Nervous Democrats have their doubts in Denver

DENVER — If I had to pick one word to describe Democrats at their convention, it would be: anxious.

OK, you're thinking, tell us something new. It's in Democrats' DNA to be as nervous as parents on the first day of kindergarten. Comes from decades of getting beat up on the electoral playground.

Only this year is supposed to be different. They're favored to win — in the House, the Senate, in governorships and on down the ballot.

Except ... you can hear some doubts in mutterings all over town. Did you see that McCain has tied it up? Why isn't Obama fighting back? Why'd he pick Joe Biden anyway? He should have picked — swoon — Hillary.

One Obama delegate told me he had been intensely disappointed in Obama's speech in Berlin in July. "So vague," he said. "The same speech he's been giving for months. Why didn't he give the Germans something more?"

I've been in Denver only two days. But that about sums up the sentiment in the trenches of Obama-land. The people here want more. More meat, more fire. More toe-to-toe with the Republicans. In other words, don't you dare do anything to remind them of John Kerry.

An even tougher path

Monday I wrote that nobody has come as far to be a delegate as accused spy James Yee of Olympia. Because to get here, Yee was once held in solitary confinement for 76 days.

But that's like a minor staycation to Majid Al-Bahadli, 40. He's an Obama delegate who lives in Seattle's U District and works as an auto mechanic.

He was held in a desert camp by the U.S. government for ... 1,500 days.

An Iraqi, Al-Bahadli took up arms — a machine gun — against Saddam Hussein in 1990 after the U.S. had driven Saddam's army from Kuwait. Then we retreated, and Al-Bahadli fled.

He was picked up in Basra by U.S. forces and confined to a camp in Saudi Arabia for more than four years. "It was a tent, in the desert, 100-degree heat off and on for what seemed like forever," Al-Bahadli says. "Why was I held by the United States like that when I was their ally?"

So that's two of our Seattle-area Democratic delegates who have been imprisoned by the U.S. government. Coincidence?

It's not just me

When I wrote Sunday that the national campaigns had devolved into pettiness, inanity and negativity, many of you wrote to call me a grump.

So I was relieved when Congressional Quarterly released a study of summertime political ads Monday under the headline "A Rough Summer, Factually Speaking."

The magazine rates ads for integrity and found that this summer, the candidates, parties and independent groups have all "become significantly less truthful in the past two months."

It concluded: "If they're exaggerating and distorting this much in August, what will October be like?"

McCainiacs derailed

Much has been made of the tepid protests at the convention. But one I saw became so heated it took Denver's light-rail system to break it up.

A gaggle of McCain sign wavers gathered on a downtown corner and began chanting the Arizona senator's name. Crowds of Democrats began shouting back. Some shoving broke out.

Then, SMASH!

A light-rail train had crushed a car. Everyone became so distracted the demonstration petered out.

There's a lesson in this for Seattle. Maybe politics and light rail don't mix?

Danny Westneat will be reporting from both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.