Review: The Democratic Convention (Night 4)
August 29th, 2008 by Matt IngogliaI’m heading down to campus today so in the interest of time I’ve got to make this brief. I thought Obama’s speech, which did everything it had to do, was wonderful on all counts. Introduced by a well-done biographical video, Obama confidently strode onto the stage, ready to get down to brass tacks with his audience. Not needing to reinforce his personal story thanks to the video, he jumped right into a stinging indictment of Bush/McCain politics, declaring, “America, we are a better country than this”. After outlining his interpretation of “America’s promise” and questioning why anyone would take a 10% chance on change with McCain, Obama shifted gears and outlined his specific strategy for change, something people have been begging him to do. I think Republicans were expecting another lofty and grandiose appeal to go along with the massive audience, but Obama threw them off with his specific proposals, even going so far as to outline how he’d pay for them. Obama made his reason for being very clear in his conclusion: it’s never been about him, it’s about restoring the promise of America and keeping that promise to future generations. McCain won’t do that, Obama will. It really was that simple, and the crowd loved it.
Despite all those specifics, the speech still felt like any other Obama address, which is to say it got the audience stirred and no doubt motivated people out there to contribute or volunteer. Like I said, it also messed up a lot of the preplanned Republican attack lines for it (namely: he didn’t say anything specific). And today, with McCain unable to fill a 10,000 seat hall to announce his running mate (Sarah Palin), the comparisons with Obama’s breathtakingly massive audience should be enough to rain on the Republicans’ parade.
Blog post on Palin coming tomorrow, or as soon as I get my ResNet hooked up.
Tags: Conventions
September 1st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
All in all, I found the convention a success. The Hillary-Bill matter was nicely resolved and the goofy roll-call was intelligently kept out of prime time. Obama’s speech was good (not historic but good) and the stadium setting seemed to work — though the fireworks and confetti drowned out what might have been a nice “rainbow” moment with Obama’s family.
The GOP seems to have caught a bit of bad timing with hurricane Gustov stepping on their coverage (with nice notes of Katrina-memory as subtext.) But, of course, the big story is not McCain but Gov. Palin.
The Dems should be all over her like flies on a rib roast. Forget the “experience” charge — it hits too close to home with Obama. Instead Dem surrogates should be pounding three things:
1) Pandering to Hillary voters. Female Hillary supporters (where are you Rep Wasserman-Schultz?) should be savaging McCain for a patronizing, insulting, gimmicky choice.
2) The “investigation.” I know it’s a tangled story, but surrogates need to keep it front and center. The message is simple. The Alaska legislature is investigating her for abuse of power. We want to know more! We demand she explain what’s going on! The people have a right to know! Keep at it so that the third paragraph in every story about her uses the word “investigation.”
3) Her views. This woman is a neanderthal. She thinks global warming is a fraud, she opposes abortion in EVERY circumstance (ladies, if you get raped, Gov Palin wants you to deliver your rapist’s baby), she wants to teach creationism in science class, she’s a gun-toting, gay-hating, moose-eating “ex-beauty queen” — and McCain wants to put her a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Every surrogate needs to expose these views at every opportunity.
We cannot wait until the debates. We must do this now. Already we allowed her to have a nice debut and that was a mistake. She needs to go into the debate already mauled. McCain gave us a way to win this election and it’s spelled P-A-L-I-N. If we don’t use it, then we deserve to lose.
And if anyone has any qualms about tearing into Ms. Palin, just ask yourselves what the GOP smear machine would be doing now if the shoe was on the other foot. In fact, you can review how they treated Geraldine Ferraro when Mondale chose her. She had to spend most of her time proving she wasn’t a member of the Mafia.
McCain screwed up — let’s nail him to the wall