Crisis greets Dems streaming into Denver to crown Obama-Biden

Tragedy has already struck the Democratic National Convention. And it doesn't even start until Monday.

With an estimated 50,000 excited visitors crowding around the baggage claim carousels at Denver International Airport today and tomorrow, each of them having had yet another pleasing experience as a modern American airline passenger, news has emerged that the Mile High City is suffering from a dramatic shortage of limousines.

Fancy cars with bars and TVs inside.

There will definitely be an insufficient number of the huge, gas-guzzling shiny cars with uniformed drivers to ferry really important members of the party of working Americans to and from their parties, meetings and votes during the four days of festivities that average U.S. taxpayers will see some of on TV.

Let alone wait for their customers, idling for hours, while patrons drink and dine and maybe vote and whatever else they do when they're away from home in a different city without family.

If a practical limousine solution is not found urgently, some Democrats may even be forced to take taxis, where you pay cash money according to a meter.

Or, worse yet, clamber up the rubber-covered steps onto common shuttle buses, just like ordinary people, to sit on yucky hard plastic seats or clasp shiny metal poles that have been gripped by other hands that have been who knows where doing who knows what.

Some Denver visitors may even have to walk on their own feet along hard cement sidewalks from their hotels to the Pepsi Center or Invesco Field for Thursday's big speech.

"Everyone wants a limo," said Gene Cookenboo, president of the Limousine Assn. of Colorado and owner of the appropriately named Presidential Limousine, the city's largest such service.

Some of the Democratic delegates and their followers want to....

...hire a limo for hours at a time and keep it waiting, empty, until they're ready to go somewhere else. Cookenboo figures a normal limo week in Denver might involve 80 rides.

This week many of the elongated cars will make 125 or more runs each day each car, which will help nicely boost the local economy as well as global warming.

The Very Important Democrats like Sens. Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden won't have any difficulty getting rides. Protected by the Secret Service, they'll be getting in and out of those ominous tint-windowed, armored black Suburbans that blend in so unobtrusively with normal traffic in rapid caravans of eight or nine in a row, violating every red light and stop sign with impunity.

But what are the working delegates to do for limousine service? Cookenboo says he's calling surrounding states to lease extra vehicles. The Public Utilities Commission has issued waivers to allow this because, as everyone knows, cars from Wyoming, being so Republican, may not be safe.

But, according to Matt Clough of Channel 9, Cookenboo may have to just give up. "We're simply running out of cars," he says.

(Now, a reminder that you can join the growing throngs preparing for the rest of this political season and beyond by having every Ticket item -- plus special offline Tweets from The Ticket's writers starting with the two party's conventions -- sent directly to your cellphone.

To register for instant Twitter updates from The Ticket go here and sign up.)

--Andrew Malcolm

Denver's ready for the Democratic National Convention

Photo credits: Advantage Limousine (top); Will Powers / Associated Press (bottom).

Comments

[3am ain't funny]

I just woke up. To me I value the time between midnight and 7am when I sleep. I prefer not to be awoken by a text message on SOMETHING I ALREADY HEARD ON THE NEWS AT MIDNIGHT RIGHT BEFORE I WENT TO BED! I can’t believe my f-ing phone went off at 3:00 in morning. I was a Clinton supporter in the primary who has moved toward Obama, but was really hoping it would be Clinton. Now I am f-ing bleary eyed, to hear it is f-ing Joe Biden (nothing wrong with Biden, its’ just 3am). Pretty class-less if you ask me to send this at 3am if they really are trying to woo us Hillary folks. It’s a complete joke, making fun of Clinton’s primary ad, and have I said WAKING ME UP FROM MY PEACEFUL, PEACEFUL SLEEP. I'm now facing insomnia for the evening, and simply livid yet again that my candidate didn't get picked. I realize Obama doesn’t have to pick her for veep, but geez, does he have to call me at 3am to tell me that?!? I’m grumpy as hell and got a text to hear he didn’t go for the candidate I was hoping for. I will no attempt to go back to sleep. When will these new young guys at the Obama HQ realize most Americans, some of whom just might decide this election, are not awake and/or don't find their one last '3am phone call' dig funny at all. I hope Obama or someone on his campaign apologizes for this. I'm thinking of just not voting.

[Dr. James Ottavio Castagnera]

Can you see her? Judy Garland in her red shoes, clicking her heels and repeating the mantra: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Voila! She wakes up in her very own little bed in her very own little shack out on her very own little Kansas farm, surrounded by family and farm hands, all safe and sound. Kitsch doesn’t get any more All-American than that.
What would happen, do you think, if John McCain clicked his heels together and mumbled, “There’s no place like home”? Apparently he might wake up in any one of about eight different places. I’ll bet none of the eight is located in Kansas.
Obama hopes to make political hay out of McCain’s inability to remember exactly how many houses he has. This is reminiscent of the elder George Bush’s expression of amazement about bar codes in a local supermarket during the 1992 campaign. Both gaffs make the candidate seem out of touch.
Obama boasts of having only one home. He hasn’t mentioned that his crib set him back a reported $1.65 million. That amount just about equaled the Obamas’ combined income for the year they made the purchase. The Chicago Tribune reported in November 2006, “They were drawn to a 96-year-old Georgian revival home that has four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, according to real estate listings and an interview.”
Obama’s book deals and his wife’s $300,000 a year vice presidency with Chicago University Hospitals together accounted for their seven-figure gross annual income.
Well, heck, Olympian Mike Phelps is expected to gross $30 million in product endorsements during the year ahead. So what’s the big deal about Obama and spouse pulling down $1.67 mil? Phelps no doubt will start accumulating real estate, too.
Meanwhile, he’s taking some heat for adding Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes to his list of clients. Writes one web pundit, “The deal has earned Phelps harsh criticism from some doctors, such as nutritionist Rebecca Solomon of Mount Sanai Medical Center. In a Daily News article posted this morning, Solomon said, ‘I would not consider Frosted Flakes the food of an Olympian.’ That's the understatement of the day. I would consider Frosted Flakes to be the food of a generation of obese, diabetic, ADHD kids who need real role models they can follow, not sellout junk food promoters who trade fame for unethical profits.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/023914.html)
This guy’s rap on fatties reminds me of the last time McCain got into trouble, but not for anything he said. A McCain advisor, Phil Gramm, created the flap by calling America “a nation of whiners.” Well, sorry folks, but I tend to agree that the overweight whiner has become an American archetype. If the shoe fits (and the pants don’t), I say wear it.
But let’s stop whining for a minute here and take a reality break. McCain is rich. Obama is rich. Even a kid, whose only apparent distinction is the ability to move from one end of a swimming pool to the other faster than anybody else, is rich. If you’re rich, too, then more power to you.
The simple truth is, ain’t no poor folks likely to run for president, or senator, or most any other important post. The last poor president, I guess, was Harry Truman. As a sitting U.S. Senator seeking reelection, Truman sometimes slept in his car while on the campaign trail. Once upon a time he had gone bankrupt. When his term in the White House was over, he and wife Bess moved back to the home in Independence Missouri that they had shared for years with her mother.
They just don’t make ‘em like old Harry any more, folks. Senator Obama may play the “poor mouth” card against Senator McCain, but in reality his feet are just as firmly planted on the Yellow Brick Road as are his opponent’s.

[Donna Hughes]

Yeah, but Joe Biden has taken the train from his home in Delaware to Washington, and then back home again to be with his family every day. Just like an ordinary person.

[madison]

while I'm not going to write you a letter describing how your piece was dripping with irony, I'm just going to say...
WOW!

[acarponzo]

It was a pretty nasty dig! Not very funny. But the LA Times open poll seems to like the Biden pick. The Pundits like it because they can actually talk about something now. Obama has just not given them much to talk about so far. Biden clearly has a sense of humor and will need it when the plagiarism taunts start coming. But Obama's base must still be asleep. The on-line poll at http://www.bop-o-rama.com shows McCain's number is just not moving much. Where are all teh wired in Obama supporters. Still asleep? No more 3a.m. text messages. Even if you do think it is funny and it was a Friday night.