DENVER - In a break in the action at the Mission Ballroom, a handful of insiders retired to a bar behind the Purina Dogfood Factory to compare notes.

No one's owned the event yet.

No one came out with a speech that electrified the crowd.

That leaves the door ajar for someone like U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ). Or - and here's the person a lot of people continue to avidly talk about - U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

Governor Josh Shapiro (Pa.) spoke earlier, but his punches lacked steam, almost as though he's angling for AG instead of prez. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger shared the stage with two guys no one can remember - and the event occurred just an hour ago. Span and Sher or Sher and Span gave the show some pep, but the point is the New Jersey governor from Virginia and the Virginia governor from New Jersey, who both won their statewide positions in 2025, can't seem to shake each other.

What about former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg?

He has a following here, too.

He somewhat short-circuited Booker once, back in 2020, when he ran for president as a small-town mayor without federal credentials, and outflanked Booker - a mayor turned senator. Tonight, these two would again find themselves in a situation where one probably has to outshine the other in order to get a firmer national toehold.

But as much as 2028, the denizens of the political lower depths here kept chattering about the fight in the senate for the majority leader position. If anyone person made a significant statement at the What's Next? conference, it was Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), (pictured, top), who earlier this week announced his challenge of sitting Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Van Hollen hung around and talked to the media, showed a pulse in the speech he delivered to the room, and seemed strangely more urgently human in a world of 2028 androids.

Onstage, Hakeem Jeffries had seemed his usual uncharismatic self, repeating the line, "I'm from Brooklyn" in the face of an onslaught of angry event disrupters, with as much force as the class nerd at a Star Trek convention. Van Hollen, by contrast, radiated electric energy. It was as though Van Hollen was here to keep the blue wave galvanized. But he faces a senate cloakroom back East, of course, not a bunch of Colfax crawlers and Rocky Mountain hipsters. "I'm the underdog," the Marylander admitted to reporters.

More than one source chucked Booker into the senate leadership conversation.

"Why doesn't Cory run, dammit?" asked a familiar Jersey face.

Well, it was like this. He's running for president. He can't get enmeshed and weighed down by backroom Beltway politics right now. Plus, he backs the unexciting Jeffries, who's on course to make history as the first Black speaker. No. Booker's not an option for senate leadership, the conventional wisdom affirmed. And that point brought the conversation back to the first point, which was that Booker would have to make a statement tonight in order to stay alive as a first-tier option, with Buttigieg still hanging around and Ossoff the comer.

More later, from Denver.