"I'm a political man and I practice what I preach.
So don't deny me baby, not while you're in my reach."
– Jack Bruce and Pete Brown

The maids in the hotel here on the outskirts of Denver don't like the Old Testament gangsta raps of Schooly D, but that's the only thing keeping me going right now as I try to sort through everything that has happened over the last 24 hours. Schooly D doesn't care about running mates or whether it's smart to hold a rally in a football stadium or how he can get Bill Clinton to shut up. Schooly D just is – telling his stories from some godforsaken corner of Philadelphia. It's a corner of a city that's totally unfamiliar to most Coloradans and perhaps that's why the maids here cluck their tongues with disapproval as they pass my door and quietly count the hours until they tell me I must check out of here. Then, it will be a tough afternoon being subjected to an airport overrun with Democratic players who are quickly doing opposition research on Alaskan pipelines.

It's a very weird time in politics where one candidate holds a Riefenstahl-style party to accept his nomination while the other picks an unknown young governor from Alaska to be vice president. But that's where we are right now – wandering around a political landscape that's been strip-mined by a president who's waiting to limp out of office. It's almost Year Zero in this presidential race and I sometimes expect I may be led away by someone into the darkness because I'm wearing glasses.

The Obama rally last night was an unmitigated success. The football stadium was filled with thousands of people who actually wanted to be there, people who were willing to wait for hours under the hot sun, be carefully searched by Secret Service agents, and then sit through a litany of boring speeches before the main attraction. It was not Obama's best speech – not by a long shot – but it almost became secondary to the amazing pageant that the Democrats arranged for television. Sure, the stage looked like it was somehow stolen from Caesar's Palace but it all somehow worked. The convention started with a whimper, when more eyes were on Ted Kennedy and the Clintons than the nominee but it ended with a bang, complete with fireworks as the Obamas and the Bidens hit the stage.

Almost as soon as the event ended, the media horde started pulling up stakes here, preparing to slouch off to St. Paul where John McCain and uber-unknown Sarah Palin are holding their party next week. How unknown is Palin? I just had to double check how to spell "Sarah." And It's a double-Jeopardy question if you can name the city she was mayor of. (It's Wasilla, Alex.) Maybe stories about the Iditarod will play well in Peoria but you know that the GOP is not looking forward to Palin's one debate with Joe Biden. Listening to her twang on YouTube, I can only see Frances McDormand in "Fargo," but maybe that's a good thing in a time when even the biggest meatheads know how to say "Si se puede."

It's time to go here in Denver. I'm going to miss this town. I'm even going to miss one of our interns who resembled a nattily-dressed Charles Manson. The only X-factor is Tropical Storm Gustav, who's lurking in the Gulf Coast and hungrily eyeing Louisiana. There's already talk that the Republicans may have to postpone their convention because of that storm. In a year like this, it wouldn't be surprising.

Bob Hardt

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