Quick, sweep the poor homeless people under the rug before they drool on Al Gore’s private jet or something!

Denver plans to clear downtown streets of the homeless during the Democratic National Convention here in 2008.

The city will open an emergency shelter normally used during winter deep freezes, and keep other shelters in the city open 24 hours during the August gathering. In addition, an army of outreach workers will fan out across downtown to persuade the homeless to come inside during the convention.

“Shelters will be open the entire time to make certain everyone can go inside and that the outreach folks have a place to take any person from the streets,” said Roxane White, Denver’s manager of human services.

This is sad, but also a little unexpected.  After all, you’d think folks like Edwards and Obama and Hillary! would want some poor people up on stage with them during the convention to illustrate the “two Americas” Bush has created and stuff like that.  Of course, it’s not exactly convenient to use real homeless people, who are usually homeless because of substance abuse problems or serious mental illness, for photo-ops.