Their true selves: where could the Democrats let it all hang out? Not in the convention center

IF you watched only the events of the Democratic convention that took place inside Boston's Fleet Center, you might have gotten the impression that Democrats have changed. They're hawkish on defense, and while they certainly oppose George W. Bush, they're no longer inclined to call him a fascist.

That's what you saw on TV. But if you left the heavily-secured confines of the Fleet Center, and traveled around Boston to visit the hotels and meeting rooms in which Democrats gathered to discuss the campaign away from the national spotlight, you would have gotten a much different impression. There, the Democrats of convention week sounded remarkably like the trash-talking, Bush-bashing Democrats of the primary season.

Much of this talking went on at what amounted to a counter-convention held at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, just across the Charles River. The leftwing organizing group Campaign for America's Future set up shop there, and their conference gave the party's "progressive" activists a place to say what they really thought.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, for example, spoke to the group a few hours before he addressed the convention. His speech was the kind of run-on, semi-mad, semi-brilliant talk that Dean gave many times back in November and December 2003, when he was the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination.

Do you remember when Dean stirred controversy by claiming that the capture of Saddam Hussein had not made America any safer? He said it again at the Royal Sonesta, shouting, "Less safe! Less safe!" as the crowd cheered. Do you remember when Dean claimed that white southern voters choose candidates on the basis of "guns, God, and gays"? He said that again, too--to more cheers. Dean also jokingly implored Democrats not to call President Bush a fascist, at least not for the duration of the convention. And he implored the crowd to volunteer for local campaigns, even for lowly offices like library trustee, because "I think library trustee is a pretty important position in an administration where they like book burning better than reading books."

It was vintage Dean, and the crowd erupted into a long, continuous roar when Dean reached his conclusion, which was strikingly similar in structure to the infamous "I Have a Scream" speech, delivered the night of the Iowa caucuses. "WE'RE GOING TO GO TO MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA AND IDAHO," Dean yelled, "AND SOONER OR LATER, ONE BY ONE, ELECTION BY ELECTION, VOTE BY VOTE, IN 2006, AND 2008, AND 2012 ..." All that was missing was the visceral "YAAAARRRRHHHH!!!!!!" that ended the Iowa speech--and his presidential hopes.

Dean's performance led some observers to speculate that the former front-runner was back to his old ways--and perhaps off the Kerry reservation. Who knew what he might say at the convention that night?

The answer was: nothing. When Dean walked onstage at the Fleet Center, he was not only back under control, but seemingly muzzled. There was nothing about Saddam, or book burning, or fascism, or guns, God, and gays. There was not a single mention of George W. Bush by name. And there was no rousing conclusion. Dean had come under what one frustrated activist called "the Kerry Effect," in which the nominee's cautious advisers had drained almost all substance from Dean's speech. "Why you would have your lions acting like pussycats is beyond me," the activist said.

Another favorite, Ohio representative Dennis Kucinich, also fell victim to the Kerry Effect. Speaking at the Royal Sonesta prior to his own address to the convention, Kucinich waxed eloquent about his pet proposal, the creation of a federal Department of Peace. Kucinich also charged, as he often did on the stump, that the Bush administration had planned the war in Iraq long before September 11, 2001, and simply used the terrorist attacks as a pretense to start shooting. "This war was preconceived," Kucinich said. "Wait for an opportunity, use 9/11 as an excuse to prosecute it, and then from that build a whole architecture of fear and military spending to try to lock it far into the future to continue to insulate this argument of the inevitability of war."

When Kucinich finished, one of his supporters yelled out, "Say it tonight, Dennis! Say it tonight!" But when Kucinich appeared on stage at the Fleet Center, he said very little. Nothing about the Department of Peace. Nothing about the neocon-conspiracy theory of Iraq, either. Instead, Kucinich launched into a somewhat mystical meditation on how Democrats will "transform [the nation] with the power of the human heart and the power of the human spirit."

By then, Democrats knew they wouldn't be getting any red meat from the convention stage. Perhaps that is why the counter-convention events were so popular. And the most popular of all was the appearance of the party's biggest star, moviemaker Michael Moore, who spoke at the Royal Sonesta the same day as Dean.