Yesterday evening, Granny D delivered an incredible talk linking the immigration issue to NAFTA. She spoke about the amount of corn being imported into Mexico and effect it had on their economy. She then introduced Mike Gravel.

Mike started talking about the war. He said congress should pass a law requiring the President and Vice President to certify that all troops are out of Iraq by December 31st. Failure to do so would be a felony punishable by a minimum of five years in prison. He said that congress should keep voting on it everyday until it passes and then after it is vetoed, until the veto is overridden.

He also spoke about the need to provide for national initiatives. At this point he opened things up to questions. The questions and the answers were all over the place. There was a discussion about ending the prohibition on marihuana. He tied this to a discussion about his sister who is a nun in Manchester who spends time visiting people in jail.

He was asked about what he would do about AIDS which led his thoughts on health care reform, which led to him talking about tax reform. He is arguing for a sales tax instead of corporate taxes. “We need to become a nation of savers”.

He said a lot of good things, but he said a lot of weird things as well, and generally, his comments were all over the place.

After this, William McNary, President of U. S. Action spoke on Sen. Obama’s behalf. It had a good Baptist revival feeling, but was a bit light on content. He spend a bit of time reading from Sen. Obama’s 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. It seemed to be good red meat for the Obama supporters, but didn’t really do much for me.

Today, Steve Gerencser spoke on behalf of Sen. Dodd and Karen Hicks spoke on behalf of Sen. Clinton. Unfortunately, it conflicted with Matt Dunn’s discussion about Service Politics which I really wanted to hear.

After this, Rep. Kucinich called in via cellphone from California. A Kucinich supporter held the cellphone up to the microphone for the room’s speaker system. He spoke about the war, health care, voting issues and impeachment. He presented the issues very well. We need to not only get out of Iraq, but we need to change our way of living to be more about peace. He spoke about impeachment in terms of the importance of accountability.

On the other hand, there was a lot of dog whistle, or at least shorthand politics. Bills before Congress were spoken of in terms of their bill number, and unless you were already well informed, you wouldn’t know what was being talked about. The same applied to court decisions.

Edwards, Obama, Clinton and Kucinich all had material at DemocracyFest. I have not seen any sign of Biden or Richardson.