Durbin preview from earlier in the week

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the man who is speaking this evening — introducing 2008 Democratic presidentialnominee Barack Obama to the throng at Mile High Stadium, spoke earlier in the week to Iowa Democrats who’re in Denver.  Here’s the audio: 10 minute mp3 .

"It is not going to be a runaway victory for either candidate," Durdin warned of the general election battle against GOP presumptive nominee John McCain.  "We’re going to have to fight it out to the end."

Durbin told a story about Obama’s trip to the 2000 Democratic National Convention in LA: "Eight years ago, Barack Obama went to the convention in Los Angeles.  Did any of you go there?  Some of you went to Los Angeles. I was out there.  Well, he went there and didn’t have a delegate badge or a super delegate badge.  In fact, he really couldn’t get in. He went to the airport to rent a car and they rejected his credit card and he talked them into taking it anyway, so he gets a car and he drives in and he can’t get inside.  Finally, somebody says, ‘Well, I can get you a ticket to go into a skybox. I can’t get you on the floor.  He was a state senator at the time and he got in the skybox and he watched it on television and he packed up and he left before Thursday.  He’d run out of money, heading back to Chicago to his family. That was the story of the Los Angeles convention."