“After reviewing feedback from all these individuals, I am confident that Charlotte is an ideal location,” DNC chair Tim Kaine said in a statement on Tuesday. “I want to congratulate the people of Charlotte, their mayor, Anthony Foxx, Senator Kay Hagan, Governor Bev Perdue, and every other leader who helped to put together this winning bid. I am looking forward to working with all of them to ensure that the next Democratic National Convention is one that will demonstrate the best of our party and our nation’s political process.”

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak offered congratulations to Charlotte.

“Congratulations to Charlotte on being selected to host this great event. Any assistance they need, we’re here to help,” he said. “We’re obviously disappointed, but having been a finalist for this selection proves once again that Minneapolis has what it takes to host any major event.

He added, “Trust me, we’re going to continue to compete for them. Every time Minneapolis vies for this caliber of high-profile event, we strengthen the infrastructure needed to be competitive in attractive conventions and new business to town that in turn create good jobs that grow our economy.”

The contract runs down an agenda of the Democrats’ boogeymen: repealing Health Insurance Reform, privatizing Social Security, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, protecting “those responsible for the oil spill,” and abolishing the Department of Education, Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency. There’s also a video that you can see here and more details on the DNC website here.

The mock contract is an attempt by Democrats to preempt the new “Contract for America” — a document similar to the one created by the GOP before the 1994 elections — that Republicans are in the process of drawing up and hope will help sweep them into office as it did 16 years ago. Republicans say they won’t lay out their platform until they have a chance to confer with their constituents during the August recess. Democrats say it’s all a phony effort and their radical agenda is already set in stone.

What’s clear is that Democrats are banking on a strategy that links Republicans to the Tea Party and the furthest reaches of the right wing. Republicans, for their part, don’t all seem to be shying away from the label. Last week at least eight House members, all Republicans, announced the formation of a “Tea Party Caucus” in congress. In addition to organizer Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the caucus’s members include Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kans.), John Carter (R-Texas), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind).

I asked Kaine if Democrats are worried about the Republican “repeal and replace campaign.” He responded, “We’re going to take very seriously these threats,” adding that if “repeal is what they’re pursuing, we are very comfortable with that.”

Kaine explained: “If the Republicans want to make November about ‘bring back pre-existing conditions, kick college graduates off their family insurance policies, take away tax credits from small businesses, and seniors give your rebate check back’ – we’ll be very, very glad to make the November elections about this.”

On May 27, House Republicans introduced a bill, backed by party leaders, to repeal the sweeping health care law enacted in March and replace it with their alternate proposal from last November. Given its extremely slim prospects, which even some Republicans admit, it appears to be a political tactic to galvanize the conservative base ahead of the midterms.

While the health care bill grew unpopular by the time of enactment, recent polls say Americans prefer to give it a chance and amend it along the way rather than scrap it.

Sahil Kapur is Washington correspondent for Raw Story and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and The Guardian.

After praising Dean’s “outstanding work,” Obama highlighted Kaine’s “progressive philosophy” that allowed him to build “a model of good and responsible government in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Kaine, who in February 2007 became one of the first prominent supporters of Obama’s presidential campaign, initially rejected Obama’s efforts to convince to take the helm of the party, but today he told the president-elect, “You are a very persuasive individual.”

He laid out three goals for his tenure as DNC chair: to “promote this president’s agenda,” to “carry the proud banner of this proud party” and to “engage Americans in new ways in politics.”

But he acknowledged the challenges of following in Dean’s footsteps. Under Dean’s four-year watch, the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and then made further gains in 2008 while also winning the presidency.

“I’ve got huge shoes to fill,” he admitted.

For the first time at a post-election press conference, Obama did not take questions from reporters.

Kaine must be officially elected by the DNC, but with Obama’s endorsement, it’s a foregone conclusion.

“You have an unprecedented turnout in a historic election,” said Adisa Muse, director of the Virginia ACLU’s rights-restoration project, “and you just don’t have enough resources.”

On Friday, the Advancement Project, a national voter-protection organization, announced it was moving forward, in conjunction with the Virginia NAACP, in its lawsuit against Gov. Tim Kaine and top state election officials for allegedly failing to provide enough voting machines and poll workers to meet the expected turnout in minority precincts in Richmond, Norfolk and Virginia Beach.The lawsuit seeks remedies like extending voting hours to 9 p.m. on Election Day and offering the option of paper ballots if voters have been waiting longer than 45 minutes. A federal judge in Richmond will hear arguments today.

Nancy Rodrigues, Virginia’s secretary of the board of elections,  told The Washington Independent that the lawsuit’s findings are out of date — and that state law doesn’t permit paper ballots or extended voting hours. That view is disputed in the lawsuit and by other election experts, citing the board’s authority to ensure that elections are properly administered.

The Kaine administration has found an unusual ally in defending against the lawsuit: the Republican Party. State GOP officials are seeking to intervene on the side of the governor, branding the request a “ploy” to get more Democrats to vote. “The other side is exploiting every single loophole that they have available to them,” Del. Jeffrey Frederick, the state GOP chairman, complained to The Washington Post.

Kaine has irked voting-reform advocates by saying that the state is “extremely well-prepared” to handle a big turnout and that long lines are not a major worry. “Look, we wait in line to buy coffee at Starbucks,” he said. “You wait in line to get on a roller coaster,”

“We shouldn’t treat the right to vote like a latte,” countered Judith Browne-Dias, co-director of the Advancement Project. She charges that there are racial disparities in the ratios of voters to machines that could lead to long lines and voters leaving before they cast ballots. In one largely black precinct in Richmond, Advancement Project researchers found a ratio of 452 registered voters per machine, “while across town [in a predominantly white neighborhood], it was 188 voters for each machine.”

Virginia law only requires that the decentralized election boards meet a minimum standard of 750 voters per machine.

With a half-million newly registered voters and an 85 percent turnout expected in some counties Tuesday, the Advancement Project estimated that such high turnouts would require some under-resourced precincts to take 20 hours to process all voters who show up.

There are other potential snares facing voters in Virginia. Peggy Sanner, Virginia coordinator for the non-partisan Election Protection coalition, worries that some voters will be “inappropriately challenged” over their eligibility, slowing down lines. Last week, for example, voting-rights groups protested that the registrar in Radford, Va., was illegally blocking eligible college students from voting because they listed their campus addresses as their home addresses.

In addition, many newly registered Virginia voters, including college students, don’t know that they’re required to bring some form of ID to the polls if they didn’t provide an ID when they registered. The result? They’ll be forced to use a provisional ballot, which are sometimes not included in final vote tallies. In Ohio in 2004, 22 percent of provisional ballots were not counted.

Even the long lines already evident during early voting haven’t fazed state officials. Asked about the possibility of delays on Election Day due to machine shortages, Rodrigues said, “All localities are following the law.”

Research assistance for this article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.