Tonight is the Big Dog’s night. But there are other speakers, and as we saw last night, they rock too.
Today the main events will kick off at 5pm ET. After the call to order, invocation, pledge and national anthem, we will hear from Reps. Luis Gutierrez, Diana DeGette, Judy Chu and John Larson, among others.
At or around 6pm ET, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka will give remarks, followed by Reps. Steve Israel and Patty Murray. Sen. Charles Schumer and Reps. Karen Bass, Al Green and Emanuel Cleaver will also speak.
The 7pm hour will bring House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Tom Vilsack, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and former NC Gov. Jim Hunt
8pm: Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards will speak on, yes, women’s health. Apparently Democrats are under the impression that women are perfectly damn able to decide their own health issues. Will this crazy twentieth century notion take hold even here, in the twenty_first_ century? Only time will tell. Also this hour-ish: Rep. Steny Hoyer and Rep. Barney Frank.
9pm: Small Business Administration administrator Karen Mills will, hopefully, attempt to enlighten us all as to who built what. California Attorney General Kamala Harris will, hopefully, explain to us why a whole hell of a lot of crooked bankers are not in jail. Unlikely conservative nemesis Sandra Fluke will, hopefully, attempt to explain to us for once and for all what the hell Rush Limbaugh’s problem is. (Just kidding. Nobody can explain that last one.)
Oh, and then we get to hear from some people who used to work for some of the companies Bain Capital took over, back when Mitt Romney was running it, not running it, retroactively not running it, or proactively running from it—I get confused on that stuff. But that should be a hoot.
10pm: The main event. Scourge of Wall Street and all Republicans everywhere, inventor of the notion that perhaps banks ought not screw their customers at every possible opportunity, and U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren will speak. Apparently Republicans are convinced that this will not go well because the public feels very strongly that banks really ought to be able to screw them—that was, I believe, one of the defining Republican convention themes. Elizabeth Warren is running for Senate against a Massachusetts pickup truck driven by some guy. I don’t remember the guy’s name—Scott somebody. The pickup truck has fairly strong opinions about local sports teams, however.
Tonight’s keynote speaker: President Bill Clinton. You may remember him from that time we balanced the budget, which got Republicans so up in arms that their guy, “successful businessman” George W. Bush, dedicated every bit of his presidency towards disemboweling all traces of federal fiscal competence. Then some bad stuff happened to the economy, and he victoriously retired to clear brush, and the Republicans found their old “national debt” counter for the first time in for-freaking-ever here in 2012, under the supposition that everyone who was around those years was probably too drunk by the end to remember any of it. In any case, I hear Clinton is no slouch at public speaking, so that ought to be worth watching.
There you go. At the least, highlights should be Pelosi, Barney Frank, Sandra Fluke, the people Mitt fired so he could make another few dump trucks of money, Elizabeth Warren and Pres. Bill Clinton.