Reporter relishes craziness of the DNC

PHILADELPHIA The last time I was here, I felt like an interloper.

Mostly because I was.

When the Republicans held their convention in Philadelphia in 2000, I got inside what was then the First Union Center for a few unforgettable moments, stood on the podium and took in the sights at the empty arena, long before anyone who really mattered was in the building.

This time, I'm in a packed arena, and no matter one's political persuasion or opinions about this particularly crazy election season, it's history happening in real time, and I'm fortunate enough to be here for it.

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All false professionalism aside, it's a pretty big deal for a girl from Williamstown.

Imagine going to a really cool concert — I was here Monday for Demi Lovato and Paul Simon and Thursday for Sheila E., Carole King and Katy Perry — but surrounded by the strangest array of fans: politicos, journalists and, well, journalists from POLITICO.

On Wednesday, I spent most of the day in Center City, covering protesters, many of them Bernie Sanders supporters angry the Vermont senator was not nominated for president by the Democrats and rallying in support of Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

I tweeted, posted on Facebook, shot video and wrote traditional print and online stories. If there was one takeaway from Twitter, it's that the only thing the far-left and the far-right can agree upon is a mutual antipathy for the mainstream media, of which I am a part.

As I replied to one tweet, #JournalistsHaveFeelingsToo and #ItHurtsMeWhenYouAreMean.

The comedian Lewis Black compared political conventions to high school pep rallies, and he's not far off — only the cheerleaders make our laws and the quarterback gets the nuclear codes and the keys to the White House. Plus, the entertainment is a lot better than your average high school marching band.

In the year and half since I moved from the editing desk to reporting, I've been lucky enough to cover the two biggest events to hit Philadelphia in decades: Pope Francis' visit in September and this convention.

The differences in logistics, though, were huge: Unlike during the pope's visit, city streets and businesses were mostly open. I never had to worry about food (thank you, USA Today, for providing grub in the media tent for your local partners!) and, most importantly, I didn't have to worry once about where to find a flushing toilet.

What I did have to worry about was how frigidly cold the Wells Fargo Center gets, even when filled to capacity during the worst heat wave of the summer; how to tell my husband not to hug me after a long, humid, 92-degree day covering protests because it wasn't just his wife's sweat gleaming off my body, but also the sweat of about 500 organic deodorant-wearing protesters; and the long hours spent away from my 7-year-old, who asked, "Why do you have to work so much?" (My reply: "Why do you have to eat so much?" It was a long week.)

This week was also a microcosm of why I love my job so much; it was a week when I saw people of every walk of life: the well-dressed and politically connected, the slackers and the disenfranchised, the dignitaries getting ferried about in luxurious black SUVs and homeless men and women huddled in doorways, foreign journalists and familiar friends and colleagues from the Philly metro market. It was a week that saw soaring rhetoric and gallows humor, hours sitting around waiting for something to happen and mad scrambles on tight deadlines.

It was a week I wouldn't trade for anything.