This article is the second in a two-part series about Tufts' presence at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. The first piece focused on the experiences of members of the Tufts community who attended. (To read the first piece, click here.) Today's piece will look at their broader reflections on the historical and political significance of the event and on how America's political landscape has changed this election cycle.
The first thing Alex Whalen noticed when he began his work at August's Democratic National Convention was that, this time around, things were different.
Whalen, a political blogger who teaches the course "New Media, New Politics" in the Experimental College, had flown to Denver this year with a novel goal: to interview hundreds of journalists, bloggers and political media types about whether the Internet has changed their jobs significantly for the 2008 campaign. He intended it to be a key component of his research, which analyzes the influence of the so-called "blogosphere" on political media coverage.
What he found was that he may have been asking the wrong question from the beginning.
"The question is no longer if blogs have an impact; it was how blogs are having an impact," Whalen said. "We all take it for granted now."
According to Whalen, that revelation — which has led him to reevaluate his research and the course he's teaching — is just one way that the 2008 election has been both unique and historically important to American politics.
"In 2004 it was like, ‘Wow, [blogs] are new, [blogs] are cool — what are they?'" he said. "This time, it seemed to be the thing that everybody was thinking about … I was able to get so many people on the record — on both the blogosphere and in traditional media — actually talking about how they saw each other and how they thought the whole thing worked."
This should have come as no surprise to Whalen, for the 2008 primary race has been nothing if not remarkable and wholly impossible to predict. And for Whalen, along with the large group of Tufts students who attended, the chance to be there for its culmination was a chance to experience a historic first.
For sophomore Lucy Perkins and senior Christine Mumma, who attended the convention as part of Tufts' delegation with the College Democrats of America, it marked a unique opportunity to witness an unprecedented political moment: Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) acceptance of the Democratic nomination, which made him the first black man to become a major political party's candidate.
"It was kind of, all eyes were focused on Obama at that time," said Mumma, who spent the final day of the convention helping set up for the acceptance speech. "You knew that the entire nation, probably the entire world, was watching him."
In a country where racial segregation was still a fact of life just over 50 years ago and slavery is still a touchy subject, the nomination's significance was largely heralded as a step forward in American race relations.
"I really liked watching other people's reactions," said Perkins, who watched from the front row after helping hand out rally signs to the Illinois delegation. "There were a lot of African-American people there, more than there probably would have been at a typical convention. It was nice to see their reactions to the speech and to see that it meant so much to them and that it was so important with them."
"It's kind of rare, as you're living through a moment, that you realize that it's one of immense historical importance," Whalen said. "Everybody who was there had a real sense of the magnitude of the moment … however the election turns out."
For senior Matt Shapanka, who attended Obama's speech in his capacity as an assistant to the Massachusetts attorney general, the experience was less novel, but equally significant.
"I was actually at the convention in 2004, when Barack Obama was the keynote speaker, and I was like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?'" he said. "And so now I got to come full circle and actually hear him accept the nomination for president.
"Words cannot accurately describe how great that experience was … It was just amazing to be a part of history in some small way," Shapanka added.
Mumma said the audience as a whole was similarly moved.
"Everybody was personally touched," she said. "People were crying. People were excited, waving flags. I had never seen anything like it in a political convention or speech. It was sincere. It wasn't people there for the cameras, because there weren't cameras back where I was."
"Imagine a Broncos game, take away the football game, add 20,000 people and that's what you had," Shapanka said. "It's pretty amazing to see people doing the wave at a political rally."
According to Whalen, that same level of engagement and enthusiasm pervaded the convention on the whole.
"I kept thinking to myself as I was walking around in Denver the whole time that the whole week felt like one big festival of democracy," he said. "The downtown area of Denver ... is like an eight- or nine-block area where there's no car traffic, and it was just full the whole week with street musicians, politicians, supporters, protestors, and everyone was just really happy and having a good time.
"Tens of thousands of people who all came were there for the democratic process, and they were all having fun doing it," Whalen added. "For someone who's a political junkie, it was amazing to see."
