I spoke with Minneapolis City Council member Ralph Remington this morning about his initial experience as a first-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Remington is a longtime Barack Obama supporter and was the first city council member to endorse his presidential run. On Sen. Ted Kennedy’s speech. “If you didn’t know he was sick you wouldn’t have known,” Remington said. ”That in and of itself was just incredible.” He was particularly moved by Kennedy’s vow, despite battling brain cancer, to be on the senate floor next January when Obama is sworn in as president.  ”If you’re not a bucket of tears by that point I don’t know what you are,” Remington said.

On Michelle Obama’s speech: “As an African American and as an American, it was extremely hopeful,” he said. ”That we’re going to move ahead and we’re going to turn the page on the past — on racial politics, on the civil-rights movement — and this is truly the beginning of the post-civil rights era.”

Remington also argued that the discord in the Democratic Party among Hillary Clinton supporters has been overstated by the media. “There are some peole that will always have sour grapes in every election cycle,” he noted. ”But I say this: if those people choose to not support Barack Obama at this point in the game, then they’re not Democrats. That’s just the fact of the matter. You need to support Barack Obama to move forward and beat this corrupt Republican regime or you’re not a Democrat.”