The warm up acts

You would almost think that organizers had asked keynote speaker, the former Virginia governor Mark Warner, who is now running for US Senate, to make his keynote speech as dull as possible to make everyone remember how good Obama’s was in 2004.

The Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick’s speech, was far better: "Democrats don’t deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose."

He also talked about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, sharing a bunk bed with his mother and sister, and spending every third night sleeping on the floor. It’s not quite John McCain’s POW cell in Vietnam, but still.

The real surprise, though, was Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. He gave a barn-burner of a speech on energy independence:

"The petro-dictators wil never own American wind and sunshine."

At one point, he asked the audience to shout "loud enough" so the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would hear them, and so the "petro-dictators" would hear them -- and they practically did. The Democrats sitting near me have their eye on him for a potential energy secretary.