Rocky mountain high, DNC Day Two
August 27th, 2008
Several months ago, in a posting I said that Hillary Clinton would rise up and do the right thing.
Last night she did. To a crowd of wildly enthusiastic supporters she addressed the convention.
Her speech was in turn, funny, emotional and incisive. Most importantly, she urged her supporters to get out and work for Barak Obama. She turned the focus away from her failed attempt to break through the glass ceiling and reminded her supporters what was really at stake - the Americans who are slipping through the cracks after eight years of failed leadership.
Day two of the convention took on a much more aggressive tone, moving away from the touchy feely of the night before and moving into coordinated attack mode against John McCain and George Bush.
I have believed for a long time that Obama should just run against McCain, he needs to run against Bush and it looks like that is the direction he is going to take.
However, it is not enough to just say what you are running against, he still needs to clearly articulate what he is running for, what he thinks America will become under his leadership.
An interesting side-note is the attempts to “Swiftboat” Obama by the same crowd who seeded doubt about John Kerry and his war record in 2004. Their book Obama Nation is number one on the non fiction list in the New York Times, which notes that this is as a result of “bulk sales”.
I’d like to think that this type of sleaze has no effect, but unfortunately, in a political climate where partisan talking points are repeated as gospel, it does.
However, unlike John Kerry who chose not to respond to the right wing lies until it was too late, Obama’s people are right on top of it just as they have been doing with the Internet rumors about Obama that have been floating up from the bottom of the toilet for the past year or so.
Tonight another Clinton mounts the podium and all eyes will be on Bill as he bites his tongue and endorses Barak Obama for President which, of course, was not the scenario that he imagined back in January.
