Month: August 2008

"With some of tonight’s speakers, especially Joe Biden, intending to focus on foreign policy, McCain’s camp focuses their attention on what they portray as Obama’s minimizing of the threat posed by Israel," – Jonathan Martin, Politico.

"…perhaps the most sinister undertone is the hint of hopefulness among a certain element of the left wing that perhaps someone will succeed in assassinating Barack Obama.

Such a tragedy would serve as a confirmation of their firmly held beliefs that conservatives are evil, and could possibly trigger a backlash that would fill the anarchists among them with glee. At the same time, an Obama death would provide progressives with a martyred hero in place of what troubles many of them the most; deep-seated and well-placed fears that Barack Obama is precisely what his record suggests, a shallow, vain, and arrogant opportunist who has created impossible expectations with little possibility that he capable of coming close to meeting those impossibly inflated expectations.

In places liberals don’t want to talk about, they’d rather have a martyr than a failure. That is the reason they pounce upon even the remotest possibility of Obama’s untimely end with such fervor,"-  Confederate Yankee.

Even by the still-falling standards of the degenerate conservative movement, this was a disgusting post.

Ad Age asked various professional ad agencies to come up with ways to sell the next president. The results were uninspired:

Romero evaluates Biden’s performance at the roundtable on Economic Security for American Families:

I’ve seen Obama participate in several of these stagey roundtables over the past 12 months, and he’s nowhere near as convincing as his new partner was today.

Restrained by his cooler, academic character, Obama tends to nod approvingly while his guests relate their stories, then poses a probing follow-up or pivots to a relevant policy point; his first instinct is never to establish an emotional connection by sharing a similar experience of his own. Given that Biden was wrong about this election–it is about health care, and taxes, and gas prices–his new role as Obama’s economic empathizer may turn out to be more important than his original roles as attack dog and foreign-policy adult. Of course, it remains to be seen how convincingly Biden can feel voters’ pain in a less choreographed setting; empathizing always borders on pandering, especially in the hands of a politician as bombastic and mercurial as Biden. His predilection for prefacing every sentence with phrases meant to convey candor–today’s list: "I’m serious"; "I’m not joking"; "Literally"; "This is not hyperbole"; "I mean this sincerely"–tends to undercut, rather than underscore, his sincerity. But today, in his first at-bat, Biden did Bubba proud–even if he was swinging at softballs.

Clive Crook is tired of Obama’s self-proclaimed selflessness:

It’s starting to annoy me that Barack keeps telling us how he turned down Wall Street for a career in "public service". By this he means politics. Just how great a sacrifice is that? The kind of ambition that gets you into the Senate and maybe the White House is not exactly renouncing the world and all its temptations, is it? And now here we have Michelle doing the same thing. She gave up lawyering, she says, and chose "public service"–the kind that leads in due course to a 300k-plus salary. I’ve no problem with it. I just don’t want to keep being asked to admire the sacrifice.

That’s what it’s getting to. McCain is getting the media air his Hillary ads for him:

In the press releases accompanying each new ad, the McCain team pledges to air them in “key states.” But don’t expect to see many show up in battleground state living rooms. According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which monitors political advertising across the country, only one of the three Clinton-themed ads has been broadcast so far –- and that ad, featuring a Clinton delegate who now endorses McCain, is only airing in Toledo, Ohio.

Obama is doing the same:

Those recent commercials raking McCain over the coals for his troubles enumerating the houses he owns? They’ve received abundant attention on the news channels, but there’s no sign yet that they are on the air otherwise.

This:

Most of all, I ran to stand up for all those who have been invisible to their government for eight long years. Those are the reasons I ran for president, and those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president.

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

Ramesh Ponnuru thinks: "Obamaphiles can’t reasonably complain about Clinton’s speech." Wanna bet?

Crowley:

I’ll amend this if I’m mistaken but on first read of Hillary’s speech text I see no clear, flat assertion that Obama is qualified and prepared to be commander in chief from day one, which of course was always her central critique of him. That was something I had expected to see.

Jim Geraghty:

I agree with the rapidly-emerging conventional wisdom that she did everything he could possibly want, and I think Hillary’s delivery is miles ahead of where she was when she began this race. She ate her Wheaties this morning.

Nick Gillespie:

I’d say that Sen. Clinton has had the best performance so far, by a wide margin, both in terms of attacking John McCain and the Republicans head-on and defining a nauseatingly comprehensive set of plans for raising taxes, getting mad at companies for "shipping job overseas," and pushing universal health care (or more accurately, even more expensive and less effective health care).

Sam Boyd:

Most of this speech could have been given a year ago. It has nods to Obama, but it’s almost entirely about her. It’s not an attack on McCain, it’s not a case for electing Obama, it’s just nostalgia and platitudes.

Ben Smith:

Clinton did little to sell Obama’s personal characteristics, his qualities or ability as commander in chief. She mentioned Obama 12 times, McCain 12 times. But Clinton’s speech probably did what it had to, closing out ambiguity and putting Obama in a position to close the deal on Thursday.

Larry Johnson:

After watching Hillary tonight I imagine the William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks and Samantha Powers (ousted Obama advisor) wish they had backed her. This woman does not throw people under the bus. She is a person of integrity and sticks to her word. She sticks with people who, by their conduct, deserve to be abandoned. But she finds in herself the grace to forgive and look pass the sin. She promised to support the nominee, no ifs, ands, or buts. And she delivered. She gave Barack Obama everything he could want and much more than he deserves.

Dylan Matthews:

Maybe it’s unfair to expect this of Hillary specifically, but what I want at some point during the convention is the equivalent of what Zell Miller did in 2004 with his keynote: vicious, personal attacks against John McCain. The kind of attacks that Obama can’t do because of his image, and Biden can’t do because of his friendship with the Macker.

Ezra Klein:

It wasn’t a speech about Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or even George W. Bush. It was a speech about being a Democrat, and what electing a Democrat will mean for the country. Tonight, she was the party’s standard bearer. And she, and those of her supporters who aren’t using her candidacy as a means to elect John McCain, deserved that.

Josh Marshall:

…this was an immensely powerful delivery, and a richly woven together speech. The beginning seemed fine but not remarkable. But it slowly built into something very powerful.

(Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

Listen. If the Dems gave Hillary the keynote, all the independents out there and all the Bush-McCain-skeptic Republicans (like everyone in my family) would have tuned out. I hate Hil as much as you. Nevertheless, she BROUGHT IT. Even I was impressed.

Given her mission to get her supporters to go over to Obama she hit every possible note. As a woman, I have to confess even I teared up (shocking) when she talked about her mom being born before having the right to vote and her daughter being able to vote for a woman for president in the primary.

It was enough. Trust me.

Another:

Christ, Andrew! What does it take to impress you? I am not a Hillary fan, but that was an excellent speech, especially in terms of bringing her die-hard supporters around. It was certainly the best I have ever heard from her.

Another:

The members of my household were in tears.

She was strong, exhuberant and forceful. I think is was a great speech and i think you just don’t like Hillary Clinton no matter what she does.

I’m completely with you, Andrew, on Obama. I’m with you on the last eight years. But I think you’re just a pissy pants on the Clintons.

Another:

When she gave us the stories like all candidates do, it was something I expected. But when she turned it around and asked her supporters if they were in it for her or for the people in those stories, that’s what sold me, an Obama guy. My wife cried. I actually got goose bumps when she said that. And some may quibble over how much more she should have spoken about Obama, I think she did quite a good job. She put the onus on us, the voters. Trust Obama. She says she does. Now, it’s our turn to answer the question.

She started out a little dull and a little self-obsessed. But then she rallied – a little. "No Way. No How. No McCain" was a good line. And the Twin Cities analogy was a great little riff on Bush and McCain. But I have to say her speaking style, although much improved over even a year ago, is still a little flat. When she’s passionate, she has little inflection. When she’s quieter, she’s a little drony. The "keep going" theme, moreover, was a little unnerving. A thinly veiled threat? But actually, I don’t have much more to say. The aim of this speech was to talk her own supporters into supporting Obama. Since I find it really hard to understand why anyone would have supported Clinton over Obama, I’m not the best judge of how it went down. The response on television from the crowd seems to have been everything Obama would have wanted. To my mind, however, it was an average performance, not a slashing attack on the Bush-Cheney record, nor a rousing rallying cry for Obama, nor a very insightful analysis of the country’s problems. There was virtually nothing about foreign policy. She did what she had to do, tell her voters to back Obama. But she gave nothing more.

So far, only Michelle Obama has rescued this convention from being dreary and distracted.

Maybe they are waiting for Biden and Obama. But watching this convention so far, I don’t get the feeling that these people have lived through the same eight years as I have. I may have aired more anti-Bush passion on this blog – written by someone who endorsed the guy in 2000 – than I have heard from these speakers so far. Unless you understand how terrible the wounds of the last eight years have been, you do not understand the urgency of the Obama candidacy. I worry that that hasn’t been put across forcefully enough so far. Clinton didn’t do it. She did the minimum, adequately. I just don’t know if it was enough.

(Photo: Paul J Richards/Getty.)