Mr. Obama was in the middle of his remarks when a woman in a white suit stood up and said, Mr. President we wrote you a song. POTUS tried to get her to wait until later, but she persisted and the table of 10 broke into a song that pointed out they'd just spent $5,000 donating to his campaign and went on to protest the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning.

The woman stayed standing as they sang. Mr. Obama looked to Ms. Pelosi and asked, Nancy did you do this? Ms. Pelosi had a look on her face, as she stared at the singing group, that definitely said she did not.

The song - will send quotes after transcribe - talked about Bradley Manning and how he is "alone in a cell..."

The 10 singers then passed around 8.5x11 signs that said "Free Bradley Manning" or had a photo of him.

Then the woman in the white suit stripped off her jacket to reveal a black T-shirt that said Free Bradley Manning, with an image of him.

"We paid our dues. Where's our change?" they sang.

USSS and WH staff had moved near the table at this point. The woman was escorted out. Two others left on their own. (The rest stayed and applauded at the end of POTUS's speech.)

"That was a nice song," a displeased Mr. Obama said.

"Now where was I?" POTUS asked.

As was indicated by that song, "Over the last 2 and a half years, change turned out to be tougher than we expected," POTUS said.

And, as promised, the song lyrics:

Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir

Each of us brought you $5,000

It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign

I paid my dues, where's our change?

We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true

Look at the Republicans - what else can we do

Even though we don't know if we'll retain our liberties

In what you seem content to call a free society

Yes it's true that Terry Jones is legally free

To burn a people's holy book in shameful effigy

But at another location in this country

Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley

23 hours a day is night

The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain't right

We paid our dues, where's our change?

Welcome to Obama 2012.

But hidden away in the weeklong liquor-soaked political and media festivals is, surprisingly, a somewhat lengthy discussion of policy. Both the Democrats and Republicans use the conventions to approve their party platforms for the next four years, each of which devote attention to a huge array of issues, offering the outline of a policy agenda for the party.

So as attention shifts toward the Republican National Convention in St. Paul next week, we thought we'd take a look at the urban development and housing policy portions of the platform approved by Democrats Monday and a draft Republican platform up for approval in coming days.

Generally, the Democrats were slightly more specific in their outline than the Republicans, calling for a number of new regulations, increased funding and new programs, whereas the G.O.P. expressed support for home-ownership incentives and policy that encourages vibrant economic development.

The Democrats, with far more registered voters living in urban areas than the suburban and rurally concentrated Republicans and a nominee who worked as a community activist in urban Chicago, devote considerably more attention to urban economic development in the platform than does the G.O.P.

The Democrats, who write that the Bush administration "has ignored urban areas," say they would boost funding for an array of programs that give grants and other assistance to cities and urban organizations. The platform also calls for a "Homebuyer's Bill of Rights" that would establish new lending standards.

And in two pledges that would likely please City Hall in New York, the party says it would further support affordable rental housing and restore cuts to public housing. The city's housing authority has had to undergo substantial budget cuts with less federal funding in recent years, there is a long list of private developers seeking tax-free bonds for below-market rate housing due to a federal cap on the bonds.

The Republicans, by contrast, focus on encouraging homeownership in their draft, which could see changes next week. However, likely an acknowledgement that the recent mortgage crisis came as a result of too many people buying homes that could not afford, the platform declares that "government action must not implicitly encourage anyone to borrow more than they can afford to repay." The party also calls for voucher programs for homebuyers and "urban homesteading," a program that gives vacant housing to poor families at cheap rates.

Of course, all is not to say that the party platform is by any means a binding document. Rather, it is a broad outline for each party to follow; and, in the case of the Democrats, is closely linked with the agenda of Senator Barack Obama. The Republican plaftorm differs from the agenda of Senator John McCain on a number of issues.

But the relevant bar is really whether it’s enough to fund the 50-state, mega-scale campaign Obama is running, and enough, compared with what McCain has, to make up for the loss of public financing.

At least in the opinion of one Democratic consultant I spoke to today, it is.

The consultant, speaking on background, said the total amount of money at Obama's disposal, when combined with the D.N.C.'s haul, comes to roughly $92 million on hand, and "allows them to be confident to keep putting people in place" in the states, and spending loads of money on organization and campaign infrastructure. The number, the consultant also noted, was raised in a month when the campaign had to address fallout from Hillary Clinton's angry donors, who weren't exactly feeling generous to Obama or the D.N.C. Also, Obama fund-raisers had to contend with anger among his previously staunch supporters in the Netroots, who expressed anger over Obama's vote in favor of the FISA legislation.

The consultant said the campaign's gimmicky competitions, like the one that gave small-dollar donors a chance to win backstage time with Obama, was smart, because it helped keep the average contribution number to $68, which gives them a Democratic-sounding talking point.

Regardless of the size of the individual donations, the consultant said, the total permitted Obama to keep quietly spending money on personnel and infrastructure, and to crush McCain in advertising spending.

"In terms of management of resources they're the best campaign we've had," said the consultant. "That's the part of their operation that has been really impressive."

“ I frankly don’t believe the John McCain of 2000 would even consider voting for the John McCain of 2008, I really don’t,” said Dean.

“Saddest of all," Dean added, "John McCain was against torture until he supported the president’s veto of the Democrats anti-water-boarding bill. This is a guy who appears not to have principles. And if you don’t have principles when you are president, you shouldn’t be president. Wanting to be president and serving America honorably in the armed forces is not a good enough reason to be president if you don’t have a core set of beliefs that you are willing to stand for.”

Dean went out of his way to welcome Hillary Clinton’s supporters back into the fold and boast about the apparent triumph of his once-maligned 50-state strategy under hyper-funded nominee Barack Obama.

“I do want to support you all for supporting the 50-state strategy,” said Dean, who added about Obama, “He’s going to run a 50-state campaign, which is incredibly exciting -- we haven’t had one in a really long time.”

Dean suggested that when Obama first became the nominee, he was worried about being an outcast, but then was put at ease that his 50-state strategy to contest elections and pour resources into races around the country would be the prevailing model.

“When the nominee becomes apparent, the nominee basically takes over the DNC, so basically I’ve had the first boss I’ve had in about 22 years,” said Dean.

In talking about the hard-fought primary later in the speech, he said, “When I started the 50-state strategy,” he said, “I didn’t mean that every one of the counties and states in the country was going to matter in the primary.”

Unlike Michelle Obama, Dean mentioned Hillary Clinton by name and made a concerted effort, after thanking the gay leaders in the room, to thank in particular “the people here who supported Hillary Clinton” and say how much he recognized "the emotional readjusting that has to go on in order for you to be here.”

He spoke about this for some time.

“When you don’t win a primary like that,” he said, “as I can personally attest, it is tough, it is really tough, especially when there is a deep emotional bond with the candidate and in this case her supporters, or Barack’s supporters as well. So whoever lost was going to have a really tough time. … I know personally -- it is not easy and it is even harder for the supporters. So it is a special effort, those of you who are supporters of Senator Clinton, or have been supporters of Senator Clinton, so that you can contribute to the campaign of the person who beat Senator Clinton, and I recognize that and I deeply appreciate your willingness to put your country up front. And put aside your understandable deep emotional feelings about this campaign. We are a united Democratic Party.”

After his speech, as Dean rushed to the elevator to catch a plane, I asked him if he felt at all vindicated by the reemergence of the 50-state strategy after so many of the party’s leading donors and strategists, who favored a more traditional, targeted approach to expending Democratic resources, had spent so much time trashing it.

“I never talk about vindication -- that’s a bad thing to do in politics,” said Dean. He went on to speak, again, about forthcoming Democratic victories across the country, including, he predicted, a takeover of the New York State Senate.

As the elevator doors slid open, a donor who had attended the fund-raiser wandered over and said, “Thank you for acknowledging Hillary supporters.”

Obama, who followed New York first lady Michelle Paterson and took the stage to the theme song “Michelle, My Belle,” mostly spoke about how her husband would continue to hold onto his principles through the campaign. She made no explicit mention of his calculated decision to absorb a big editorial hit by opting out of the public financing system, except to say how happy she was about the large number of small donors the campaign had attracted. (“We like the big donors, don’t get me wrong,” she joked.)

Speaking specifically to the gay donors in the hotel’s Starlight Room, she said, “Barack is not new to the cause of the LGBT community,” and pointed out the support he expressed in his positions on DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But when she spoke of his support for “robust civil unions,” a position short of actual marriage rights, some of the men in the room shook their heads.

One of them was David Melancon, a 47-year-old marketing executive and Obama supporter who donated the maximum $2,300 to the candidate.

“I don’t think civil unions go far enough,” he said. “Gosh, no little boy or girl dreams of being part of a robust civil union.”

Sure, the conventional wisdom went, he’d still have a loud voice in the national political dialogue. Even in defeat, Dean retained the passionate loyalty of much of the Democratic grass roots, the activists who’d grown irate with the timidity the acquiescence of their party’s Washington establishment to so much of the Bush agenda. But, as the ’04 primary results showed, the grass roots alone wasn’t enough to beat the establishment. Going forward, Dean would be the voice of a faction of his party – never a true leader.

That he secured the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee in early 2005 really didn’t change this thinking. He would serve as the party’s titular leader, a figurehead to mollify the restive activists and, perhaps, to wean a few more bucks out of them. But the real power – the control over message and money – would reside elsewhere. Dean could talk all he wanted about his vision of a “50-state strategy,” but there was no way that Rahm Emanuel and all the other guys who knew how to actually win elections would ever let him throw real money at that pipe dream.

It’s kind of funny where things have ended up.

In two months, Democrats will convene in Denver and nominate for president a candidate who opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning – the very position that made Dean such a radical in 2004. In 2008, though, that prescient war opposition may have been the single biggest factor in Barack Obama’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton – whose own vote to authorize the war, a vote that supposedly made John Kerry a safer choice than Dean in ’04, undermined her campaign from the outset.

The second biggest factor in Obama’s triumph was his stunningly superior financial position, which freed him to organize and compete in every state of every size, while the Clinton operation wrote off entire states. And how did Obama raise all of this cash? By perfecting the model that Dean pioneered in 2003, when his grass-roots army used the Internet to pour hundreds of thousands of small-dollar contributions into his coffers, allowing the little-known former governor of Vermont to outraise Kerry and John Edwards and their big-dollar bundlers.

Supposedly, Dean’s experience in 2004 had demonstrated that the old limits to insurgent national candidacies still applied in the Web age. Despite the buzz Dean had generated, it was Kerry, with his safe, poll-tested message and support from much of the party’s institutional forces, who had won – and, really, it hadn’t even been that close. (Dean’s only primary win in ’04 came in Vermont, after he had dropped out.)

But four years later, another insurgent has come along and – against a woman who was supposed to harness her deep establishment ties to assemble the most fearsome national political machine ever seen – essentially employed an improved version of the Dean model. And he’s won with it.

And then there’s that whole 50-state pipe dream. As a candidate in 2003-'04, Dean promised over and over to mount a meaningful fall campaign in every state – money, field workers and personal appearances invested in states the party typically ceded to the G.O.P. without even trying. To prove his point, he even went ahead in the summer of 2003 and ran television ads in Texas.

Dean’s contention was that expanding the map in general elections would create surprising new targets for the party’s presidential candidate, just as it would force the Republicans to expend resources in states they’d grown accustomed to Democrats writing off. He also proposed that it would be just as beneficial to down-ballot candidates – those running for governorships, Congressional seats, and even state legislatures. The Democratic Party may be an endangered species in Mississippi today, Dean would say, but we can grow it – and it will end up paying off at the national level.

As the nominee in ’04, Kerry ran a conventional campaign, targeting the usual handful of swing states and ignoring the rest. When he became chairman in early ’05, Dean revived talk of the 50-state strategy and announced a plan to fund a field worker in every state. But he quickly ran into fierce resistance from the party’s D.C. establishment, particularly from Rahm Emanuel, the quintessential Washington power-player who’d been tapped to lead the Democrats’ effort to win back the House.

Emanuel had his own fall battle plan – money from the DNC would be poured into the most promising targets on the ’06 map – and it had no room for party money to be sent to Mississippi or other red bastions. Dean stood his ground. Ugly fights ensued. Emanuel told Dean he was clueless and endangering the party’s chances of victory. Traditional big donors vowed not to send a dime to the party as long as the current leadership was in charge.

Dean still refused to fold, and finally a compromise was reached, and the idea of the 50-state strategy survived.

And now this: In the wake of his primary triumph, Barack Obama – the candidate who ran against the party establishment on Dean’s issue and who won with Dean’s strategy – has decided to launch a massive and unprecedented push this fall in all 50 states. Paid staff will be sent to every state. Voter registration drives are under way. Television ads will blanket the airwaves in cities that haven’t seen a Democratic presidential candidate in decades.

Obama’s campaign is selling the idea that this election isn’t just about winning the presidential race; it’s about expanding and transforming the Democratic Party. Senate seats are potentially in play in North Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alaska and even Kansas this fall. House seats are within reach in similarly unlikely locales. And redistricting is just a few years away. Democratic legislatures elected in 2008 and 2010 could position the party for a decade of dominance. Texas may be a red state, but its Legislature is within reach for the blue team.

Howard Dean will almost certainly never run for the Democratic nomination ever again. But in a way, he’s already won.

Like some of McCain's previous spots, this one is also trippy.

Not everyone fits the stereotype. Among those who will help decide the Democratic contest is a 51-year-old office administrator and piano teacher in Dublin, Ireland, who has not lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and follows the race in large part through coverage in the Irish and British media.
Liv Gibbons, a native of Los Angeles, will cast her vote at her party’s convention in Denver for Barack Obama.

Ms. Gibbons has a seat on the Democratic National Committee as a representative of Democrats Abroad, the party’s overseas branch. Democrats Abroad has eight superdelegates, though the vote of each one only counts as half that of a regular superdelegate.

At present, three other DA superdelegates are committed to Mr. Obama and two to Hillary Clinton; two are uncommitted. Among their number are residents of Japan, Switzerland, France, Italy and Canada.

Ms. Gibbons argues that the perspective gained by living abroad can add valuable insight to the American political conversation.

“You can see how America is viewed from abroad and how policy decisions made there ripple through the rest of the world,” she said by telephone from her home in Sutton, a northern suburb of the Irish capital.

In Ireland, she added, the image of the U.S. “is generally very positive, but it has declined during the Bush years. Look at Guantánamo, look at how there hasn’t been habeas corpus. America used to stand more for universal human rights, and its standing has been diminished.”

Ms. Gibbons moved to Ireland in 1985, having met her future husband, an Irishman, while at UCLA. She said she had “always voted Democrat in the States,” but was “never involved in Democratic politics” until becoming an expatriate.

Ms. Gibbons makes regular political pilgrimages back to the U.S. for the twice-yearly meetings of the DNC. It was at one such meeting last year that she met Mr. Obama for the first time. Though the meeting was brief, it was also testament to the importance of the personal touch in political campaigning.

The favorable impression Ms. Gibbons took away from her brief encounter with the Illinois senator was, she said, “one of the reasons” she decided to support him.

“It wasn’t any big policy discussion, but he just gave me his full attention,” she recalled. “I wanted him to sign some books so I could raffle them off to raise money for our organization. And he was very nice, very courteous. As he was talking to me, people tried to cut in on us and he kinda sent them to the back, saying he was helping his party. I thought that was very respectful of me and what I was there to do.”

Ms. Gibbons said she had long doubted Mrs. Clinton’s electability in a presidential election given that “so many people view her negatively.” But it was the complaints from the Clinton camp about the running of the Nevada caucuses in mid-January that proved to be the final catalyst for her to pledge her support for Mr. Obama.

“I was going to stay unpledged as long as possible,” she said, “but I wasn’t that happy about that.”

Since then, she added, she has received regular mail from supporters of Mrs. Clinton trying to get her to change her mind.

“I think there is a very active Hillary Clinton cell around San Francisco,” she said with a laugh. “I have gotten a lot of letters from there.”
Though Ms. Gibbons, like all superdelegates, was free to make up her own mind about whom to support, her choice also happens to be in line with the majority of her far-flung “constituents.”

The Democrats Abroad primary ran for a week starting Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, and Mr. Obama emerged with over 65 percent of the 23,105 votes cast from 164 countries and territories.

The result in Ireland, where voters who did not wish to vote by mail or Internet could cast their ballots in a Dublin pub, was roughly in line with the overall tally. Mr. Obama received 243 votes to Mrs. Clinton’s 142.

Ms. Gibbons said she was “surprised” by the scale of her favored candidate’s victory.

In Ireland, she noted, Mrs. Clinton is “very popular. If the Irish people had voted, it might have gone two to one the other way. But people want a change. They want a break from the past.”

Ms. Gibbons may be watching events unfold from across the ocean, but her concerns about the recent twists and turns in the race seem to echo those of many U.S.-based Democrats.

“The supporters of the candidates have become very polarized, and it is going to take some time to work on these people afterward and say, ‘We’re on the same side, don’t even think about staying at home or voting for the Republican.’”

Not surprisingly, she feels that it’s the other team that is more responsible for the descent of the campaign’s tone.

“The Clinton campaign—not her personally, but the people close to her—were the ones to start throwing stones. And that’s very difficult for him to respond to, because he is trying to be a healer and a uniter.”

She said she hopes that the trailing candidate decides to pull out of the race well before the Denver convention. But whether that happens, she will be there to register her half-vote for Mr. Obama.

Francisco Domenech, a superdelegate supporting Hillary Clinton in Puerto Rico, thinks that Ickes, her point-man on the wrangling of superdelegates, may find himself having to explain his work on behalf of one side of the flammable issue of Puerto Rico's national status.

Domenech, who supports statehood for Puerto Rico, pointed out that the three remaining undecided superdelegates in Puerto Rico are all proponents of maintaining commonwealth status. Ickes, who became a lobbyist after working at President Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff, was an adviser to former Governor Pedro Rossello in the battle for statehood.

"If they know of Ickes' background—they are going to question him on that," said Domenech, a Democratic National Committeeman. "And he is going to have to answer—tell them whether he is going to be advocating X or Y resolution to a problem. But the counterproposal—if they go back and let's say for argument's sake they are for commonwealth, what does that do for the statehood superdelegates? They have a tightrope to walk, because they can't upset our side."

The conventional wisdom is that Clinton will win the late-scheduled primary in Puerto Rico because she has done better than Barack Obama among Latino voters so far. (On a conference call Saturday morning, Ickes suggested that the campaign was counting on Puerto Rico to put Clinton over the top in the delegate count. "On June 7, when Puerto Rico votes," he said, "she will be neck and neck and shorty after that will wrap up the nomination.")

Domenech argued that the status issue would be very important to Puerto Rican Democratic primary voters, who he said are about evenly divided between commonwealth and statehood.

"Status is going to be the number-one issue," said Domenech, adding, "It’s going to get a lot of attention on the status issue. Here we are. We have a delegation larger than 27 states, right? We can be helpful in deciding this primary yet we are not going to be able to vote for them in the general election."

Puerto Rico has seven superdelegates altogether. For those keeping track, the three remaining undecided superdelegates are all firmly in the commonwealth category. They are Celita Arroyo de Roques, a national committeewoman, her son Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, an at-large DNC member, and Luisette Cabanas, the vice chair of the island's Democratic Party.

The pro-commonwealth governor, Anibal Acevedo Vila, is the lone superdelegate currently supporting Obama.

Kenneth McClintock, the president of Puerto Rico's Senate, and Domenech, director of the Office of Legislative Services of the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly, are both pro-statehood. Puerto Rico's one other pro-Clinton superdelegate, Roberto Prats—the chairman of the Democratic Party of Puerto Rico—is pro-commonwealth status.

The Clinton campaign declined to comment.

Dean said he thinks there will be a nominee by March or April, and if not, "we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement."

Here's the transcript from NY1: