Your convention jolt: Mother Nature threatens, Democrats blink — just like the GOP
The Georgia delegation to the 2012 Democratic National Convention sits for its official portrait.
For the second time in two weeks, the weather has forced the organizers of a major political convention to rethink. From the Associated Press:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Democratic officials are moving President Barack Obama’s convention speech Thursday indoors because of the possibility of severe weather.
Obama had planned to accept his party’s nomination in an outdoor football stadium before a crowd of up to 74,000 people. But Obama officials said forecasters have predicted severe thunderstorms Thursday in the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. hour, raising concerns about the safety of supporters, volunteers, staff members and law enforcement.
Officials said Thursday’s entire program would be moved indoors, including Vice President Joe Biden’s speech. The events will be held at the Time Warner Cable Arena, the site of the first two days of the convention proceedings.
The move will significantly reduce the number of people Obama will speak to in person. The setup in the arena can accommodate 21,000 people.
Democrats were warily watching the weather all week. Their worst case scenario was a last-minute cancellation that would strand tens of thousands of people, many of whom had planned to arrive by the busload in the middle of the storm with no place to go.
Obama’s team, locked in a tight race with Republican Mitt Romney in this Southern battleground state, determined that wasn’t worth the political risk.
Democrats were also worried about the possibility of anti-Obama hecklers acquiring some of the free tickets to the event and disrupting the president’s speech. The move indoors limits that possibility because most of those in the crowd will be official convention participants.
Republicans, who canceled the first day of their own convention because of the storm that would ultimately become Hurricane Isaac, immediately accused Democrats of avoiding the spectacle of an empty stadium.
But the best argument against that GOP taunt is an eyewitness view of Time Warner Cable Arena, designated as the site for the first two days of the Democratic meeting – and which now will be the venue for the third.
The size of the arena reminds one of the old Omni, which housed the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.
***
The Rev. Jesse Jackson in Charlotte. AJC/Aaron Gould Sheinin
The Rev. Jesse Jackson this morning rallied Georgia Democrats to be certain that “we are better off” today than when President Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, reports my AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin:
“Those whose voter rights are threatened by purging and suppression, with the Justice Department intervening, they’re better off,” Jackson said.
Jackson credited Obama with growing jobs, bringing troops home from Iraq and making the world a safer place.
“Those who are afraid of Osama bin Laden, he’s a ghost now,” Jackson said. “We’re better off.”
There is, however, unfinished business, Jackson said.“No one has earned the right to do less than their best,” the civil rights leader said. “We must challenge our constituency and hold their hopes, and not their fears.”
At their morning delegation breakfast, Georgia Democrats also heard from Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA standout.
Jackson split quickly, citing a busy schedule — which means there was no time to ask him about the health of his son, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is undergoing treatment for bipolar disease.
Georgia Democratic delegate Reese McCranie
***
When Democrat delegates in Charlotte approved their party’s national platform, one of the most enthusiastic votes cast came from Reese McCranie, who is gay and today celebrates his eighth wedding anniversary. It is also worth noting the fact that McCranie is a spokesman for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who has been under pressure to endorse marriage equality since President Barack Obama did so in May.
Reece declined to talk about the mayor, but did say that the platform inclusion showed that Democrats view gays and lesbians as productive and valuable members of society whose relationships ought not be criminalized. “I think that’s a big moment,” McCranie said.
***
Back home, the Georgia Tipsheet reports that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has scheduled an ATM visit to Georgia:
Local fundraising aides to the former Massachusetts governor sent invitations this week to a September 19 luncheon and photo opportunity at the Atlanta Marriot Marquis.
The per-plate cost of the luncheon was set at $1,000, according to an invite provided to Tipsheet, though donors must contribute at least $10,000 for the grip-and-grin.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
For instant updates, follow me on Twitter, or connect with me on Facebook.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
41 comments Add your comment
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
12:56 pm
You see! God is angry at both sides! He sent a hurricane at the Republicans and a thunderstorm at the democrats. He is so awesome. Why can’t both sides just get along? Only together can we move ahead!
Both sides!
Obama is dishonest
September 5th, 2012
1:16 pm
Come on people: Weather forecast is 30% chance of rain with wind at 4 mph for Charlotte at 10PM on Thursday night!!!!
Obama & the Democrats did not want to be embarrassed with a less than full house when Obama spouts his lies and deceitful comments…….no way in heck would he have 74,000 people show up this time (the rock star hype is dead and gone…..reality is starting to set in). He would have looked like a fool if only 30,000 to 40,000 people showed up. More lies from the left!!
GaBlue
September 5th, 2012
1:30 pm
Weather happens.
Keith
September 5th, 2012
1:33 pm
Would love to see a hard count of the racial make-up of the GA Democrat delegation. From the picture it looks like 3 or 4 token whites?
Look
September 5th, 2012
1:40 pm
Just like the GOP? That was a hurricane threat, man. The Dems are entitled to move inside but you could have done without this fairly weak comparison.
cc
September 5th, 2012
1:45 pm
“Democratic officials are moving President Barack Obama’s convention speech Thursday indoors because of the possibility of severe weather.”
Charlotte either has much better meteorologists than we do if they can predict on Wednesday morning that severe weather will strike on Friday night!, or perhaps Hussein has communicated directly with Allah.
I believe the much more likely explanation is that the Kenyan found he cannot fill a stadium in 2012 and moved the site to where there are far fewer seats to attempt to fill. We know, however, that there is one seat currently empty as per Mr. Eastwood. That seat will be filled in January, 2013 by President Romney . . .
cc
September 5th, 2012
1:50 pm
Obama is dishonest @ 1:16 pm:
With a forecast such as that, I would not move the event . . . unless I had other problems!
are you all serious?
September 5th, 2012
1:58 pm
hey cc…the President has 99 problems but Mittens ain’t one…
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
2:05 pm
@cc You are so funny!
. You are much nicer than td. You keep calling Obama Kenyan. Is that just a joke or do you really not think his birth certificate is real? Do you have a good website for me to look at?
@look – I do believe that the weather is bad in NC. There is NO WAy God would send a hurricane at the Republicans but not something similar to the democrats.
@obama is – So…are you saying that there are less than 70000 Obama fans? Or just that there are less than 70000 people that will vote for him in north Carolina” I don’t understand. You are confusing me.
cc
September 5th, 2012
2:14 pm
are you all serious? @ 1:58 pm:
Bernie @ whenever you make your presense known
All socialist libs
Say your prayers to Saint Jude. It is the only hope Hussein and your communist party has for winning, and even Saint Jude can’t always succeed!
wendy
September 5th, 2012
2:15 pm
Jesus is a libtard.
JSH
September 5th, 2012
2:15 pm
The sorriest week of TV in four years.
td
September 5th, 2012
2:17 pm
I see Jim is having another kind day to the Democrats and their convention. He posted an entire speech of Michelle and how BHO just loves all Americans but nothing about how mean and nasty the other speakers were last night. Now today is all about how bad the weather is to cancel the outdoor speech but nothing about how the Dems are throwing Israel under the bus or how the SC chairman said the Governor of SC (Nickii Haley) “She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun”.
Keep up the good work Jim being a patsy for the Obama machine.
cc
September 5th, 2012
2:19 pm
JSH @ 2:15 pm:
Your DVD player can be your friend.
JSH
September 5th, 2012
2:23 pm
He would easily gotten 74,000 people by promising to give out steak and wine food stamps.
cc
September 5th, 2012
2:23 pm
td @ 2:17 pm:
Every day is “Be kind to Democrats Day” for Galloway. You don’t actually expect fairness here, do you? After all, Galloway is a columnist and not a reporter. Job security probably figures in this deal somewhere!
MANGLER
September 5th, 2012
2:28 pm
I can already hear your taunts if the speech were to be held in the stadium next door and it rained the whole time. You’d be blaming the Dems or Obama himself for not being able to control the weather at will.
The GOP could have held their acceptance speech at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa if they were truly concerned about appearing to have more people in person. In fact, if that stadium were walking distance from the convention center in Tampa like Time Warner is in Charlotte, then you can bet that the GOP would have rented it as well.
Sparta_Bubba
September 5th, 2012
2:28 pm
OK Keith, so what’s your point? The Georgia GOP delegation had 3 or 4 token non-white delegates.
I’d love to know how much the token GOPers received and who paid their expenses. And where was Spermin Cain?
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
2:30 pm
@cc – Are you angry? Why have you started acting like td? I mean, td can get away with personal attacks because he is obviously related to someone at the ajc or something but other people like cendentist get banned! Don’t start the personal attacks, it just makes me sad for you, and if you were banned the only way I could see your cute posts would be if you used a proxy wenside and changed your name to something like seesee, and I would hate that because it would be a blatant violation of the 1996 dmca and the ajc could have you brought up on CHARGES…though the good news is that Jim is a nice man and isn’t worried other newspapers are reading this and will print a story about how they let their comment section get hacked by the same guy over and over again and made fools of or how they are showing clear negligence to shareholder owned assets by allowing a security breach encouraging class action lawsuits against themselves….
Fortunately that will NEVER happen because you smart and good and wise and not likentd or cendentist at all.
Reading your posts is the highlight of day
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
2:34 pm
@sparta bubba – I know! Both sides are bad, right?
Pardon Me
September 5th, 2012
2:36 pm
I’m part of a motor coach filled with 56 attendees for the Thursday speech. People were begging for more tickets. Why isn’t there an alternative to the alternative? Back in the day a hotel ballroom would have been booked at an alternative viewing site. I’m just saying……
td
September 5th, 2012
2:50 pm
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
2:30 pm
” Don’t start the personal attacks”
You have no clue my friend what a personal attack is. Talking about the political candidates are NOT personal attacks. Obama is the most horrible President this country has ever seen is not a personal attack. Now if I said you were a moron then that would be a personal attack against a fellow blogger (no personal attack intended just an analogy of the situation).
td
September 5th, 2012
2:53 pm
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
2:30 pm
And tell us what your former name was on this blog?
20/20
September 5th, 2012
2:58 pm
Recently I came across one of several new studies and lab experiments that center on a scientific possibility of disengaging the muscle-linked connections of the anal and oral functions of certain humans: particularly with those types who exhibit an ability to biologically disrupt the natural birth separation of the two. Somewhere in the aging process of these individuals, some have – for reasons heretofore unknown and understood – a propensity to engage the anal function ahead of the oral-cranial syntax systems thus resulting in a completely incoherent blathering that is both unintelligible and idiotic. This symptom was first discovered in those who vote Democrat and, thus far, has remained totally contained within that group; this, of course, has caused some consternation and has become an enigma as to what causes it and requests by the DNC have hastened a call for a hurry-up cure for it before November 6.
Jim Galloway’s blogs seem to bring out these study cases more readily than do most clinical analyses that are conducted in lab environments. Of note, however, 98.3% of all psychiatrists have been stumped and are resigned to the fact that this malfunction of the human body is irreparable and they as a group may soon vote on formally disbanding the studies and accept that the master group – all who possess this mysterious abnormality that appears to manifest itself in the connections to and from the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, cannot be cured. Sadly they are doomed to continue life in a fairy land of broken promises, higher taxes, super expensive health care, a belief that government is the “answer”, Hope and Change
and a myriad of other distortions uncovered recently by the Tea Party and other conservative movements.
If there is any progress in this arena, I will share it with you later.
cc
September 5th, 2012
2:59 pm
Mild Mannered Moderate @ 2:30 pm:
Stuff it!
moses malone 3:16
September 5th, 2012
3:02 pm
praise allah!
td
September 5th, 2012
3:03 pm
A little more about our fairy telling first lady and her real Michelle Obama is more like below:
“And then you’ve got the other half of young people who were like me and Barack, who too, out loans to pay for our college. So yeah, we have Ivy League degrees, but they cost us a whole lot of money to get. And see, what we did was what we thought we were supposed to do. We got those fancy degrees, and then we left corporate America, and went to work in the community. And with every job we took, we made less money…(W)here we found ourselves, in a position like most young couples, with our PhD’s and JD’s and MPh’s and WLMOP’s, all those wonderful degrees, all mired in debt. We had not paid off our loan debts until just a few years ago. Barack couldn’t even run for president.”
http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2008/05/michelle-obama-complaining-about.html
td
September 5th, 2012
3:06 pm
Dems. Ignore Gulf Storm Victims at Convention
“But the devastation–which includes loss of lives–went unmentioned last night by the three major prime time speakers at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“All three main speakers last night, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, San Antonio mayor Julián Castro, and First Lady Michelle Obama, failed even to acknowledge that the storm had just recently hit the Gulf Coast, a review of their prepared remarks reveals.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dems-ignore-gulf-storm-victims-convention_651741.html
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
3:10 pm
@td – Why don’t you just ask your brother on the ajc board what it is?
Oh I am sorry, I didn’t realize we all get to define what a personal attack is. Well, ok. Why don’t you define what it means for me so I can be sure to understand what you are doing when you are NOT making personal attacks in the future.
@cc – (blush) …..was..was that you fliring with me?
Such….innuendo…you overwhelm me sir.
@td – I love fairy tales. She is such a nice lady like Ann! My favorite fairytale is “my pet goat”…I love that book. Hopefully she will tell us some more.
And it is true…why aren’t the democrats acknowledging the damage from hurricane Irene! And the debt
. Both sides are sooooo bad. :[
R
September 5th, 2012
3:10 pm
It sure does reveal a bit doesn’t it?
The RNC caves to a Hurricane while the DNC caves to a THUNDERSTORM …
Yes the world certainly is a safer place since now since we will only “engage” when it’s NOT raining…
So I guess this means “firing the President out of a cannon” is off the table at this point?
cc
September 5th, 2012
3:12 pm
I’m sure this bodes well for you socialists:
“The Rasmussen Employment Index fell sharply, and confidence in the labor market is now at the lowest level of 2012. Generally speaking, a decrease in the Rasmussen Employment Index suggests the upcoming government reports on job creation will be weaker than the prior month’s report. Just 21% of workers report that their firms are hiring, while 23% report layoffs. That’s the second straight month in which reported layoffs top hiring. Additionally, 29% of those who have jobs are worried about losing them. That’s up four points from a month ago and the highest level of concern measured since last fall.”
Source: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
3:16 pm
@cc – That is so smart! I love Rasmussen reports. They are so reliable and balanced. They are proof that both sides CAN get along. Just seeing another authoritative report from them gives me more confidence. Why doesn’t Obama put Mr Rasmussen in charge of fixing the economy…why, I am sure with a few strokes of his pen he could fix it over night!
Why can’t both sides be like you and Rasmussen reports? =(
cc
September 5th, 2012
3:20 pm
The Kenyan either approved a lie or told the truth. Is he truly a Kenyan? We all know he is a liar. What was the case in this incidence?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/Obama-pamphlet-in-use-2007
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
3:35 pm
@cc – Wow! THANKYOU cc! I had suspected that this was the truth for quite some time; Andrew Breitbart is a martyr to the truth who exposed the real ACORN and was exposing the conspiracy to tie poor Ann Romney to shamus the do and they killed him for it! =[
Holy cow! I checked the links on the way back machine and they CHANGED the post to say he was born in Hawaii! :’(
What an abuse of presidential power.
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
3:39 pm
Oh wait. I was wrong. Ok. So there we have it. Proof from Andrew BREITBART himself, a man who died with martyr’s blood on his hands, a real American hero, showed us that dytel said that Obama was born in Kenya!
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
3:42 pm
And before you meanieheads attack cc, I checked. Dytel is a LEGITIMATE company that does voice mail in Alabama. This is proof enough for me that Obama was born in Kenya. Obama should step down now.
It will Eva choice between Biden and Hillary and Romney and Ryan!
Carol
September 5th, 2012
4:31 pm
td
We got those fancy degrees, and then we left corporate America, and went to work in the community. And with every job we took, we made less money…(W)here we found ourselves, in a position like most young couples, with our PhD’s and JD’s and MPh’s and WLMOP’s, all those wonderful degrees, all mired in debt. We had not paid off our loan debts until just a few years ago. Barack couldn’t even run for president.”
+++++++
What are you smoking? Michelle NEVER implied any of those things. It’s what you heard. She talked about their debt when they got married. They had student loans llike many Americans have. You can’t deny that, nor can you deny that the Romneys didn’t have any.
And if you look at her employment record you’ll see that she had a pretty well paying job before they left Chicago. Actually got criticized for it.
Carol
September 5th, 2012
4:34 pm
Mangler
I can already hear your taunts if the speech were to be held in the stadium next door and it rained the whole time. You’d be blaming the Dems or Obama himself for not being able to control the weather at will.
++++++
Or would have said that they were so arrogant that in spite of weather reports they refused to move indoors because Obama, thought he was the Messiah and could hold back the rains.
They still can’t argue with the fact that in both 2008 and 2012 they had to postpone one day of their conventions due to bad weather. In Florida I can see, but Minnesota. And they think God is trying to tell the Dems something.
Mild Mannered Moderate
September 5th, 2012
4:55 pm
God is trying to tell the democrats something! Both sides are bad! They are the same! Exactly the same!
are you all serious?
September 5th, 2012
5:18 pm
td are you just angry? you hate the fact the POTUS takes a vacation in Hawaii “every Christmas.” despite the fact “W” was on his ranch cutting back door deals for more drugs to be pumped into the country by his partner in crime, V. Fox. you hate the fact that he went to a private school and went Ivy for higher education. why don’t you at least man up and say it. you can’t stand to see black folks doing good. I have asked you time and time again exactly what policy has the POTUS put forth that has you claiming he’s the worst president. when all the polls would suggest the opposite. I believe his numbers are better than RayGuns. Get ready for some more dedmocratic love tonight dude. Joe Biden and Bill Clinton are going to spit on the mic. Remember Bill? I know you remember the peace time and the prosperity.
Mary Kay Henry At Democratic Convention: Romney ‘Wants To Take Us Out’ – Huffington Post : : Multi Level World
September 6th, 2012
5:27 am
[...] Atlanta Journal Constitution [...]