Clout: Gonna party like it's 1968 ... not

FOR A SECOND DAY, protesters from the group "Re-create '68" demonstrated against the Democrats' decision to cordon them off in a "demonstration zone."

"We're going to stay here for just a couple of minutes to state our disgust with this abomination, the way the city and Secret Service are tearing the Constitution of the United States to shreds and then we will leave," "Re-create '68" organizer Mark Cohen told the Associated Press yesterday.

Why somebody would want to re-create '68 beats us. If it did happen, it would beat them, too.

In 1968, in what an investigative commission later called "a police riot," hundreds of cops bashed in the heads of anti-Vietnam War and anti-establishment yippies and hippies at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

The Denver group, unlike that in Chicago, is a smorgasbord of causes: anti-war and pro-environment, mixed in with black-flag-waving anarchists.

One of the anarchists said he "opposed all authority."

Hey, been there, done that, got the bloody T-shirt.

Hillary's harridans

Clout dispatched special correspondent Yanik Ruiz-Ramon to the protest zone yesterday and he found a gaggle of Republicans, of all things.

The GOPers were expressing their support for three Hillary Clinton Democrats who said they were going to vote for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

The three women were wearing T-shirts that read "NO-bama."

Even though Clinton herself has urged support for Obama, Hillaryite Robin Carlson said, "I refuse to be emotionally blackmailed to vote for a candidate."

Carlson and her group marched down 16th Street to Union Station, where MSNBC was taping "Hardball with Chris Matthews."

During commercial breaks, Ruiz-Ramon told us, "A tall blond producer was waving her arms trying to get more passion" from the group.

We always thought that TV is just supposed to cover the stuff. Was Matthews waving a black flag off camera?

Kenney: Biden made time

It was fall 1974. President Gerald Ford had just pardoned Richard Nixon for crimes committed in the Watergate scandal.

A young attorney from Delaware, Joe Biden, was in his first term as a U.S. senator. And 15-year-old Jimmy Kenney had a paper due.

The future city councilman, then a sophomore at St. Joe's Prep, called Biden's office and asked for an interview. Kenney was surprised at how quickly Biden's staff put it together. The young man was instructed to take the train to Washington, D.C., to meet the new senator on the platform.

Together, they rode a northbound train back to Wilmington, with Kenney asking questions and Biden giving answers.

Kenney doesn't recall the grade he got on the paper - "An A or a B-plus, I think." But he does remember the lesson. When a student contacts him for a school project, Kenney makes the time to help out.

"It just always inspired me that a person at that level would make time for me," Kenney said.

Narberth kid makes good

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper kicked off the convention by welcoming delegates to his city.

This makes us proud 'cause Hickenlooper is a Main Line kid who grew up in Narberth and Wynnewood, and graduated from the Haverford School in 1970.

How did he get to Denver? Practice, practice, practice.

Actually, it was his career as an exploration geologist.

In the late 1980s, however, he switched to a more Philly-style business: He opened a brewpub.

Denver: Different century

It was exactly 100 years ago that the Democrats last held their convention in Denver.

Some things haven't changed since 1908: Nominee William Jennings Bryan called the Republicans "the party of privilege."

But other things have changed: Although Bryan was progressive on labor issues and foreign policy, he refused to consider a civil-rights plank in the platform.

In fact, Bryan, fearful of losing votes in the segregationist South, would not even allow the platform to include a denunciation of lynching.

Michelle: Soccer mom?

Last February, Clout said Michelle Obama's style reminded us of Jackie Kennedy.

Last night, not so much. No pearls, for one thing. And that teal dress. Talbots?

We checked in with our style expert, Daily News columnist Jenice Armstrong, to find out if we were missing something.

"She talked the soccer-mom talk, but didn't look the soccer-mom part," Armstrong told us.

The dress was indeed "simple and understated," Armstrong said, "but do you think she looks like a soccer mom?"

Well, she looks more like a sophisticated Harvard-trained lawyer to us, but what do we know?

The Democrats' plan was to introduce Michelle as a down-to-earth Everymom. In that department it was her daughters who carried the day.

The interaction between Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, and their mom after her speech did more to create the image the Dems sought than anything Michelle said.

"Nothing says it more than when she brought those girls out," Armstrong said. "How beautiful."

Now if only their dad could figure out the difference between St. Louis and Kansas City.

Best of the blogs

When Democratic veep pick Joe Biden gets up there and talks poignantly about the typical American family sitting around the kitchen table late at night worrying how to pay its bills, and then twists the dagger on John McCain's "seven kitchen tables," it's a great line politically, but . . .

An article in the New York Times makes it out to be something of a crock, because of Biden's long record of backing the Delaware-centric credit-card industry, especially the former MBNA Corp., which hired the senator's son Hunter Biden for a lucrative lobbying gig.

In 2005, Biden helped win passage of a conservative, anti-working-class bill that made life a lot harder for that struggling family that he depicted at that kitchen table.

- Will Bunch's Daily News blog Attytood, ( www.attytood.com)

Talk about a full house! The Dems are said to be salivating at the possibility of a John McCain-Mitt Romney ticket, as the two families apparently own 12 houses worth about $35 million.

"As the presidential campaign turns increasingly personal and the new Obama-Biden ticket strikes a decidedly more populist tone, Democrats believe a McCain-Romney ticket would provide a near-perfect frame for their class-conscious message.

"It will be a contest, they'll say, between the son of a single mother and son of a car salesman against the son of an admiral and son of a governor."

- Jonathan Martin blogging at the Politico, ( www.politico.com
 
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For many in Denver, the only story is whether Obama and Clinton can get along:

"And even those who are not passionately committed to one side or the other are trying to figure out why Obama didn't just go through the motions of vetting Clinton [for the vice presidency]. Tell her that she was high on the list and go through the entire process. It wouldn't have been true, and Clinton probably would have known it wasn't true, but what could she have done? As it turned out, since Obama blew her off, she can now claim that she was disrespected in all this."

 
- Byron York, blogging for National Review Online (corner. nationalreview.com.) *

Staff writers Gar Joseph, Chris Brennan and Will Bunch compiled this report.