Ross on Joey:
He bellowed, he rambled, he stumbled over his words – but he got the job done. It wasn’t as smooth as Clinton, but it was more of the anti-GOP red meat this convention desperately needed. All in all, tonight was a reminder – the first in what seems like a while – that this is an election that the Democrats really, really ought to be able to win.
Biden started off strong, but ran long. The Obama folks may want to persuade him that less is more — but I suspect that his own staffers tried that earlier in this election season. Still, a good performance, though not in Bill Clinton’s league by any means.
I wish Biden had taken a page from John Kerry and expressed more personal disappointment in his friend: “I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day I learn something new about candidate McCain,” as Kerry put it. Biden just mentioned his friendship with McCain and then went on to critique his policies, as though they were two unrelated things. Kerry was sharper.
The first section of Biden’s speech isn’t that different from the one John Edwards gave in 2004. In fact, Edwards used the exact same riff, imagining parents sitting around their kitchen tables at night worrying about their finances. But I remember listening to Edwards and thinking, I wonder how many people hear him and feel like he’s describing them instead of poorer people they can’t really relate to. Maybe it’s the fact that four years later, the economy is worse and financial struggles have moved up the income ladder. But I bet Biden’s examples–"we owe more on the house than it’s worth", "another year and no raise?"–hit home with more people.
JPod:
Biden didn’t offer specifics about what Obama would do. But he framed the discussion in terms of the way Republicans have mishandled American foreign policy. I think he’s wrong about a lot of that, but it’s not intended for us; it’s intended to sway independents and others who don’t follow these matters very closely and might be swayed by the attack.
The first thing that jumps out from Biden’s speech is that the tone seems to appeal to the Jacksonians in the Jacksonian / Academic divide that Michael Barone explored during the primaries. He talks about "honor" and fighting and bloodying the nose of neighborhood bullies and the bearing of crosses. This is not the type of imagery that Obama has been comfortable trading in.
The Dish 