom . . . I SAID YOO-HOO!

* * *

The state Democratic Convention was mostly a good-love, good-vibes game of Spot-the-Congressman, though we did get screamed at by a properly diverse (go, Dems!) and multiculti group of old people for smoking outside, and they kept screaming at us after I’d put my cigarette out and (channeling Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash) politely apologized for having upset them. (The Al Gore-Alike, Frank Quattro, kept smoking still.) Oy vey, old people! You are going to give yourself a stroke!

It was also an exercise in Manchurian control: hear the name “Nancy Pelosi,” and stand up and scream. Pelosi is just as beautiful as she looks on television, and I don’t know if she actually had vocal coaching to repudiate all the pundits who reflexively accuse her of shrillness, but her voice is the softest, most-gracious, best-modulated thing I’ve ever heard—and I’ve heard June Carter Cash. The woman—excuse me: Madam Speaker—can actually yell gently. And while my mama never raised me to rock the Armani, I look at Speaker Pelosi and wish she would tell me What Not to Wear.

At the fat-cat banquet Saturday night, the Speaker (softly!) told stories of Father John Drinan, a Catholic priest who’d joined the House as an antiwar advocate, until 20 years later when John Paul II told him to choose between the House and the Church. “I hope his Holiness found joy,” Pelosi said (gently!), “in the fact that he was succeeded in the House by Barney Frank.”

You tell him, Nancy Pelosi! You tell that Pope!

(Modulatedly!)

Then, our table of pirates took turns cleaning out the reserved table right next to us to which nobody showed up. For $125 per, we should have had a second bottle of wine (for 10 people) without having to steal it, but maybe the thieving made it sweeter still. Father Drinan could tell you all about sweet, sweet stealing on account of Augustine’s Confessions.

* * *

Tim Carpenter’s Progressive Democrats of America had a huge presence—yay, hippies!—as did labor, with Lakewood’s Reagan-tressed, old-fashioned pol Ray Cordova still smoking (outside) and heckling and calling women’s legs “pins.”

* * *

Saturday morning, we’d showed up at the Convention Center properly wounded from the (non-free) drinks the night before, when we’d seen a procession of Assemblyladies rock the karaoke, with Long Beach’s Betty Karnette talk-singing, sort of a la William Shatner, her way through “Delta Dawn.”

For at least four hours, the Obamites stood outside the Convention Center, chanting. They were tireless! And Barack Obama was terrific. He entered through the crowd to a fonky, fonky ’70s blaxploitation song. Give the people what they want! Ow! One for you and one for me! Bow-shooka-shooka! Ow! And he testified. And the people loved his history—Alberto Gonzales does make one long for a former constitutional law professor in the White House, no?—and it was a treat to hear a speech that good, but his forays into policy left at least me unimpressed. Letting people buy into Congress’s health care plan? Fantastic! And pretty much totally not even the point.

Afterward, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd spoke to an almost empty hall, the air having been sucked out of the room along with Obama’s funky-funk. Ow!

Hillary had spoken that morning, but we didn’t really care.

It was Sunday, though, when pretty John Edwards came to speak, that the delegates got more than hope-and-platitudes.

We’d rallied across the train tracks to enter together into the gloomy hall, and organizers there were passing out green badges. Someone thought they might be permits to assemble, but my mama didn’t raise no kids who don’t know their First Amendment rights. The badges turned out to be a sign to let the bearer into a meet-and-greet with Edwards after his speech—and at least one PDA hippie (yay, hippies!) got close enough to sneak some little “bring me home” toy army men into his suit pocket.

Edwards’ speech blew Obama’s poetry clean from people’s minds. He managed to be pissed and optimistic at the same time, slamming the country’s actions and calling out our many instances of global shame, from Abu Ghraib and the “bodies floating through the Lower Ninth Ward” to our silence on Darfur, without looking sour or crotchety for even a second. His speech had so much more substance—from action points on global warming to health care, and as he started talking about “employers covering everybody,” I was starting to get tense. “Just say it, John,” I was muttering (I call him “John”). “Just say ‘single-payer.’”

“And that may lead to single-payer,” he told the delegates—noncommittally but at least mentioning it—“if that’s what the country wants.”

It is! It is what we want! Yay, you!

He served up more Democrat red meat too, yelling at us (not gently!) that we don’t need to get out of Iraq in 2008 or in three months; we need to get out today. And if the president vetoes Congress’s bill with a timetable, they should send him another bill with a timetable, and if he vetoes that, they should send him another bill with a timetable, and if he vetoes that, they should send him ANOTHER bill with a timetable! AndhewasyellingandwewereyellingandeverybodywasyellingandyayJohnEdwards! Yay, him!

So if Al Gore really doesn’t run—after voting for Ralph Nader in ’96 and 2000, I figure I owe him one—I’m an Edwards girl. Resolved.

CommieGirlCollective.com