Well, the dinosaurs are going to have a hard time beating this next week. This was a good convention for the Democrats. I don’t know the hard numbers, but viewership seems to be high. The speeches were outstanding and got better as the week went on.
Ian gave me his virus, so I’m off my game tonight, but Obama’s speech was very good. This speech was more challenging than any of his speeches on the campaign trail. He had to give policy specifics, which doesn’t lend itself well to soaring rhetoric. He brought in vague and beautiful stuff about opportunity and promise. Good stuff about a new order and post-partisanship. I’m not sure if there was enough policy specifics, but I’m going to have to think about it.
Apt. 11d 
Was going to post a long reaction, but Ross Douthat said what I was thinking, only more efficiently.
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Well, there’s always going to be soemone who is not pleased. But had Obama done all inspirational he would have been savaged for lack of specifics. So he did both: he was remarkably inspirational and he tossed in plenty of wonky policy specifics. He also projected a presidential sense that completely contradicted the “rock star” criticism. Plus he did a terrific job of responding to the concerns that have been raised about “judgment” and “experience.” And he did it all in front of 84,000 people.
I think it was the most amazing political speech I’ve seen in my life. Even Pat Buchanan said it was terrific. And last night, with 22,000 votes on CNN.com, the speech was averaging an A.
It was a remarkable event, nit-picky critics notwithstanding.
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My dad, a big Obama fan, was underwhelmed. He didn’t like all the wonkiness, which he saw as recycled.
I haven’t been able to pay attention to the convention speeches. There seems something wrong to me lately about the performance of politics.
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I agree with Dr. Manhattan. Obama’s skill was getting away with saying so little for so long. Now that he absolutely must translate “hope” and “change” into concrete policy terms, he sounds as ridiulous and duplicitous as any other politician. If they were relying on that speech to reverse the convention-week slide in the polls, I think they’ll be disappointed.
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he convention-week slide in the polls
What a load of….fiction. You’re obviously projecting. There has not even been a poll yet that captures the convention.
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It was a safe speech, and that’s fine, I think. I don’t agree with Douthat that the occasional tone of combativeness was off, probably because Douthat and Brooks and some other of concern-troll Republicans keep wanting Obama to be yet another lamb-to-the-slaughter victim of slimy campaign tactics. I think it’s a good thing for Obama to signal that he’s not just doing to do the Mike Dukakis above-it-all schtick.
The points at which Obama could have taken the speech into more challenging territory. oratorically or thematically, would probably have distracted from some of the basic political work that the speech needed to do, and provided a soft target the next day for pundits.
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There has not even been a poll yet that captures the convention.
What do you mean by “captures”? Fully captures, as in taken today? No, of course not, which is why I wrote “I think they’ll be” not that “they are”. But surely you realize that several of the national polls poll daily?
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You said there was a “convention-week slide in the polls.”
I say there is zero evidence of that. And you have not provided any. Provide some, and I’ll examine it. Otherwise, I stand by the statement that it’s pure fiction.
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I think that Douthat was a little right about Obama making some of some predictable policy proposals. When Obama said that he was going to hire a mountain of new teachers and pay them better, I turned to Steve and said, “no, he won’t.” But then McCain is going to promise school vouchers next week, and I’m going to say, “no, he won’t” to Steve again.
Did you see Brooks snarky column today? I admire snark of all political stripes, but I am a little shocked that it’s in the Times and not in a blog.
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I’m anxious to see the polling data. I’m predicting a huge bump for Obama.
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If you are looking for evidence, not projection, how’s this: “Gallup Shows an Initial Convention Bounce for Obama.”
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/gallup-shows-initial-convention-bounce.html
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Obama said he’s going to cut taxes on 95% of working families. Mark your calendars, ladies and gentleman, I think that’s going to be the first promise to be nuanced away.
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I’m not sure about that. He’s going to jack up the tax on upper income families. That’s one of the reasons that I’m going to vote for him, and that proposal seems doable.
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