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Fight for Obama, ‘Vanity Fair’ Tickets Consumes DNC

These people should have picked up their VF party ticket on Tuesday. Photo: Joe Hagan

The only activity left at the DNC is jockeying for tickets to Obama’s big speech and the big Google/Vanity Fair party that will serve as the last, and greatest, party of the week. Tickets to Invesco were distributed via an online sign-up, mostly to campaign volunteers; the only way to snag one now is to play off political connections.

The Vanity Fair party, naturally, is less democratic. There are currently huge lines on the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton to pick up tickets; we saw new Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli sprinting up the stairs to retrieve his.

The line is no doubt prompted by the e-mail that went out last night at 12:14 a.m., explaining that anyone who had not already received a confirmation e-mail with instructions on ticket retrieval — invitees were supposed to grab their precious pass on Tuesday — would not be getting in. No exceptions!

We happened to glance at the guest list yesterday and saw it was covered in Sharpie marks, with virtually every guest’s wife crossed off. So last night’s e-mail was akin to a surprise dis-invitation. No apologies. No explanation. Just the crushing and infuriating realization, as one person who’d been with several dis-invitees when the e-mail came through said, that someone, somewhere, had decided that “you’re not cool enough to make the cut.”

Fight for Obama, ‘Vanity Fair’ Tickets Consumes DNC