I’m at the DNC meeting in Washington where the presidential candidates are speaking and will be sending along occasional dispatches. Dodd had a bunch of harsh lines that you would expect to be big applause lines, but they were met with a ho-hum reaction. He said Democrats are not going “to take fear for an answer anymore,” and made verbs out of various Bush administration sins, accusing it of “Abu-Ghraibing, Exxoning, Brownie-heck-of-a-jobbing.” He said he’s a “proud Democrat, without prefix, without suffix, and without apology.” He immediately followed this up with a call for bi-partisanship, explaining the dissonance by saying it has to be bi-partisanship based on “getting Republicans to agree with Democratic principles.” He then pledged to overturn the Bush “torture bill” from last year, and “to bring our troops out of Iraq.” He hit the non-binding Senate resolution as too weak and boasted about his alternative that is a “real bill, with real teeth, real accountability.” This didn’t get as much reaction as you would expect. I’ve always heard that Dodd is a likable guy, and he tried get that across, although not entirely successfully. He talked about his young children and how he’s the only candidate who gets mailings from AARP and diaper services. People stood and applauded at the end of his speech, but everyone was clearly waiting for the main event up next: Obama.
