The parties go on...
Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 10:41 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From MSNBC.com's Tom Curry
One of the de luxe places to be downtown at this convention is the chic Monaco Hotel on and its northern Italian restaurant Panzano, where Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware was settled in a banquette, receiving friends and allies late Tuesday afternoon. The place was jammed with Democratic financiers and friends of the party, the same people you see at every Democratic convention every four years.
The new era may give you “change you can believe in,” but one thing that is not likely to change is the power of the trial lawyers within the Democratic Party.
The American Association of Trial Lawyers of America -- rechristened as the American Association for Justice -- had a very well-attended reception Tuesday evening downstairs at the Monaco.
In our 10 minutes mingling with guests, we spotted eight House members, including Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers and Judiciary Committee members Betty Sutton, Steve Cohen and Adam Schiff.
We also saw three senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, as well as former New Hampshire governor and current Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen, and Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland.
We asked one Democratic House member from Connecticut, who was in attendance but asked to not be quoted by name, whether he would be flying to the Twin Cities to represent the Democrats at the Republican convention.
“No,” he laughed, “Connecticut will already be well represented there!” That led to a spirited debate on sidewalk outside the Monaco the question of whether John McCain really would pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Consensus: no, he just couldn’t.
