Denny Heck is up now. He thanked the convention for the nomination and accepted.

Heck grew up in Vancouver and recounted memories of family vacations. He said it’s difficult to ensure the next generation that they’ll have the same opportunities as he had as a child because of the direction the country has taken.

He said he’ll work to help get the country back on its feet. “We need more jobs,” he said, to cheers.

He quoted Ted Kennedy, who said the best social program is a good job. “And so, we can, we must and we will” build jobs, he said. That includes modernizing rail, reforming Wall Street so a similar economic collapse won’t happen, and “get credit flowing to Main Street and increase the jobs that go with it.”

He said Republicans are targeting the third district.

“If you think Main Street is more important than Wall Street, join us,” he said.

His song: Phoenix’s 1901.

Tags: Democratic convention, Denny Heck

Suzan DelBene, who’s running against Republican Dave Reichert, is now up. (Her song: “Teenage Wasteland”)

She said she’ll be the first Democrat to Congress on behalf of the eighth district. She said there’s a failure of leadership from Reichert.

She said Reichert hasn’t tried to hold Wall Street accountable, hasn’t support the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and didn’t work for healthcare reform.

“A job is more than a paycheck, it’s a matter of dignity and confidence,” she said. As a child, her parents moved around the country looking for work. When she was in college, her parents lived with her for a time.

She said despite damage done by Republicans, there is still room to hope.

“As a Democrat and committed progressive, I’ll also fight for the values that we believe in,” she said, including a woman’s right to choose.

Tags: Democratic convention, Susan DelBene

In a brief vote, the state Democratic party has picked Denny Heck for the third congressional district candidate and Clyde Cordero for the fifth congressional district.

Right now, they’re debating whether to endorse Charlie Wiggins in his race for Supreme Court against Justice Richard Sanders. The convention heard two speakers in favor of the endorsement and another two against. That passed, and Wiggins is the Democratic party pick.

Now for recommendations: Democrats are voting on which referenda and initiatives to support. Initiative 1068 (legalizing marijuana): Endorse. Now they’re recounting. The recount: 314 to 185, so it’s endorsed.

They voted to oppose 1100 and 1005 — the initiatives to privatize liquor.

Tags: Democratic convention

The convention is getting started back up after a lunch break — but the World Cup game, where the U.S. team is tied 1-1 with Ghana, is being kept on in the background. To accommodate for speakers, they’re keeping the game on silent.

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The state Democratic convention has 714 voting delegates.

The convention is now breaking for lunch, but: the World Cup soccer match will be shown on the big screen here.

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Tim Kaine said Republicans are hungry for the November elections and want to “take the country back.”

“I want to tell you what our message is,” he said. “What was so great about back anyway?” He said when Pres. Obama was elected, the country was “in a ditch” — the deficit had ballooned, the nation had lost jobs, family incomes had dropped, income disparity had increased and the economy was in shambles.

“We had to build our own ladder, folks,” to climb out of that ditch. “And we built that ladder, and today 18 months later … we’re gaining 4 to 500,000 jobs a month,” he said. Gross Domestic Product is growing, the stock market is climbing.

“Do we want to keep climbing, or do we want to put it back in the hands of the guys who put it in the ditch in the first place?”

Kaine said the economic recovery act — the stimulus — will create jobs, grow the economy and more, yet few Republicans voted for it. Republican “would not lift a finger to help an economy in crisis recover.”

He said healthcare reform was done by Democrats alone — something they should be proud of. He said it provides tax credits for 92,000 small businesses to help purchase insurance for employees. “It’s helping families keep their youngsters on their health insurance policy,” he said. For seniors, he said, it helps cover prescription drug costs not covered by Medicare.

“That’s because of this president and this Congress,” he said. “Many of the Republicans say that their strategy going into this fall is to repeal health reform,” he said. “If they want that to be the battle, let that be the battle,” he said. He suggested printing bumper stickers that say “Bring back pre-existing conditions.” “Let them run on that and we will beat them so badly at the polls on that issue.”

Kaine said he’s not going to sugar coat it: “Midterms are tough … the average president in their first midterm election” loses seats. And, he said, this isn’t an average year.

But he said “we’re going to do everything we can … to make sure that Sen. Patty Murray comes back.” He said Murray has held onto Washington values, “while Dino Rossi has proven again and again” that he’ll support special interests.

Kaine said about 70 percent of the 15 million new voters from 2008 aren’t likely to vote this year. But the Democratic National Campaign Committee is launching an initiative to reach out to young voters. “If we can just increase their percentage turnout from 30 percent to 40 percent, that’s a million and a half more votes” for Democrats, he said.

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Jay Inslee said he was getting his questions prepared for BP executive Tony Hayward at a recent hearing when he heard his Republican colleague apologize to Hayward.

“There is a refrain here: We are the party who don’t believe we should give an apology to Wall Street. We are the party who will pass a bill next week” to further regulate Wall Street. “We are the party who doesn’t think we should apologize to the insurance industry,” he said, but the party that will make sure you can get insurance “even if you have heart disease, even if you have cancer.”

“This is a contest between the optimists of Americans and the pessimists,” he said. “Optimism is an inherent American value,” he said. He said the country is addicted to oil, but “we are the optimists as Democrats and Americans who believe that we can dominate the field in clean energy,” he said.

He said for people who don’t think Americans can master clean energy, he said they should visit Boeing to see their biofuel-powered jet or “let them come to Moses Lake, where we’re making the guts of solar panels,” he said. “Let them come to Washington state, where we intend to lead the world in a clean energy environment.”

He said next month, more jobs will have been created during President Obama’s term than in the eight years George Bush was president. But, he said, Republicans want to repeal some of the work Democrats have done.

“If you see Rob McKenna, you tell him to keep his hands off of our healthcare,” he said, of the state Attorney General, who is part of a lawsuit over the federal health insurance reform.

Inslee said America only knows one direction: Forward. “Stand with me and we will go forward on healthcare, not backwards … stand with me and we will go forward on clean energy,” he said. And education, the economy and more.

Tags: Democratic convention, Jay Inslee

McDermott said he wants to change the direction of the conversation this morning. “Let me set the context for this election,” he said: In the 1930s, the country was in a Depression and Democrats stepped in with programs to help. He said that lead to loyalty to the party for decades, until people “started to forget.”

Republicans “know that if this healthcare bill gets into place … we will control and lead this country” for the next decade. McDermott said if Republicans win seats because of “health care, the Tea Party and all of that crazy business,” it could lead to the repeal of healthcare reform.

He said politics “has changed to the point where we think it’s all about money,” he said. This election will be no different, because of the Supreme Court decision on corporate political contributions. But: He said the Democratic party “can have an impact that is much stronger than a commercial” by hitting the streets and talking to people.

He said young people “put Obama over the top” in the 2008 presidential election. But, he said, young people get distracted “and they need to be reminded that what Barack Obama started in 2008 has got to be continued.”

He said in his first campaign, he doorbelled at the UW doorms the night before the election. He said he got kicked off of campus, but it was worth it because young voters are crucial to Democratic campaigns.

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U.S. Sen. Patty Murray just took the stage at the state Democratic convention, to the tune “Aint’ No Mountain High Enough.”

Introducing her: 11-year-old Seattle resident Marcelas Owens, who met Murray at a healthcare rally and told Murray about his mother’s death. “Talk about the kind of person” you’d want representing Washington, he said, “and you’d be talking about … my dear friend, Sen. Patty Murray.”

Murray said her friend Marcelas wanted to tell people — “even a United States Senator” — about his mother’s health struggles that ended in her death. Murray took that story back to D.C. and told it at committee hearings, on the floor and to Pres. Barack Obama. She said Marcelas was a hero.

“This is a crowd that wants this economic recovery” to keep going, she said. “This is a crowd that is mad as hell at Wall Street and wants to stand with me” as she ensures they’re held accountable. “This is a crowd that never wants to see an oil spill” like the one in the Gulf happen on the West Coast.

She said she stands up for Wshington in D.C. “Now there’s some folks in this race who are going to stand by and watch, who right out of the gate said they’re going to refuse” to stand up and fight, and would rather delegate that to “some beureaucrat 2,500 miles away.”

“I’m fighting for you because, unlike some others in this race, I haven’t forgotten and I haven’t supported the bad decisions from the Bush administration” that got the country “into this mess in the first place.” Murray said she voted against the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich. (more…)

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