"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need
Oh baby, yeah, yeah!"
– Mick Jagger/Keith Richards

When you head to the outskirts of Denver where I'm staying, there's a point where you pass a massive Purina factory and the smell of dry dog-food suddenly washes across the highway. In the mornings this week, that smell has become a sign that you're headed into the town, where serious politics is about to happen.

In the early morning hours after the Democratic convention has ended for the night, that smell becomes liberation, a Pavlovian sign that you've busted free of Denver's weird tractor-beam and it's time to hole up for a few hours before jumping back into the breach.

It's only been a few days for me in Convention-world but the effects of massive sleep deprivation are already taking hold. I just had a nightmare that the entire ICH crew here almost mutinied and sent me adrift like Henry Hudson. Sure, it was just a dream but who could blame them if it really happened? Who would voluntarily subject themselves to this numb work, surrounding yourselves with politicians 20 hours a day, politicians who've suddenly been emboldened into thinking that they're doing their best to keep the American Experiment alive and are part of the solution?

With little or no sleep, you will see spots where there are none or constantly feel like something small and feral is sneaking up behind you in your blind spot. One of our crew members told me almost jauntily that he no longer sleeps because he has two children. Then his eye started to twitch as he reached for a cigarette.

Out at Fort ICH, we're on the outskirts looking in. We share our quarters with a weird British blogger – far from the New York delegates who got caught in the middle of a street hassle the other night between Denver police and demonstrators when pepper spray apparently was liberally used.

Nerves were calmer yesterday at a demonstration for Hillary Clinton by women who weren't sure what to do now that their general has fallen on her sword. As hard as Clinton tried last night, part of her still sounded downright sad that she had lost her primary marathon. It was a wistful Hillary – and a real Hillary – that was on display at the Pepsi Center: Moses Hillary, the Hillary who won't be making it to the Democratic promised land. She appeared to be on the verge of tears at several moments, a barrier that was broken by her husband who was watching her in a luxury box.

It was a decent speech ("No way, no how, no McCain") but it was also interesting how she relied on one of her favorite stories about Harriet Tubman to be the crux of her address ("Keep going"). This was a speech device that Clinton embraced with gusto when she first ran for the Senate nine years ago and I couldn't help but wondering if she couldn't have brought something new to the table – that perhaps this was partially why she lost to Obama, that she needed to try something different and instead brought back Tubman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton until the well was dry.

Nine years ago, Clinton looked to be running against Rudy Giuliani for Pat Moynihan's Senate seat so it was somewhat weird to see Giuliani bounding around the hallways of the arena ("to see my senator speak" he joked to our Dominic Carter). Not surprisingly, Giuliani is loving his role as GOP pitbull ("the Democrats have made our point better than we can: that Barack Obama is unprepared to be president.") It remains to be seen if this will be Giuliani's final role in politics – morphing into a conservative Al Sharpton, someone who won't hold office but instead serve as an ideological lightning rod in major debates.

Perhaps it's easier losing the presidency when it's a rout like the Republican race but Giuliani seems much more at peace with himself than Clinton.

Tonight, it's show time for President Clinton, Bill Clinton. And the real proof in how fine the Clintons are with Obama could come with tonight's roll-call vote which Democratic leaders hope will go more like a Soviet-style election than one of those 19th-Century conventions where the candidate is picked on the 42nd ballot. And maybe Obama's crew knows something about the weather: the forecast for tomorrow's open-air speech by the candidate is for clear skies.

As we say in the biz, stay tuned.

Bob Hardt

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