By Bob Gibson
Daily Progress political blogger
Jesse Jackson knows how to fire up a crowd. In Lexington a little over a week away, he’ll do it again.
The former presidential candidate is one of a dozen name speakers at the 100th anniversary mock convention at Washington & Lee University set for Jan. 25-26.
From Charlie Wilson to Jim Webb and Tim Kaine, the W&L Mock Convention seems destined to attract significant media attention to Lexington while picking the eventual Democratic presidential nominee the same Saturday that South Carolina Democrats vote in their primary.
Wilson, whose support of American CIA-led efforts to knock Russians out of Afghanistan, is a former Texas congressman. He will be joined by former Sen. Max Cleland, Geraldine Ferraro, Carol Moseley Braun, Doug Wilder and Harold Ford Jr.
Webb, Virginia’s freshman U.S. senator, is a keynoter.
I’m a bit proud as a dad of Logan Gibson, the speakers chairwoman of the Mock Convention who helped invite and snag all these speakers.
The two-day event is set to predict the winner of the 2008 Democratic Convention this summer in Denver. The W&L students have been right in each of the school’s conventions since 1948 in picking the nominee of the party out of power in the White House with one exception. In 1972, the convention picked Ted Kennedy instead of George McGovern.
About 95 percent of W&L’s students participate.
