Artur Davis At The GOP Convention

OS watched what he could stand of the proceedings yesterday...what was not boring seemed lame, and he couldn't bring himself to make Mrs. OS endure a moment of it. We had a lovely dinner at a quiet Japanese restaurant that opened up two years ago and has managed to hang on in a deeply redneck county.

He does regret not hearing the speech given by Artur Davis, the 2008 Obama campaign co-chair.

So, in case anyone else missed it, here it is.

He had carefully washed all the anger out of his text, while leaving the sense of loss and disillusionment well in place.

Maybe we should have known that night in Denver that things that begin with plywood Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don't end well.

Maybe the Hollywood stars and the glamour blinded us a little: you thought it was the glare, some of us thought it was a halo.

But in all seriousness, do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.

But dreams meet daybreak: the jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this Administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting.


No doubt there is a lot of fur flying around his life now. A lot of friendships lost, bitter words launched in his direction. A great deal of questioning of his basic sense of ethics. And he's got to wonder how many of those people in that room really would invite him to dinner, make him that good job offer, or introduce him to their daughters. How many will be his friends this time next year?


So, this took some courage.


And, as viciously as his old colleagues rail at him, they can't erase the historical fact of his crucial role in the 2008 Obama victory. His presence and words last night are a true repudiation of the entire Obama mystique. He knows where the bodies are buried, and they must worry a bit about how much of what he learned over the years has been disclosed.

Now THIS Is Embarassing: Obama's 2008 Campaign Co-Chair Introduces Paul Ryan To A Campaign Crowd In Virginia; Governor Wilder Denounces Joe Biden

 Ruh-roh.

From CNN, earlier today:

Artur Davis, the former four-term Democratic congressman from Alabama who co-chaired President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, introduced the running mate of Obama's Republican challenger in Virginia Friday.
 
"Are you ready to meet the next vice president of the United States?" Davis asked at a rally in Springfield, Virginia. It was Ryan's second event of the day. He held a rally outside Richmond on Friday morning.

In his introduction, Davis pointed to Ryan's age – he's 42 – as having energized the GOP. Davis is 44.
"Remember a week ago, some of our Democratic friends had the illusion that we were kind of an older party. That were the party of the last generation. One week later I'm the oldest man on this stage right now," Davis said. "What a difference a week makes."

Davis, who said in May he was switching parties from Democrat to Republican, said he had only disagreed with Ryan on one subject: the status of Led Zeppelin as the "#1 band of the modern era."
"I questioned you as you said it. As a Genesis man, I questioned it," Davis said.

He also praised Ryan's willingness to advance a House GOP budget that included sometimes-unpopular cuts to programs in the name of cutting the federal debt.

"President Romney is going to have a vice president who believes, in a town where no one takes responsibility for anything, Washington D.C., this man wrote a budget with tough, hard, necessary choices. He put his name on it," Davis said.

And there's former Virginia Governor Wilder letting loose about Joe Biden...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The nation's first elected black governor, Virginia's L. Douglas Wilder, lambasted Vice President Joe Biden on national television Wednesday for his remark to a largely black crowd about banks keeping people "in chains."

Wilder, a Democrat and a grandson of slaves, echoed indignant denunciations from Republicans, including presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, that Biden's comment at a Tuesday rally in Danville, Va., injected race into the presidential contest.

"Without question, they were appeals to race," Wilder told CNN. "And if you don't argue with that, then you understand that, then the next question is: Why? Why do you feel you need to do that? But the more important thing that I got out of this was Biden separated himself from what he accused the people of doing. As a matter of fact, what he said is, they are going to do something to y'all, not to me, not us. So he was still involved with that separate America. And I'm sick and tired of being considered something other than an American."

Ouch!!

Both gents, in case it needs to be said, are black. You know, that core group of Obama supporters that would never ever ever ever think about voting for aaaaaannnnyyyone else--ever.

It takes real courage for reach gentleman to speak up--they will have a lot of anger spewed in their direction over the next few weeks.

OS wishes them well, and as the descendant of a Confederate soldier from Mississippi, really truly wishes we could somehow get past the race-baiting, the constant pouring of salt into old wounds, the relentless appeal to our resentments at the expense of our hopes and our sense of logic.

Even George Wallace publicly repented of the practice, for crying out loud. The rest of us would do well to look to his example.