Even as we speak, planning for the Democratic National Convention is underway in Denver. That planning is taking place right now, as you read, in the old Denver Post building downtown, that imposing brown structure right in the center. Looks all but impregnable, right? Right.

Photos by Bill Stetson

But let’s take a quick peek inside, which is a little less imposing. See all of that cavernous, empty space? DNCC organizers thought there’d be a nominee by now, whose team would be helping to fill those endless soundproofed cubicles. But no. Not this time out.

It’s an eerie sight, all of that nothingness, because it brings to mind all of the coordinated somethingness going on, even as we speak, between the McCain campaign and the RNC.

Anyone who tells you that the continued back-and-forth between the Obama and Clinton campaigns is strengthening our hand in November is a sad, deluded fool.

Yet seeing these pictures only strengthens our iron resolve to become one of the Obama delegates to represent Vermont in Denver, come August. Because they make clear that this nomination process remains entirely unpredictable, and potentially chaotic.

Among other things, the Clinton campaign has made it clear that they will attempt to make inroads even into Obama’s pledged delegates. Hard to imagine, but after last week’s debate perhaps not.

And that’s where VDB comes in.

Of two things you can rest assured: first, if we do make it to Denver as a pledged delegate, then pledged means pledged, period; and second, we will transmit every detail of the ongoing donnybrook, no matter how small, directly to your desktop, with just enough humor to make it worth the read.

To get to Denver, though, we still need your help at the State Convention in Barre, the 24th of May, just a few weeks from now. A good number of you have written in with help of all sorts, and it couldn’t be any more greatly appreciated.

But we’re still shy the votes we need. That’s the brutal truth.

So if you plan to be there, or know someone in your town’s delegation who might help a brother out, please get in touch. That’s the beauty of the blogosphere: the shocking connectivity, the force in numbers that rise up out of nowhere, accomplish what they will, and return to invisibility.

It boils down to this: if just one guy with one cellphone on the ground in Colorado can be our eyes, then only God knows what all of us can do together. And He isn’t saying.