Carter’s was the better speech, but Clinton was magnificent. I think he was better last night than at either of his own conventions and certainly better than any of his SOTUs. He performed a brilliant rhetorical trick: he deployed the usual canards used against him to buttress Kerry. Rather than attack the wealthy as recjpients of tax cuts, he attacked himself as a now-wealthy man. And then the coup de grace: he put himself and Bush in the same camp as draft-dodgers, in stark comparison to the patriotic Kerry! My jaw was on the floor at that point in a mixture of admiration and horror. But it was mighty effective. And the way in which he described the cost of the tax cut in terms of squandered attempts to improve homeland defense was another smart move. Use the Republican tax cut issue against the Republican security issue. Wedge against them for once. If the constitution didn’t prevent it, the man would still be president. After last night’s speech, you can see why.
THE PANS: Yes, there were some duds. Whose great idea was it to have Glenn Close as a speaker? She’s an actress! And she even flubbed her lines. Oh and Tammy Baldwyn and Barbara Mikulski make the dullest femme and butch act I’ve ever seen. Hillary was pedestrian, as always.
BUSH LOSES MINORITIES: Here’s an interesting nugget of polling. After three years, George W. Bush has lost some appeal among minorities and become a much more exclusively white evangelical president. here’s the Annenberg data:
As the Democratic National Convention begins, 66 percent of African-American registered voters called themselves Democrats and just 7 percent say they are Republicans, numbers almost unchanged since 2000, when it was 65 to 7 percent. Among registered Hispanics, Democrats now outnumber Republicans 45 to 24 percent, compared to a 39 to 21 percent margin in 2000.
But among registered white Protestants who described themselves as born-again or evangelical – a share of the population bigger than blacks and Hispanics together — Republicans now enjoy majority status. Fifty-one percent of this group called themselves Republicans, while 22 percent said they were Democrats. Four years ago, 43 percent said they were Republicans and 24 percent said they were Democrats.
Seventy-one percent of registered white evangelical and born-again Christians now view Bush favorably and just 19 percent see him unfavorably, up from 63 percent favorable, 19 percent unfavorable in 2000. That ratio is reversed among African-Americans, where 12 percent view Bush favorably and 72 percent unfavorably. In July of 2000, 34 percent had a favorable view and just 40 percent an unfavorable opinion.
It’s important to understand that this was a deliberate choice by Rove: to increase the base before you reach out to others. He has been successful. And Bush may lose because of it.
The Dish 