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Is the winner from Tuesday’s pair of primaries Barack Obama, with his narrow defeat in Indiana and powerful showing in North Carolina? Or are the real winners the Denver waiters, valets, taxi drivers, doormen and hotel maids who look forward to seeing two entrenched delegations come to town, fighting for every vote with more tips to spread around?

If you looked at the headlines written that morning, penned desperately by exhausted reporters and pundits and suggesting that Indiana and North Carolina could provide actual closure to the Democratic race to the White House, you might have been fooled into thinking that politics is a) rational and b) predictable.

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So Tent State University is on the outs with their protest brethren at Re-create '68. What gives? Last Friday, when the ACLU held a press conference to declare it had filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Denver and the Secret Service, it seemed that all was well in the land of DNC protest. On hand at the confab were representatives of Re-create '68 – Glenn Spagnuolo and Mark and Barbara Cohen – as well as those of Tent State University, Code Pink and Escuela Tlatelolco and the American Indian Movement of Colorado. But more significant were the additional groups listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit: United for Peace and Justice, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and the American Friends Service Committee.

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Tent State University has folded up its tent and moved on -- at least from Recreate '68's efforts to organize protests at the Democratic National Convention.

"Recreate '68 has demonstrated an inability to fulfill the needs of a growing list of individuals and organizations," said Adam Jung, the local representative of Tent State, a national student protest group planning to camp in Denver during the convention.

But according to Glenn Spagnuolo of Recreate '68, the local group profiled here last fall, the Tent State name was causing problems, since it conjures up images of Kent State, where four students were shot by National Guardsmen during a 1970 protest of the Vietnam War.

That from the main mouthpiece of a group whose name recalls the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, which erupted in violence as the whole world watched.-- Patricia Calhoun

Gosh, wouldn’t it have been smart to come up with a visual art event that would promote Denver’s burgeoning culture and higher national profile in the arts during the Democratic National Convention? Doesn’t that make it dumb to instead bring in a bunch of second-tier art stars from around the world who mostly don’t have anything to do with Denver?

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On April 28, Roseanne joined the cast of characters dreaming about riots in Denver. Guest-hosting a show on Air America, she let loose with this:

..I mean I think somebody’s profiting by keeping us all divided and making us feel like oh my God we don’t even know what to believe what we’re reading what’s true. But you know, we have a lot of power and there is a Democratic Convention in Denver in just a short time and we should a bunch of us go there and repeat the Democratic Convention from Chicago. Like, let’s just cause a bunch of trouble. Let's wrest back our government from what, six or seven you know guys like McCain and Romney and Bush from the top. Let’s just go take it. It’s ours. Nobody gives it to you, you just go take it. Let’s meet in Denver and let’s do it.

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Rush Limbaugh is something of an expert on the incitation of riots. Of course, he isn’t inciting riots when he dreams of them disrupting the Democratic National Convention in Denver and destroying the Democratic Party, but was he dreaming of nailing Obama with the charge of inciting riots on his talk show a year ago?

On his June 6, 2007 show, Limbaugh ripped Obama’s June 5 speech at Hampton University in Virginia, where the senator discussed what he called the “quiet riots” fostered by disconnection, hopelessness and despair in the forgotten communities of the country:

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Denver, we have a problem.

Blubbermouth Rush Limbaugh of advocating rioting in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. For the record, on his April 23 radio show (which airs from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays on 850 KOA), Limbaugh was responding to comments from Al Sharpton, a Barack Obama supporter, that there will be "trouble" in Denver if the nomination is taken from Obama.

"Now, I am not inspiring or inciting riots. I'm dreaming" -- and here Limbaugh started singing to the tune of "White Christmas" -- "I'm dreaming of riots in Denver."

He went on (no surprise): "Riots in Denver at the Democrat Convention would see to it we don't elect Democrats. And that's the best damn thing (that) could happen for this country as far as anything I can think."

As that creepy Richard Dreyfus senator croons in An American President, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...."

For a transcript of the show, click here. -- Patricia Calhoun

Democrats, God bless ‘em, love the underdog.

Maybe it started in 1960, that magical year when the country put aside 0.1 percent of its prejudices and a few dead-body-ballots in Chicago to elect a young, idealistic Catholic to the White House. Maybe it was his untimely death, maybe the pain of two Nixon victories, the nightmare of Carter or the tabling of hope when nominating vultures like Humphrey, Mondale and Dukakis, but the party of donkeys has a definite penchant for the ostrich and his head full of cool, sandy dreams.

And now, in this savage Year of Our Lord 2008, at the divinely-appointed confluence of all things electorally miraculous, the party got picky. After eight funereal years of intractable war, economic meltdown, international scorn and a fine dismemberment of the Constitution, the boys and girls in blue were handed a blank check to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, hand-delivered by a fed-up citizenry and bathed in the perfumes of a friendly Congress. Only two questions remained: how great was to be the glory, and who would hoist the banner of Change while placing his, or her hand, whether it be black or white or Latino or gay or young or old, on John Roberts’s swearing-in Bible. This was to be the karmic calling in of all favors to balance out Lee Harvey Oswald and company, George Wallace, the Canuck Letter, the Monkey Business, Newt Gingrich, Florida 2000, Ken Starr and Karl Rove, et al.

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It’s easy to see Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary on Tuesday as meaning everything and nothing.

It means everything because, after a month of entrenched campaigning in a critical battleground state that any modern Democratic presidential candidate must carry in the general election, the victor will have invested millions of dollars and countless appearances in the Keystone State and will be expected to perform similarly against John McCain in November.

It means nothing because, after a month of campaigning and millions of dollars and appearances, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already publicly braced themselves for the long road ahead. As Sly Stallone’s Rocky Balboa, favorite fictitious son of Philadelphia once opined, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” the results in Pennsylvania are unlikely to send either campaign to the mat.

The tale of the tape:

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is turning up the pressure on the publicly unaffiliated superdelegates who have yet to endorse a candidate. On Thursday, Dean told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that superdelegates should start making their decisions public “starting now,” while saying the party couldn’t afford to lose two or three months of reunification time in the face of a potentially bruising campaign against John McCain. The superdelegate dilemma is a true test of Dean’s leadership, but it isn’t the only one.

If the remaining 300-odd, currently-mum superdelegates can’t come to a quick, convincing consensus between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the focus may yet again turn to the unseated delegates from the Michigan and Florida primaries. The results of these “beauty pageant” votes, contests that were stripped of their delegates by the DNC as punishment for their early, unauthorized primaries, would give Clinton momentum and likely put her in striking distance of Obama’s delegate and popular-vote leads.

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On August 24, the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee will throw 24 parties for the 54 official delegations to the Democratic National Convention. If you do the math, you’ll see that some delegations are doubling, even tripling up. In some cases, the delegations requested their partying partners. In others, the committee grouped delegations together because they were staying at nearby hotels.

As for Florida and Michigan, the disgraced delegations, there are no official festivities in their honor. But if those delegates want to meet us at Lola -- whose deck looks off on the Pepsi Center, where they will go unrecognized the next day when the convention starts -- we'll buy the margs! -- Patricia Calhoun

The complete list of party venues (in alphabetical order) and the delegations assigned to them:
Belmar Center : Alaska, Indiana, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Tennessee
Blair Caldwell Library: Democrats Abroad, Virgin Islands
Botanic Gardens: South Carolina
Center for the Visual Arts: Georgia
Colorado History Museum: Arkansas, Kentucky, Wisconsin
Denver Art Museum: Illinois
Denver Chophouse: Kansas
Denver Public Library: Iowa
Denver Zoo: Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota
Downtown Aquarium: Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri
Exdo Event Center: California
Grant Humphries: Minnesota
Governor's Mansion: Colorado
Hudson Gardens: New Jersey
The Lab at Belmar: American Samoa, Guam, Idaho, Hawaii
Museo de las Americas: District of Columbia
Museum of Nature & Science: Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah
Palazzo Verdi (Tech Center): Nebraska, Oklahoma
Phipps Mansion: New Hampshire, Vermont
Phipps Pavilion: Mississippi, Montana, Wyoming
Pinnacle Club: New York
Red Rocks: North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
Wildlife Experience: Texas
Wings Over the Rockies: Arizona, Louisiana, Maryland, Oregon, Washington

Tim Russert came to town yesterday, to collect the fourteenth annual Damon Runyon Award handed out by the Denver Press Club -- and to give us just a taste of what Denver can expect in August, when the whole world will be watching.

Lately, we've heard the word "Denver" a lot on all the political yapfests, including Russert's Meet the Press (in fact, we'd heard it earlier that morning, when Russert -- wearing the same suit and tie he sported at the Marriott -- was chatting it up with Mary Matalin and James Carville, other recent visitors to Denver). Because even if the Democrats have a candidate when the Democratic National Convention convenes in Denver on August 25, the gathering is sure to feature a first: the first major-party female candidate for president, or the first African-American candidate for president.

And there's no guarantee that the Dems will have a candidate by then, as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama keep battling it out. "The level of intensity is wonderful for our democracy," said Russert, addressing a record-breaking crowd of 750 (and the size of that crowd, as well as the big names sprnkled through it, said something more about the level of intensity). "There are important times."

And they're going to get more important, right here. Although Russert likened his role to that of a "referee" -- which means he's not about to reveal which candidate he supports, if he supports one at all -- he didn't disguise that he'd love a floor fight. "I hope it goes to 103 ballots," he said at the end of his speech, referencing another record: the all-time high number of ballots, at the 1924 convention in New York City.

But this time, all 103 would be right here in Denver. -- Patricia Calhoun

State representative Andrew Romanoff is a party man, but not that kind of party man. The Colorado Speaker of the House is looking forward to the Democratic National Convention this August, but doesn’t think the nation’s drunkest city should consider keeping bars open later (make that earlier into the morning) during the festivities as some Minnesota lawmakers have talked about doing for the Republican confab in St. Paul.

“I think the convention will be enough fun without a 4 a.m. trip to the bar,” Romanoff said, adding with a chuckle, “Superdelegates, and for that matter, all the other delegates need to be alert.” But in all seriousness, Romanoff said “nobody I know of has put in a request” to introduce a late bill that would extend last call.

In late March, a Minnesota House committee approved a measure that would have allowed bars within a ten-mile radius of the Xcel Energy Center to stay open two hours later than usual, to 4 a.m., for an eleven-day period around the convention; the Grand Ole Party parties at the St. Paul stadium September 1-4. (The state’s Senate had pushed for a later closing time for the entire Twin Cities area, but that proposal was withdrawn.) The measure eventually died, but could be brought back later in April.

It’s co-sponsor, Representative Phyllis Kahn, was quoted as saying, she wants the region to appear as “sophisticated” as other cities. “Las Vegas is open all night long, and New Orleans is open till dawn,” Kahn told the New York Times. “I spend a lot of time in cities like New York and Montreal, and they all seem to have later drinking times.”

Of course, Kahn, like Romanoff, is a Democrat, so getting Republicans stumble-drunk might be in her best interests, public-relations-wise. Romanoff on the other hand doesn’t want the Dems in Denver to end up looking like donkeys. -- Jonathan Shikes

The Colorado Rockies' first home game yesterday attracted a host of local politicos -- Governor Bill Ritter, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper (who had to leave before the first pitch for a police academy graduation ceremony), Representative (and U.S. Senate candidate) Mark Udall. But a national star was in the house, too: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, in Denver to take in some baseball and, with any luck, some cash at a party later that evening designed to help retire the campaign debt Richardson had picked up during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Richardson withdrew from the race in January, and two weeks ago, he endorsed Barack Obama, a move that Hillary Clinton-consultant James Carville called "an act of betrayal," since Richardson had served in Bill Clinton's cabinet -- and even watched the Super Bowl with the former president two months ago. (Although not going as far as Carville, Bill Clinton -- the $109 million man -- was still complaining about Richardson at a California appearance a few days ago.)

Sitting in section 125 at Coors Field on Friday, though, Richardson didn't look one bit like the Judas that Carville had accused him of being. He looked tanned, rested, bearded (having grown one after he got out of the race) and ready to take on all comers.

Too bad he isn't sticking around town until Monday, when Carville will be here to do one of his icky opposites-attract schticks with wife Mary Matalin.

It would be much more fun to have Carville face off against Richardson -- beard or no beard. -- Patricia Calhoun

If Governor Ritter has any doubts about putting pen to paper to sign the long-overdue repeal of Colorado’s Sunday liquor ban, he should remember that the state’s honor is at risk. This is Convention Summer, and Minnesota sure as hell isn’t going to beat us to the booze.

A legislative proposal in the Twin Cities that would allow cities within 10 miles of the Republican National Convention hub, the Xcel Energy Center, to extend their closing time from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. for the 11 days surrounding the convention has met with an icy reception. The proposal also includes a reprieve of a Sunday liquor store ban, allowing temporary hours for the convention duration.

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