By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
The following Michele McPhee quote — uttered within the last five minutes — is guaranteed 95 percent word-for-word:
The last time he [Obama] had a crowd this big, he blew his nose. And it was nasty, folks. What’s he going to do this time? Is there going to be flatulence on the stage? And are people going to cheer?
Simply amazing.
Tracking polls are notoriously unreliable, but the Gallup trend is clear:
If these numbers are right, then it shows that all the media’s hyperventilating about the convention’s not being attack-oriented enough and the Clintons’ stealing the spotlight from Obama is bunk.
The latest figures don’t even capture voter reaction to Bill Clinton’s, John Kerry’s, and Joe Biden’s speeches, not to mention Obama’s cameo at the end of the night. And Gallup’s numbers won’t include Obama’s own speech until Saturday.
What does this mean? It looks like Obama is going to receive a normal convention bounce. And unless McCain and the Republicans utterly blow it next week, we’ll be back to a tied race when both conventions are over.
We’d all be better off watching C-SPAN.
I didn’t realize how few viewers had a chance to see John Kerry’s speech last night. So let’s see — the pundits keep telling us that the Democrats aren’t attacking McCain enough; Kerry devotes his entire speech to a full-throated disembowelment of McCain; and the pundits don’t let us see it. Am I missing anything?
Josh Marshall calls Kerry’s “the best speech of the convention.” I don’t think it was quite that, but it certainly gave viewers (some viewers, anyway) the biggest helping of red meat they’ve had so far.
We all love Dan Wasserman (and I’m loving his new blog, Out of Line). But this is what happens when you get immersed in the spin. Wasserman’s Boston Globe cartoon today makes sense if you listen to the pundits, who have been salivating over the prospect of open warfare between the Clintons and the Obamas all week. It might even make sense if you talk to disgruntled Clinton delegates.
But what, pray tell, have the Clintons actually done to undermine Barack Obama at the convention? Both Hillary and Bill gave emphatically pro-Obama speeches. Delegates have cheered the Clintons. Delegates have cheered the Obamas. HRC released her delegates to vote for Obama, then moved that Obama’s nomination be made unanimous.
Is it all choreographed? Of course. Or to be more precise: It’s a television show. At least according to some news reports, the two families don’t like each other. But they’re playing their parts. And though the Clintons may not be heartbroken if John McCain wins this November, since that would give HRC another chance to run in 2012, they don’t want to be blamed for Obama’s defeat, either.
Bottom line is that not a single thing has taken place at the podium, or in any of the Clintons’ or the Obamas’ public utterances, to support Wasserman’s take. At best, he’s channeling unhappy Clinton fans. At worst, he’s suffering from pundit overdose.
Maybe I’m speech’d out, but I wasn’t hugely taken with Joe Biden’s address. He was good, and he certainly did what he needed to do. But there was a ragged, stop-and-start feel to it. Clinton and Kerry were better.
Beau Biden, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more moving. Judging from what I saw on television, there wasn’t a dry eye in the convention hall.
Funny, but I thought Bruce Springsteen was going to come out when it was announced that there would be a “special guest.”
I’ve never seen him that impassioned on his own behalf. And if Bill Clinton was more intent on whacking Bush than McCain, Kerry made up for it. He even poked fun at himself as he ran through a litany of McCain flip-flops.
Good Jason Zengerle piece in The New Republic on Kerry’s revival as one of Obama’s most effective surrogates. If Biden falls flat tonight, remember: I told you so.
How stupid is this? Obama is going to be giving his convention speech in front of some faux-Greek columns, which isn’t exactly new — Bush himself did it just four years ago. And have you walked around the Statehouse lately? Or ever?
But anonymous (i.e., Clinton) Democrats claim this is more proof that Obama thinks he’s Zeus or something, the media are freaking out and the Republicans blasted out an e-mail about the “Temple of Obama.”
Could everyone please grow up?
Well, that was quite a performance by Hillary Clinton, was it not? Unlike the Mark Warners of the world, she managed to talk about herself and use that in a compelling way to transfer her personal message to Barack Obama. Also, for the first time this week the Democrats were drinking the blood of their enemies. And loving it.
I never would have imagined when Clinton first ran for the Senate eight years ago that the stilted public speaker of that campaign could grow into the accomplished, and even moving, figure that she is today.
Not to get carried away. She was not this good while she was running for president. Not even close. Like Ted Kennedy and Al Gore, to name two other examples, defeat seems to have brought out the best in her.
Gov. Deval Patrick is speaking right now — quite effectively, too. I did a quick channel flip, and discovered that he’s being carried only by New England Cable News and C-SPAN. The folks at PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all think they have more important things to talk about.
Instant correction: Boston’s WFXT-TV (Channel 25) and WLVI-TV (Channel 56) also broadcast Patrick live. They’re local stations that aren’t stuck with carrying the network feed.
The tension has been over whether the speakers should spend more time praising Obama or bashing McCain. No problem for Mark Warner — he thinks it’s about him.