Sara has suggested that I may have been unfair to the Dems in my criticism below. Perhaps. Here's my thinking.

I know that lots of states (Rhode Island, Wyoming, etc) aren't really keys to Dem victory and therefore don't merit lots of attention but I figure it is a good idea to at least get folks up on the stage for a few words. That rallies the troops, you know. Plus, this was the first day, and especially early on in the proceedings not a ton of people were watching anyway. So why not frontload it with the less important folks? Instead, we got lots of California, and lots of people who didn't give shoutouts to their home states.

Notice also that most of the ethnic diversity (and both of the two homosexual folks and the handicapped woman) were early in the evening. Why not a bit later, so that they could be seen by more people?

As to the religiosity of the evening: I don't see why it has to be prominent. It has been the Dem supporters who have been beating the drum against Dubyah's shirtsleeve religion.

And a word on the South. Clinton, Gore, Carter, LBJ, and arguably Truman are/were at least nominally southern. I know it probably looks like a hard slog, but I figure the party is stupid to not do free campaigning with things like convention speakers.

All things considered, I didn't dislike most of what I saw, but I would have put things in a different order, left out a few things, added one or two others.

We shall see what happens today.