It’s over and I’m exhausted.

So many thoughts about the convention and the race… but I’m too tired to think coherently, so here, scattered, are some of them:

1. Best convention floor tactic: Dion’s neo-green shirts and scarves. In a party where everybody wants to be in red, Dion went neon-green. The genius of this was that in a sea of divergent red loyalties the green sashes stood out. Dion’s delegates became extremely visible, which made them look more numerous.
2. A nervous NDP?: Somewhere between the surging green movement in the Liberal Party and the emerging Green Party sit a good chunk of vulnerable NDP voters. Forget about driving left, the NDP may be most vulnerable if the Liberals drive green.
3. Losing Candidates: Some of you have written and asked if Ignatieff and Rae will run in the next election. I’m confident they will, especially after Ignatieff’s speech to his volunteers after the vote. Leadership races are, in essence, about serving as the standard bearer of the party’s ideals and vision. Your volunteers and supporters expect you to reflect your interpretation of that ideal as best you can, be it as the leader or a leader. To walk away now would reflect very, very badly on any of the former candidates. Moreover their supporters would be left holding the bag, having to account for why they backed a man or women who left the party high and dry.
4. The kids don’t care?: One image that struck me was the number of young delegates crying as their chosen candidate lost. In a day and age when the press keeps talking about how young people don’t care or aren’t active enough it was an interesting site.
5. Wither LiBlog?: The real loser of the campaign may have been liblogs. A lot of people enjoy liblogs because they make public the party’s internal debates and enable us to participate in them. During the leadership race however, many blogs became specific campaign mouthpieces – closed to real debate where the participants (and the bloggers themselves) remain open to persuasion. I suspect this left many readers bored, and more importantly, asking: why go to a liblog when I can get the same talking points from newspapers or the candidate’s webpage? I have it from a reliable source that many liblogs experienced a decline in hits and pageviews. In time, maybe they’ll recover, maybe they won’t, but one can’t help but ask, did the blogs lose credibility?

I gotta get to bed.

Update: For those particularly interested in point #2 it seems you are not alone… Chiara B. sent me this article from today’s Toronto Star which elaborates on it significantly.

So a lot of people I’m running into are hoping that Martha picks up some ex-officio delegates so that she doesn’t come in last on the first ballot. I couldn’t agree more. Martha has earned a lot of respect from people within the Party (very much including me) – I’m hoping she quickly finds a role that enables her to channel all her energy for renewal into reality.
It was odd to see Volpe walk offstage with a baby in his arms… the optics of that scene are not good. My friend commented “Volpe’s carrying one of his financial backers offstage!” Ouch. But it sums up the feeling of the crowd near me.

The CBC keeps pointing out that this could be the last great ‘from the floor’ convention… hinting that future leadership conventions will be decided virtually, with delegates voting from computers at home. I’ll admit that conventions feel 18^th century but it’s hard to imagine them going the way of the dodo.

I suspect that even if the weighted one member, one vote system – that which is strongly associated with an online leadership election processes – passes it will not end conventions. (Sidebar: I wish I could tell you more about the one-member one-vote resolution but I’m afraid that it is impossible to find the resolution online!) However, it is very unclear to me how the one-member, one-vote system would be implemented and what it would mean for the party, something those in favour of the amendment need to explain better to party members. However, if the resolution passes a number of people are going to be spending the next few months figuring out how to integrate this resolution into the convention process…

Why? Because contrary to the CBC’s musing: conventions are big business for political parties. In Montreal, delegate fees hover around $950 while observer fees are over $1200. With over 4000 (I think!) people in attendance I suspect this convention will generate a tremendous amount of cash for the party. In an era where political donations have been restricted and campaign funds are harder and harder to come by this must be increasingly important in building the party’s war chest.

In addition, conventions bring the party together – they get ordinary party members from across the country together, challenging one another, networking and building relationships. Yes, some of this could be done online but lets face it, it’s a lot more dynamic, personable and fun in person. If we all want to go out for an evening we don’t log into a ‘pub’ chat room – we prefer to meet up because we enjoy the tactile, oratory and visual experience… In a country as large as Canada parties won’t be underestimating the role conventions in building relationships and affirming a sense of identity among its members.

Of course, these expensive fees (not to mention associated travel costs) risk making conventions exclusive events, something that calls for greater examination. And just because meeting in person is ideal doesn’t mean that online technology isn’t going to revolutionize the convention system. The current process for getting resolutions drafted and passed is completely archaic and could use a big dose of online collaboration. What is needed is an some open-source public policy development to supplement conventions and give the debates both greater popular engagement and improved rigour, depth and sophistication. More on that in the future…

So if there is a single word to characterize yesterday’s events at the convention it is nervous. I don’t think I’ve felt so much nervous energy since the grade 8 mixer/dance in my first week of high school. Moreover, I’m not talking about the candidates, they and their staff are too busy organizing and strategizing to be nervous… I’m talking about the convention participants. It’s like a Canada25 forum on the first day, everybody knows (or at least wants to believe) that it is all going to turn out, but no one can see how we are going to get there…

Dean’s speech – which I was very much hoping would get pretty tactical about how to use the internet to drive policy and youth engagement in campaign – was disappointing. I’m not sure how Dean and the democrats can talk about a ‘strategy’ that won them the midterm election when it was a Republican collapse, not Democrat ingenuity, that landed voters in their lap. That said, stylistically he was definitely among the best speakers of the night. That he spoke some decent French and was unafraid to make fun of himself definitely warmed him to the crowd. After being introduced by this super-cheesy video about himself, he definitely seemed embarrassed and, in a nice recovery move, opened his speech by noting the video was one ‘his dad might actually watch and his mom might actually believe.”

But, the show stealer was Bill Graham’s son who, in a thank you speech for his dad (who served as interim leader), seemed to evoke the most genuine emotion (and laughter) from the audience… But then who can resist a speaker with lines like: “such as the time I called my Dad from Fallujah as the marines were preparing to invade and having him say ‘shhh, we can’t talk right now I’m going into the White House!’ It’s just too bad he couldn’t do anything to alter the marines plans.

As the location tracker to my right has ominously highlighted for the past few weeks – I’m off to Montreal and yes, it is for the Liberal Party Convention. I hope to craft a few posts while I’m there and possible even try out posting via email.

In the meantime the frenzy around the leadership continues… Today Ralph Goodale threw his support behind Rae. (Sidebar: Goodale just won the McLean’s/Dominion institute MP of the year award).

Hope to have more news about the Convention, as well as write a post or two on the plane ride over (how’s that for setting expectations?). Look for a few book reviews to be done – I’ve just finished “A Short History of Nearly Everything.”