In Denver.

Denver is not equipped to handle any convention scenario other than a coronation, and certainly not the most (potentially) contentious national convention in 40 years.

It is important to point out that the state of Colorado, and the city of Denver, is currently nearly completely controlled by Democrats at every level of government. This puts these locals in a box, politically and from a law enforcement standpoint. This sets up a scenario similar to Seattle 1999 WTO debacle. I happened to be living in downtown Seattle during that awful experience, and what stands out is that the city and state (even the Federal Government at that time) were all controlled by Democrats at every level, even police chief. That meant they were politically unwilling to confront their own in the days leading up to the summit: that is, the anti-globalism/WTO protestors, greenies, and union members that were planning major marches, civil disobedience, and even outright mischief.

The reason is simple, they didn’t want to alienate their own constituencies by seeming too heavy handed. The result was that by the time they had to crackdown, it was too late and with police state tactics, water cannons, gas cannisters, police in riot gear, and dusk to dawn curfews on the streets. There is still a lot of these scenes on YouTube and many disenchanted lefties are promising a repeat in Denver this year. Any variation of this would be a potential public relations disaster for the Democrat nominee in trying to win Colorado, and one that would virtually ensure not only a McCain victory in the state, but a stigmatization that could likely lead to major setbacks for the Democrat party in Colorado for years to come.

[Early afternoon update]

It’s already starting, and it’s still March:

Spagnuolo has been meeting monthly with city officials for a year, hoping to win the right to use Civic Center throughout the convention. He says 50,000 war protesters are coming for a march from Civic Center to the Pepsi Center on Aug. 24.

He said Thursday that he would not respect the host committee’s permit and would occupy the park, even if it forced police to intervene.

Referring to the $50 million in federal security money slated for the convention, Spagnuolo said Denver police would need “$25 million to protect the Pepsi Center and $25 million to protect Civic Center.”

I have no sympathy. When your political party encourages and welcomes brown shirterry (as long as it’s aimed at “neocons” and “globalists,” and “capitalists,” and other evil people), this is what you get. Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas.

[Update at 1 PM]

More bad news for the donkeys:

In a sign of just how divisive and ugly the Democratic fight has gotten, only 53% of Clinton voters say they’ll vote for Obama should he become the nominee. Nineteen percent say they’ll go for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and 13% say they won’t vote. Sixty percent of Obama voters say they’ll go for Clinton should she win the nomination, with 20% opting for McCain, and three percent saying they won’t vote.

That’s already starting to show up in the national polling, where McCain is way ahead of both Hillary! and Obama. As I’ve been saying for months, the Dems have set themselves for a shellacking, because both of their lead candidates are unelectable in the general, and the internecine strife just makes it worse. Their only hope lies in a brokered convention, and a different candidate, and even then, it’s unlikely that they’ll recover.

Clarice Feldman has some useful advice for Howard Dean:

Have Carter rerun the entire damn primary before June 7. Really, Carter can do this.

I suppose right now you’re saying,” Where did he get this idea?” I’ll tell you, friend. it came to me listening to Carl Levin who asked, “How can you make sure that hundreds of thousands , perhaps a million or more ballots can be properly counted and that duplicate ballots can be avoided?”

See, I read that and remembered that Carter does this all the time. He’s the election certifier extraordinaire. From his supervision of the 1990 election in the Dominican Republic to his oversight of the Chavez recall collection in Venezuela he’s become the one man in the world who can, with the acquiescence of the entire world, put a gold stamp of approval and purity on a completely unfair and corrupt election. Fraud in counting votes? In registering voters? Discrepancies between the number of cast ballots and voter registration lists? Jiggered machines? Doesn’t matter. The guy will keep his eyes and ears closed and stamp the entire thing kosher.

See, what I’m saying, is that there’s no way you can resolve the present contretemps without at least half your party claiming the result is unfair. They will always believe the nomination was “stolen” from their candidate and given the players and so-called rules of your party’s nomination process, they will have a point. So why not go whole hog. Have the process planned, overseen and supervised by the man who’s given his stamp of approval to crooked elections everywhere else on earth. He was YOUR president, after all. He’s good enough for East Timor and not for his own party?

Maybe he could even win another Nobel Peace Prize.