I’m assuming most of you saw Biden and Obama’s speeches (if not, here’s Obama and here’s Biden), so instead this is off-hour Barney Frank. It bogs down a bit in the middle, but the first few minutes are his usual good stuff.
Obama’s speech is getting mixed reviews, but I thought he got the job done, and the close was excellent. Biden’s was vintage Biden – if you could bottle it then everyone could have a swig and feel like they literally grew up in Scranton and sat around the kitchen table and talked before putting the kids to bed.
Valdivia
I put this in another thread but it is better here–
I haven’t read all the threads so I don’t know if we have already bitched at the consensus that Obama’s speech was bad. So many people calling it pedestrian. And Tomasky saying Obama blew it and probably lost the election with it. What? Where they watching the same speech as me?
arguingwithsignposts
Just getting to watch the Biden speech. The “Fired Up/Ready for Joe” signs are a nice touch.
Patricia Kayden
The Democratic Convention was a winner. Even the folks on Morning Joe are saying that the Republican Convention failed completely.
Obama did enough to excite his base, but was probably overshadowed by his wife, Clinton and other speakers (including the fantastic Ms. Granholm and Mr. Patrick).
Good times.
Brian R.
Mika on “Morning Joke” just had a great line — “Mitt Romney seems like a good neighbor … if you lived in his neighborhood.”
bjacques
Calling Romney a myth is unfair to myths. Myths at least are based on historical or cultural truths. Romney is at best operational truth, whatever needs to be true at any given time. Once the time has passed, that truth becomes inoperative.
Mark B.
I thought Obama’s speech, especially at the beginning, was not as fiery as Clinton and Biden’s speeches. It didn’t tug at the heartstrings as much as Michelle’s speech. But that’s just Obama, he appeals to the intellect, and not as much to the emotions as his surrogates. He’s emotionally cooler than a lot of people who have run for president in my lifetime.
Now, the average right wing voter, who’s pretty much immune to anything less than a cattle prod applied directly to his hippocampus, might be disappointed with the emotional impact of the speech, but the average Democratic voter can see the entirety of the convention and be inspired to go out and vote. And I thought Obama finished very well. I honestly don’t see how this thing is even close any more, but then we have had 20+ years of a 24 hour propaganda network poisoning people’s minds.
Dan
Bill and Michelle gave amazing speeches, but there wasn’t a single speech at the RNC that was half as good as Obama’s. If he was a Republican they’d be calling him the second coming of Churchill.
Mark B.
And there was nothing at the Democratic Convention to match the dada performance art of Clint Eastwood incoherently haranguing an empty chair.
WereBear
Man, I love that. And yes, that is what they want.
mai naem
@Brian R.: Mika’s good if she’s got Dems around her. If she doesn’t, she’s too chicken to fight back against Scarbo’s crap.
Willie Geist just made fun of Sarah Palin’s tweet. Even Chuck Todd couldn’t believe Sarah Palin’s tweet. Sarah’s done. Stick a fork in her. Finally, our national nightmare is coming to an end. This really is good news for John McCain.
amk
@Mark B.: This. His appeal is more on an intellectual level, which the pundtwits sorely lack.
weaselone
@Valdivia:
Don’t believe your lying eyes. Don’t trust your treacherous ears. It’s a horse race I tell you, a horse race. Plus, no convention bounce according to polls conducted prior and during the convention.
Napoleon
@mai naem:
What was her tweet?
Valdivia
@weaselone:
wait. they are already measuring a bump even before the convention ended? huh?
I thought he was awesome. I just don’t get the haters
Baud
Steve Benan (as usual) has a good analysis of Obama’s speech, and what it was and wasn’t.
JPL
the job number sucks but unemployment drops to 8.1
Davis X. Machina
Obama’s got a day job, and also goes around giving speeches.
It’s Romney’s only job.
All things considered, I’m not that concerned about the speech last night.
Suffern ACE
The part that disappointed me most about Obama’s speech is that he didn’t use it to introduce the theme of “what really happened at area 51” into it, changing the tone of his campaign. Also, he didn’t speak to the press corps concern with ratings and sound bytes.
The Ancient Randonneur
Unemployment down to 8.1% and economy added 96,000 jobs.
weaselone
@Valdivia:
Only the idiots.
Hawes
So many people got hung up in the first half to two-thirds of Obama’s speech. He ALWAYS starts out slow, reasonable and measured. And then he builds. And builds. After the Lincoln line (man, that ugly son of a bitch could write) the speech soared. You don’t START high, you finish high.
I guess it was late and they had deadlines…
Exurban Mom
Hey, jobs numbers for August are up, 96000 new jobs, unemployment down to 8.1% from 8.3%. Yay!
Morning Joe still talking about how GOP convention was a dud. “No one cried at the GOP convention” was stated.
I am feeling better this morning about our chances than I’ve felt in a long time. Not overconfident, just better.
The Ancient Randonneur
Link to BLS report on unemployment for August.
butler
@The Ancient Randonneur: This feels a lot like a hit by pitch: ultimately successful but an ugly way to get on base.
Patricia Kayden
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Disappointing, but at least the unemployment went down a little. As Bill Press just asked, why doesn’t anyone ask the Republicans what they’ve done to create job since taking over the House? They’ve focused on social issues and vain attempts to repeal Obamacare. Nothing else.
Brian R.
@Exurban Mom:
I don’t know. I bet some Romney advisers were crying during Eastwood’s meltdown.
Comrade Mary
TAR beat me to the link. Jobs up 96,000; unemployment down to 8.1%. Solid but not terrific.
Brian R.
@Napoleon:
Yeah, I blessedly missed that too.
The Ancient Randonneur
The part of Obama’s speech that disappointed me the most was when he failed to promise me a unicorn and a free trip to Disney World.
jwb
@JPL: The job numbers border on horrible, and the downtick in unemployment has to do with a large increase in those taking themselves out of the job market. As far as I can see, no good news in here at all.
EconWatcher
Jobs numbers not good, although it might again be public sector lay offs drowning out improvements in the private sector. It would really help the Dems to get the headline number below 8 percent–some chance that may happen if we have a modest spurt of hiring this month.
weaselone
@Patricia Kayden:
The boilerplate answer given is that the Republican House has generated a flood of “jobs bills” which then get blocked by the Dems in the Senate.
NonyNony
@Valdivia:
Ah yes. Because that’s what decides elections – convention speeches.
Seriously – do political pundits have their heads shoved so far up their asses that they don’t remember how this whole thing works? We only go through this song and dance every FOUR FREAKING YEARS.
We have conventions which exist to fire up the base for the most part. Then we have the debates, which exist to convince the undecideds that the other guy is a nitwit and you know what you’re doing. Then we have the last minute ad dump between the debates and election day, wherein you can tell who is desperate and who isn’t by watching their ad buys and the kinds of ads that they run.
Not rocket science. Every four years. Every election I’ve seen has followed this general pattern since Reagan’s re-election in 1984 (too young to really pay attention to Reagan 1980). There is a variation in incumbency years, where the challenger can actively run against a record. But that’s in the margins – the basic pattern is always the freaking same thing.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think that the politics beat is where they stick reporters who can’t handle more difficult assignments. Like sports (where at least reporters seem to be able to pick up on patterns) or the police blotter.
YellowJournalism
I just can’t help but think that a lot of BO’s speech critics are afraid to give it a good grade because they praised Clinton and Michelle. Don’t want to look biased now! Have to have a horse race, don’t you know?
Valdivia
@NonyNony:
Amen. I almost threw my laptop out the window in rage when i read Tomasky.
hueyplong
“The boilerplate answer given is that the Republican House has generated a flood of ‘jobs bills’ which then get blocked by the Dems in the Senate.”
Those guys label as “job bills” (1) tax cuts for 1 percenters; (2) repeals of Obamacare and (3) mandatory pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasounds.
Orwell would be so dizzy he’d have to sit down.
Brian R.
Oh God, Sarah Palin is wallowing in self-pity in a clip shown on “Morning Joe.”
“I’m surprised John Kerry even knows my name,” says the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. “I’m just an ordinary person and he’s part of the elite,” she added from the television studio in her million-dollar home.
beltane
@NonyNony: Sports journalists generally have to be knowledgeable about sports. Political journalists can get away with being ignorant about everything.
JPL
Palin while on Fox TV asked how Kerry even knew her name.
This is good news for John McCain.
Suffern ACE
@NonyNony: Yes. But every election has a single moment when everything turns. A tv moment. What the pundits want to be is the one who called the gaffe. Gore’s sigh, Dukakis in a tank, Kerry windsurfing, bush I at the cash register, Nixon sweating. It is really a pissing competition between them to see whose analysis will be on the history channel in 10 years for having called it.
JPL
@Brian R.: Beat me to it. She is the gift that keeps on giving.
Kane
But we also believe in something called citizenship…
I expect to hear the word citizenship a great deal from TeamObama and Democrats as we move towards November 6. There is no better word than citizenship to use against a candidate who refuses to release his tax records, has off-shore bank accounts and who refuses to ask the richest one percent to share in the sacrifice.
mai naem
@Napoleon
befuggled
@NonyNony:
Sportswriters do eventually pick up on patterns, but it’s generally about 5 years after the patterns have become apparent to everybody else. Then they cling to them for another 5 years after the pattern has ended.
I’d be happy to see political journalists get to that point.
Suffern ACE
@mai naem: II actually agree with her when you put it that way. Seriously, she’s not running for anything and the less said about her the better.
NonyNony
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah that stupid “narrative moment”. Not only are they bad at analysis, they also all seem to be frustrated script writers. If it were a movie then Bush the Elder at the cash register would be the moment where everything came crashing down (like Mr. Burns being served the three-eyed fish). But I watched that election and what killed Bush was that he was not a charismatic politician to start with and his base absolutely hated him and he had no bones to throw to them come election time.
And I watched the 2004 election and what killed Kerry was that Bush the Lesser was still at 60% job approval come election day and his base loved him.
And I watched the 2000 election and what killed Gore was that he refused to embrace Clinton and take credit for the good things that had happened over the previous 8 years. And it wasn’t because he wanted to position himself to the left of Clinton (Lieberman as his running mate helped project that image of “serious centrist) so it killed him simultaneously with the left voters in the party (who wouldn’t have minded a rejection of Clinton if it involved a signal that Gore wanted to push the party towards more economic justice) and simultaneously with the centrist voters of the party (who LOVED CLINTON and wanted Gore to tell them that he was going to be Clinton II). I’ve never seen a politician in my life who pushed more of his party voting base away in a single election campaign – AND HE STILL WON THE GODDAMN POPULAR VOTE despite pushing his entire base away as hard as he could.
Elections are strategic and tactical. It’s all about getting the right votes into the right places. It pains me to watch frustrated script writers try to explain this shit with “moments” in the campaign when this stuff is all about long-term political tactics and short term get out the vote techniques. Irritating beyond measure.
jwb
@Valdivia: I didn’t think it was Obama’s best speech, but I’m not sure his best speech was what was needed here. I did think this one sounded more like a State of the Union address than a campaign speech. At the same time, word on Twitter last night is that Obama had already seen the jobs report. Somehow I was under the impression that he got word of the report more or less the same time everyone else did. In any case, if he had seen the jobs report, he may have also toned down the speech a notch or two. I also like what Fallows and Pierce had to say about the themes of citizenship and self-government in the speech. It seems like Obama might be laying the ground work to make this theme a bigger part of the campaign.
Emma
@NonyNony: That has been my conclusion too. “He’s an idiot, send him to Washington and get him out of our hair” seems to be the preferred stance of newspaper editors.
grandpa john
@Patricia Kayden: This.
Remember they ran in 2010 on Jobs, jobs, jobs. So far that have not introduced ONE single job creating bill in 2 years, they lied just as they always do.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hawes:
Look, buddy, those cocktail weenies aren’t going to eat themselves!
NCSteve
Okay, I haven’t seen it anywhere else here, but then there was a lot of commentin goin on last night. But it bears saying: last night, Jennifer Granholm briefly made me get that whole weird thing about Republicans all the time wanting to f*#& their leaders.
Yeah, okay, the gesticulation that was probably killin’ it in the hall came off as a bit disturbing on the teevee, but, dayum! She stomped Galt/Gekko’s worthless weaselly hineys into the ground like a stampeding herd of wild horses.
Cervantes
@NonyNony: Agree with you about journalists, but if we are going to mention “Bush the Elder at the cash register,” we should, out of fairness, probably also mention that the story was (surprise, surprise) fraudulent. The cash register that Bush was unfamiliar with was not a normal, run-of-the-mill cash register; it was a then-new type that was still unfamiliar to a lot of people. This fact was known at the time — the pool reporter mentioned it in the original story — but the big-name nitwit-journalists who created Bush’s Moment created it via distortion — just as they fraudulently created Gore’s Internet Moment, Clinton’s haircut-on-the-tarmac Moment, and countless others.
There were plenty of good reasons to criticize Bush the Elder; this idiotic “cash register” story assiduously avoided them all.
Elie
Honestly. I can’t believe the downer reviews. I thought it was an EXCELLENT speech of a leader in the middle of a battle.. on a leader being candid and direct with his people — stripped of false pride and loaded with the weight of the responsibility of BEING President. Its the voice and link to the reality of struggle and responsibility. Soaring? To me it did. Because he was direct and candid with us about needing US to help him …
Honestly. Many of you have ears but no hearing.
Better get the wax out of your ears and some idea of the work WE have to do. Its always been about us and that was, for those of you paying any attention, the message that you had better take away. Yes, that means YOU.
Joel
Obamas speech was good. He let a little emotion in with the “You did that” section. It was touching. His speech was not quite as good as Clinton’s (the only other long speech to compare to) but he was solid all around. I left the speech completely fucking fired up, FWIW.
Mnemosyne
@jwb:
That’s what I think, too. I think the Obama campaign is going to take the “you didn’t build this” “controversy,” turn it into “we all built this,” and beat Romney with it from now until Election Day.
My only fear is that, frankly, a lot of people don’t want the responsibility of governing themselves. I think the president addressed that when he talked about how if ordinary people don’t step up, the guys who can write $10 million checks will step up in their place, but my worry is that 30 years of Republican governance have beaten people down so thoroughly that they’re convinced they can’t do anything to improve their lot, so why bother to try?
I dunno, I didn’t feel like this last night. I think the pundits are getting to me.
Maude
@Mnemosyne:
What the pundits do is explain what Obama said. Of course, they haven’t the faintest idea of what Obama was talking about.
Obama is intelligent and this makes the pundits unhappy. They haz a sad.
Amir Khalid
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Don’t know about unicorns. But I’ve been to Disney World; and if you haven’t, you’re not missing all that much.