Life on the Floor, Day 2

A packed convention floor in Austin (photo by Lee Nichols)

12:40pm: Sen. Leticia van de Putte has relayed the take-home point from the Clinton speech: "To my disappointed supporters, every moment spent looking back is time wasted looking forward." Which raises the real question: when does paying final tribute to her dead, defunct, canceled, ended, suspended campaign become last week's business that people need to stop talking about?

12:25pm: Sen. Leticia van de Putte's intro for Sen. Judy Zaffirini is getting big plaudits for the Laredo legislator. She also got in a good jab at Judy's Republican opponent, former Democrat Louis Bruni. Explaining his seemingly baffling jump to the GOP last December (yes, you read that right), "In my book, that's like a rat trying to get onto a sinking ship."

12:11pm: If the energy is a little low in the hall, that may just be because the national delegate selection process last night became the hellacious long process everyone expected it to be. In addition to just dealing with the sheer number of people in the building (Sen. Leticia van de Putte did note that, at her first convention, she knew everyone by name: this time, Sen. Carlos Uresti was having to get everyone to stand up by compass direction), but the aggressive lobbying to become a delegate. "It is Travis County custom to stay in your district convention until 3:30 in the morning, and last night we honored that custom," said Travis County Democratic Party chair Andy Brown.

12:06pm: The feed never came back, but Sen. Eddie Lucio summed up the reality in advance of that when he said, "Senator Barack Obama has become the hope of America." Sen. Leticia van de Putte, one of the strongest Clinton-boosters in Central Texas, has lead the unity charge while technology (and the feed) evades the convention.

11:58am: The feed is wobbling in and out, and the delegates on the floor are keeping things going by chants of "Oh-Bah-Ma" and "Yes, We Can" (except one old gentleman near the press enclosure keeping on with "Hill-La-Ree" and "All the way"). Plus, to keep spirits up, there's some Springsteen on the PA, and Lloyd Doggett has just entered, wobbling on crutches.

11:55am: The feed comes up just in time for the formal endorsement of Obama and the suspension of her own campaign. That got another round of applause, and now everyone is wondering when the Clinton-boosters will take their t-shirts off.

11:54am: Live Hillary feed went down. Mild booing.

11:51am: Hillary has finally started, and even the CNN feed being shown in the hall got a round of applause (standing in some quarters).

11:42am: And as the second day of the Texas Democratic Party Convention starts, it doesn't quite. As seems to have happened so often this campaign season, it got held up by Hillary Clinton. The party decided that, since she would be making her concession speech at 11am (the time when they were supposed to be gavelling in for the second day of the convention). Tired of waiting, Kirk Watson brought the meeting to order at 11.17. By 11.42, there'd been the colors, the pledge of allegiance, the invocation, a speech from Travis County Democratic Party chair Andy Brown, and now Sen. Leticia van de Putte is introducing the speeches from the state senators.