It’s Tuesday around lunchtime here in Denver and I’m sitting in the Starbucks at the Denver Marriott, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Gov. Blagojevich and State senator James Meeks. Meeks is coming to Denver as a delegate, but he has threatened to have a “lobby-in” until Blago and the IL delegation leaders talk to him about education funding. Now, that’s just a rumor but Daley did mention that this is a convention for electing the next President, not for other issues. So there are several news people hanging around waiting for a possible showdown. Most of my time has been centered around the IL delegation. There is a whole convention happening all over the city, but there is enough drama in our local delegation to carry this blog through to Thursday. There’s a lot of talk about 2010 statewide elections and who will run for what. It’s really a game of musical chairs. That has kept everyone in the media busy trying to find out the higher-office ambitions of Madigan, Hynes, Giannoulias etc. The buzz here is that Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. stole the show with his speech last night at the Pepsi Center. It’s fun to watch the tactical cops. They look like soldiers from the movie “Starship Troopers”. They don’t really have much to do. You walk past them on the streets and they are just sweating and taking pictures with tourists. They were here at the Marriott, too. I guess they get one bathroom break and they all went together. There were 2 stalls and 4 guys deep waiting for them. You could see their handcuffs on the floor of the stalls. So they had their bathroom break. Just so you know.