Remembering candidate Barack Obama's acceptance speech in Denver four years ago

It was too bad that many thousands of Democratic Party volunteers and supporters didn't get to hear President Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night at the Charlotte Panthers football stadium. Threats of thunderstorms forced the speech indoors. I was able to see and hear candidate Obama's first acceptance speech in 2008 at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium on a warm August night. Wyoming Dem delegate Lori Millin took this photo that night. It makes me look like the party standard bearer when in reality I was merely an embedded blogger. Still, it was a heady night for this lifelong Dem who had never been to a convention and may never get there again. Read a nifty article by Patty Calhoun about the lingering effects that the convention had on Denver and its image in last week's Westword. Especially illuminating in the interview with then-Mayor John Hickenlooper and now Colorado Governor Hickenlooper who delivered a memorable speech in Charlotte. He remembers being very nervous about security and traffic and all of the thousand-and-one details that make up a national gathering of this magnitude. He was nervous right up to the closing-night party at his Wynkoop Brewpub in Lodo. Especially illuminating are the details of his decision to let a Rage Against the Machine-led peace march go from the Denver Coliseum to the convention at the Pepsi Center. Instead of having the police stop the march, he ordered the DPD to escort the marchers through town, a decision that probably meant the difference between a peaceful protest to one of mass arrests and violence. That Hick is one smart cookie. He's going places...