Live Blogging From the Conventions This Weekend

I’ll be blogging from the Republican convention tonight and tomorrow morning, followed by the afternoon watching the Democrats compete for spots on their ticket.  This is not a good week to anticipate where to find the news in Connecticut politics.  Nevertheless, the McMahon-Schiff-Simmons showdown in Hartford tonight ought to be the main event.

The Democrats, meeting about a mile away, will make some news tonight if they give Merrick Alpert 15% of their votes, allowing him to qualify for a primary against Richard Blumenthal.  Alpert could, of course, try to collect signatures to force a primary, but that’s a lot of work for a campaign that has not been bursting with volunteers.

We’ll see if the Democrats can force themselves into a cheerful trance for Blumenthal’s nomination. They’ll do it under fire on a day when The New York Times found another instance of the fantasist attorney general weaving more tales about serving in Vietnam.  By any reasonable standard applied outside the tribal world of politics, this has becoming a disturbing pattern of deceits that cannot be dismissed as serial misspeaks.

While Democrats put their hands together for Blumenthal, Republicans will decide between a the promise of Linda McMahon and the familiarity of Rob Simmons.  It has been warfare of a sort Sergeant Blumenthal might remember from his Vietnam days: intense combat fought in close quarters.  The nominating speeches begin at 7:30 p.m.  Read about here as it happens.