Today, many Democrats received the following email.

From: Tom McMahon To: _________ Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:07:06 -0400 Subject: Special invitation from Barack Obama The Democratic Party Dear ____: One month from today, more than 75,000 Americans will join Barack Obama at the first truly open Democratic National Convention in a generation. If you make a donation in any amount before midnight this Thursday, July 31st, you could join Barack backstage before he accepts the Democratic nomination. Watch this short video invitation from Barack and make a donation of $5 or more today: Watch Barack's video message [link to donation page omitted] This year, the convention will be built around the participation of ordinary Americans. Democrats like you are opening up the political process like never before, and it is a bold and exciting time for our party. Free tickets to the convention will be available soon. But if you make a donation in any amount by Thursday, July 31st, you and a guest could be flown to Denver, spend a couple of nights in a hotel, participate in the convention, and then go Backstage with Barack before the big event. Watch Barack's invitation and make a donation of $5 or more today to be part of this extraordinary opportunity [link to donation page omitted] Your donation will not only support our party, but will build our 50-state strategy to secure victories up and down the ballot in November. Thanks, Tom Tom McMahon Executive Director Democratic National Committee Donate If you do not wish to make a donation, you can still be selected to join Barack at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Learn more here. Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003 Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Click here to unsubscribe from this mailing list.

  This communication is almost too pathetic to be worthy of addressing. Yet it requires comment because it shows

• an egregious misunderstanding of what a "truly open convention" would be
• just how desperate the DNC and Senator Obama are to raise some money
• the ongoing conflation of the DNC and Senator Obama
• the continuing refusal of the DNC to accept the reality that they have a badly fractured party and unwillingness to take the substantive steps to address that problem and head off disaster

Having a pep rally and holding a contest to hang out backstage has nothing to do with the idea of an open political convention. Historically, an open convention means a convention where the outcome is not settled in advance and where the people who have earned the right to be decisionmakers at the convention get to exercise that right. The only way this year's DNC convention could seriously qualify as convention that will be built around the participation of ordinary Americans would be if it acknowledged the participation of millions of Americans in the primaries and caucuses - including every single voter who went to the polls in Michigan and Florida. Such acknowledgment would start with the DNC making every effort to make Senator Clinton feel comfortable having her name placed in nomination at the convention, so that the delegates to the convention - not 75,000 spectators in a stadium - could exercise their right and fulfill their responsibility to elect the nominee who seems best equipped to defeat Senator McCain this fall. The reason the onus lies with the DNC, and not Senator Clinton, is because the DNC spent sixteenth months trying to oust Senator Clinton from the primary and caucus process and make it seem as though any effort on her part to make herself available to be the nominee was some sort of traitorous act. Senator Clinton would have every right and some good reasons to refuse having her name placed in nomination. But this is an entirely separate question from whether the DNC should be actively announcing loudly and clearly that should she deem it advisable for herself, her party, and her country to accept being placed in nomination, the DNC would more than happy. The DNC should in fact be more than happy were this to come to pass because only by having Senator Clinton's name in nomination can the party have what it continues to pretend it is going to have: a meaningfully open convention, open as in open-ended in result out of respect for the Party's own rules and the more than 18 million voters who made Senator Clinton the popular vote winner during the primary season. Note: I refused to reproduce in the copy of the DNC communication the links to Senator Obama's campaign donation pages because I find it hard to credit the claim that the DNC circulated this email without the authorization of Senator Obama's claim. Tip for Senator Obama: if in fact your campaign did not not authorize the DNC to send this email blast, time for you to join the rest of us in clearly and loudly expressing your objections to the DNC's ongoing and presumably intentional efforts to dupe rank and file Democrats, including those you apparently expect to help fill the football stadium you rented before you even knew you would actually be the Party's nominee. For the people who Just Say No Deal, tickets to a pep rally will not be satisfactory.