On the scarcity of bacon, Slovenian solidarity, and moving the party leftward: DNC Reporter’s Notebook, Day 2

A roundup of news from the Democratic National Convention:

NO BACON FOR BREAKFAST: Iowa delegates to the Philadelphia convention are missing their bacon.

Breakfast at the downtown Marriott Hotel where delegates are paying about $500 a night for rooms is hearty with eggs, potatoes, fruit and pastries. But no bacon.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire said the hotel told her it would be another $700 to put out bacon for the delegates.

Although she knows Iowans love their bacon, McGuire said the money could be better spent on campaigns this fall.

SLOVENIAN SOLIDARITY: Melania Trump isn't the only one who has Slovenian ancestry.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who spoke at the Iowa delegation's breakfast meeting Tuesday, said her ancestors came from a place about a half-hour away from where the ancestors of the wife of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump emigrated.

'You can see the resemblance,” she joked.

'We think we have enough Slovenians,” Klobuchar said, referring to 'my fellow Slovenian Sen. Tom Harkin.”

Their ancestors came to this country from Slovenia to work in the mines - Harkin's in the Iowa coal mines and Klobuchar's in the Minnesota iron mines.

IOWA, MY SECOND HOME: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley visited the Iowa delegation to, among other things, pay homage to the hosts of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

'I spent so much time in Iowa it almost feels like home,” said Sanders, who spent 54 days in Iowa before the Feb. 1 caucuses.

O'Malley, who spent 64 days in Iowa, said it was wonderful 'to be with friends again” and called Iowans 'salt of the earth people - you're what America is all about.”

'I feel like Iowa is my second home,” he said.

HARKIN PREACHES UNITY: Tom Harkin, Iowa's former Democratic U.S. senator, used a history lesson to implore Bernie Sanders supporters from Wisconsin to vote for Hillary Clinton this November.

Harkin spoke at a breakfast gathering of Wisconsin delegates.

Sanders defeated Clinton decisively in Wisconsin's primary, 57 to 43 percent. Many Clinton supporters have spent the first days of the convention attempting to foster unity and ensure Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton this fall.

Harkin did the same Tuesday at the Wisconsin delegation, using the 1968 election as an example of how party division may have hurt.

Harkin said he thinks supporters of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy may not have done as much as they could to help primary winner Hubert Humphrey in the general election. Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon.

'Imagine what our country would have been like without eight years of Richard Nixon,” Harkin said. 'So I say to you, look, we've got to come together. The other side is way too scary.”

IOWANS HIGHLIGHT WOMEN'S HISTORY: During state-by-state roll call voting on the floor, during which representatives often note items of interest about their states, three Iowa representatives noted some of the historic accomplishments of Iowa women.

Sruthi Palaniappan, an 18-year-old delegate from Cedar Rapids, said that in 1857 the University of Iowa became the first state university to accept women into degree programs.

U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack noted that in 1869, Iowa became the first state to let women to join the bar, which allowed Arabella Mansfield to become the nation's first female lawyer.

That led to Iowa's final roll call, delivered by state party Chairwoman Andy McGuire, who delivered the state's 21 votes for Bernie Sanders and 30 votes for Hillary Clinton, who McGuire noted becomes the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party.

Compiled by the Des Moines Bureau