Howard Dean's keynote at Yearly Kos, plus a bit of Clinton news

Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean gave the keynote speech tonight about the influence of the netroots, and the restoration of democracy that George Bush has undermined, federal election reform (Bill HR811), the effect of the YouTube debate, and Iraq. Here's a snippet of Dean (I shot this from my table) comparing this Congress to the do-nothing Republican-controlled Congress.


You can watch the full video of Dean's speech here, at the YearlyKos site.

Dean announced a new initiative by the Democratic Party to go out to every county in the country (down to the precinct level) and identify voting problems in advance of the 2008 election, looking at how vote counting and administration is handled, and whether an adequate number of voting machines is available for voters in those precincts.

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Hillary Clinton to skip breakout session

Breaking news out of the convention -- Hillary Clinton will appear at the Presidential Leadership Forum on Saturday night, but it was announced by YK organizers after Dean's speech that Clinton will not appear in a breakout session (that includes taking questions from attendees). All of the rest of the candidates will attend the forum and breakout sessions (except Joe Biden, who couldn't make YK). In her place will be senior advisor Ann Lewis. That announcement brought a lot of boos in the room from attendees, who had to pick in advance which presidential breakout session they were going to attend. The Hillary attendees are now understandably unhappy because it's not possible to trade in access wristbands for different presidential breakout session at this point because the other top tier candidate sessions are already full, I believe.

There's a lot of banter about it in this DKos diary.

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As A.J. mentioned earlier, Air America's Sam Seder moderated tonight's dinner. Seder wants to interview some of the bloggers here, and I've been tapped for a slot. (I do it tomorrow, but I think it will air Sunday).