The Delegates

I’m squeezed into the blogger area in the Invesco Field press box, our aerie on the 25-yard line between the 400 and 500 levels. All of us are utterly wedged into the space, and latecomers are stymied.

The building is three times as large as the Pepsi Center, the staff myriad, the distances inside and outside the building greater. The metal mesh maws of freight elevators clank up and down and disgorge lumbering dollies piled with pallets of styrofoam cups. Giggling teenage volunteers carry bundles of flags across the concourses. Impassive uniformed army personnel walk by in dusty desert camouflage. The sun is heavy on the parking lots where thousands of people are lined up waiting to go through the metal detectors.

This is the first day of our visit when Denver’s famous smog is fully in evidence, and the crowd that is slowly entering and filtering into their seats is absorbing fine particulates and nitrious oxides at an alarming rate. The haze is creeping in from the horizon. Down on the field, Obama’s greek-temple set with its thrust stage is awaiting its moment. Word is that Springsteen will indeed be playing tonight.

We’d also like to welcome commenter “sally schuster”, who marks a number of firsts for us. She’s our first non-relative commenter, our first negative commenter, and our first bafflingly inarticulate commenter. She has “one thought” for us about the “rool call”, which is to “get with the program and get used to living in the real america”. We don’t know what a “rool call” is — our Dutch is rusty — and we are equally ignorant of Sally’s “program” and the “real america”. But we treasure each of our commentators, so we’re glad Sally is on board.