Diary of a (Tired) Democratic Delegate - Back Home!

Sitting at the dining room table in Dearborn and trying to marinate all that poured over into my brain the last seven days is quite a challenge. . .but I will try. FIRST, I ran for delegate - not an easy task - because I am so supportive of this Administration for what they did to save the domestic auto industry. You've read my past missives on the specifics, but there is no question in my mind that Michigan would be a very different place without the active intervention of our government and President Obama. --- FRANKLY I THINK it is ungrateful for those of us who love the auto industry and are dependent on it NOT to stand up for the one who stood up for us in our time of need! - - - THAT SAID, I am so humbled and proud to have been able to give voice to that message. I ran to help tell the auto story, and, thanks to the media outlets that wanted to hear what I wanted to say, I told our story.  . . . I was not the only one, as it turns out, as almost every platform speaker mentioned the auto rescue. . . .Wasn't it great to hear our friend Jennifer Granholm whip up the crowd the way she did? . . . Wasn't it great to hear Joe Biden use the rescue as one of the two examples showing the President's character (the other was the killing of Bin Laden)? . . . Wasn't it great to hear The UAW's Bob King tell the story? . . .And on and on! - - - THE AUTO MESSAGE speaks volumes on the differences between the parties today - the Democrats are willing to take tough stands to put government to work for people, while the Republicans would rely on old canards about bootstraps and new philosophy that sounds like it centers on scroogian selfishness. ("I got mine - damn the others!") . . . The Ds are for lifting -all Americans into the Middle Class so they can truly live the American Dream, while the Rs want to make the rich richer and the government smaller. . . .I am a corporate guy, a capitalist if you will, but I am a huge public-private partnership supporter . . .a concept that the Republicans have all but abandoned.  - - - THE CONVENTION REINFORCED my support for the President's re-election as the moral thing to do, the right thing from a foreign relations perspective, and the best thing to protect the "least of these" in our society, particularly senior citizens whose safety net would be ripped asunder if the GOP budgeteers have their way. - - - THE CHARLOTTE gathering was a look at America, in all its glory  - diverse and united. . . .I spent time talking with a New Hampshire grandmother, a New Orleans oil rig worker and a New Mexico Navajo leader - and they all said the same thing to me: what President Obama is doing is right for their families and their communities. . . .I spent time with gay delegates who for the first time felt validated, with Arab-Americans who have a voice at the table, with teachers and firefighters who wonder why the Republicans hate them. . . .I saw disabled people struggling just so they could be there to lend support, tons of energized and enthused young people, carpenters and commissioners, retirees and even some former Republicans who said their party has left them to curry favor with the looney right wingers. - - - SO FOR ME, I went to Charlotte to support the President and the autos, but I come home with so much more - a firm commitment to do everything I can to convince my friends and neighbors that the team we already have on the job is the best one to keep there!  . . . . (Thanks to the Dearborn Patch for providing me for the opportunity to blog, and thanks, too, to those on Patch, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, for following my reports.)