"And as for fortune, and as for fame I never invited them in, though it seemed to the world they were all I desired," -- Tim Rice

The sun is slowly rising over the Rockies here in my Wyoming hotel room, as I fuzzily try to contemplate Day Two of the Democratic National Convention.

Okay, it's not Wyoming, but this is clearly not a political hub where people are obsessively watching John King on their TVs. It's a hotel where drunken charter pilots stay when they're too dazed to make the 20-mile drive to the city from the airport.

It's truly quite far from the peace and love going on in Denver's Pepsi Center and much closer to a place where deals go wrong and an escape into the mountains might be a tangible thing.

Some of Hillary Clinton's delegates are planning something near to that this week – disappearing after the Hill-Dog takes the stage tonight and issues a call for Democratic Party unity. They're not sticking around for the big show at Invesco Field on Thursday night, when they're quietly praying for buckets of rain in the open-air stadium to ruin Barack Obama's party.

Terry McAuliffe is known by those close to him as "The Macker" – and he oozes confidence, confidence that brought him all the way from the backwaters of upstate Syracuse to becoming a golfing buddy with the last Democratic president. Under Bill Clinton, The Macker ran the Democratic Party with unfettered enthusiasm – enthusiasm that sometimes would get him into trouble when he would say exactly what he thought without speaking in fuzzy politcal-ese.

It happened again yesterday when our Dominic Carter sat down with him in our skybox. McAuliffe started riffing on the "unfair" media coverage of Hillary Clinton and suddenly let loose: "You're nominated to be president. It's your campaign. At some point, quit talking about the Clintons and move on."

A lot of New York delegates are sharing The Macker's pain. They're like baseball fans who saw their home team not make the playoffs and now they're sort of half-heartedly rooting for the American League team in the World Series. Hillary Clinton will have a lot of time to watch baseball this October if her speech doesn't go over well with the delegates here.

Many Obama supporters already seem ready to dropkick Clinton back to Chappaqua.

A welcome distraction for them was the dramatic re-emergence of Ted Kennedy at the convention last night when he addressed the crowd. While Kennedy's speech was moving, the film introducing him may have even been more powerful and somehow made a millionaire senator cavorting on his sailboat look like a man of the people.

The other highlight of the evening was Michelle Obama's speech, in which she managed to say something nice about Hillary Clinton – and then have a cozy videolink chat with her husband and their daughters in front of 4,000 delegates. The Obama daughters may be the not-so-secret weapon of the campaign ("And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night...") – Malia and Sasha becoming 21st century versions of John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy (who lovingly introduced her uncle last night).

Expect to see more Obama family ads this fall to counter John McCain's "celebrity" attacks. Celebrities, after all, are too busy to have a real wife and kids while they body surf in Hawaii and stealthily smoke cigarettes with their Hollywood pals.

Poor Mark Warner. This could be one of those keynote speeches that no one remembers (à la Reuben Askew) because of this delicate Obama-Clinton tango. He doesn't even get to give the final speech tonight because it's the Hill-Dog's (maybe final?) moment in the spotlight.

You can bet that the Obama people are hoping that Warner somehow channels Mario Cuomo at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco and gives the speech of his life. It would be enough to drive Team Hillary into the Rockies here until November.

Bob Hardt

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