Last night, I hunkered down with twitter, ignored the dirty dishes, and went into full geeky mode. I love my Twitter friends during these things. It's like political Mystery Science Theater 2000.
Clinton's speech last night was a grand slam. I'm not quite sure how Obama's going to top it. He went off the teleprompter to give a 48 minute speech full of geeky policy goodness. He rebutted every claim that came up at the RNC. He resurrected the enthusiasm for Obama that has been tepid up until now. He addressed the moderates, who felt alienated by some of the other speakers at the convention. It was good politics. It was good entertainment.
The Democrats have been amazingly on message during this convention. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Yes, they said over and over. I almost believe it. I'm not sure how much blame or credit for the economy should go to presidents. Forces beyond their control shape the economy, though they can tinker around the edges to make things better or worse. They can lay the groundwork for long term changes and can support groups that are the big losers in a bad economy. But politics doesn't work in these subtleties.
These conventions often end up being Star Searches for the next election. During the RNC, I saw a few people that were clearly laying the groundwork for themselves. The DNC has been notable for its few entrepreneurial moments. We haven't seen a Christie yet. Perhaps Clinton was setting up Hillary for 2016, but I kind of believe her when she says that she's not interested in another election. Her hair looks tired of politics.
Did Clinton's speech change anyone's mind. I don't think so. I've been skimming the conservative blogs for the past hour and they found lots of faults in Clinton. They focus on the Democratic platform use of the word "God" and their views on Jerusalem. I also don't think that there are any undecided voters left in America. They are only people who are undecided about bothering to vote.
I suppose that's not unusual. People stick with their parties from birth to grave, barring one of those rare party realignments. That's not going to happen this year, which means that November is going to be a close race regardless of the homeruns coming out of North Carolina this week.
UPDATE: Here's Bill's speech marked up to show all the ad-libbing. I could not do that.
Apt. 11d 
The Democrats have been amazingly on message during this convention.
I wish I had a score sheet so I could check off all the mandatory elements to the routines, like the balance beam at the Olympics. Just like nobody could stick their landings in London, I feel like the hardest part in every speech writer’s job is trying to figure out exactly what “out from the middle and up from the bottom” means, and trying to work it seamlessly into the speeches.
I suppose that’s not unusual. People stick with their parties from birth to grave, barring one of those rare party realignments.
I feel like that should be normal, but never quite seems to be. I remember in 2000, people telling me all of the time that they wanted to support “either John McCain or Bill Bradley,” but they weren’t sure which. I remember 1984 in grade school, when everyone I knew was a Democrat, wondering how the heck Reagan could have possibly won 49 states. If identical candidates were running today under identical circumstances, would the Reagan-clone win New York and California? I don’t see it, but then I can’t really see how it happened then.
LikeLike
I loved Clinton’s speech and all the activity on Twitter and Facebook, though toward the end I hung in there just to see exactly how long he’d talk. And I’ve gotta say, he motivated me to donate, which I hadn’t done yet this time around.
At the same time, though, I felt tremendously dispirited by the very fact that most of my friends and I agreed so wholly with just about everything he said. I’m sure there are lots of Rs out there who felt the same way last week, which makes the potential for anything less than partisan divisiveness extremely low. If conventions are about playing to the party’s base, though, I suppose that’s to be expected.
LikeLike
“People stick with their parties from birth to grave, barring one of those rare party realignments.”
Isn’t it the case that party membership generally is way down and the number of “independents” (a very murky concept) is way up? Independents do have sympathies, of course.
(I was looking for a chart on this online but couldn’t find one.)
LikeLike
But who are those independents, and what are they like? Isn’t that a political science question that someone should have an answer to? In Laura’s configuration, an independent is one who votes in some elections and not others (thus, the group average changes in favor of one candidate or another — it doesn’t require more or less independents to vote, just which ones). So there’s a large group of disaffected voters (who might be increasing in number), but each individual voter always votes republican or democrat, but only in some elections. If that’s the way it works, there need be no individual voter who switches their vote from dem to republican.
But hasn’t anyone studied this phenomenon? Hasn’t someone found a group of voters who change their votes (I know there are some, ’cause I hear them interviewed sometimes). Are they a small minority, with the population statistics being determined by the voting/not voting?
It’s an interesting question (and, comes up in neurons when one wonders whether individual neurons actually have preferences, or only the group average — looking at group averages, it could work either way, and, one usually looks at group averages of neuron, for practical reasons).
LikeLike
“If identical candidates were running today under identical circumstances, would the Reagan-clone win New York and California?”
There is one running today, except he’s a Democrat.
(Ba-dum-bump!)
LikeLike
I know a few (politically, not religiously) conservative Jewish Democrats somewhat in the Lieberman vein who supported Hilary Clinton in the primaries but refused to vote for Obama because he was “bad for the Jews” and were all set to vote for McCain until he nominated Sarah Palin. One of these people voted for Bob Dole in 96 in protest of marital infidelity. Broadly speaking, the people I know in this demographic are middle aged women who are relatively well-off professionals with families, tend towards the left of social issues but have a personal moral system that is pretty straight laced (like, children before marriage would NOT be ok for their kids), and are very middle of the road on economic ones.
Alternatively, I can imagine some of my religious Republican relatives being turned off by the Ayn Rand talk and anti-contraception stuff and calling women ‘sluts’ who might vote for a Democrat in an election if they thought the Republican candidate would truly harm the poor and middle class. These people are pro-life, but don’t necessarily consider abortion a more important issue in terms of ‘life.’ Alternatively, I have some religious Democratic relatives who would vote for a moderate Republican if they thought the Democratic candidate was hostile to religion.
Anyways, again I don’t know the extent to which these people exist in any meaningful numbers, but I think there are a fair number of people relatively happy with the status quo (at least pre-crash), and who either have one strong issue that’s not clearly partisan, like Israel, which can tip them between two similar candidates, or who have beliefs but no ‘bright line’ issue, and don’t want someone whom they see as too ‘radical’ whatever that may mean. I think people like this often view “balance of powers” as an ideal, so they’ll vote for the Republican presidential candidate and the Democratic senate candidate, or always for/against the incumbent, or something like that.
LikeLike
*oh, as its unclear, my religious relatives are in mostly center-right mainstream Protestant denominations, like the less conservative Baptists and the more conservative Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.
LikeLike
Speechwriters AND speech- givers should study Clinton’s speech. Masterful in making an argument using statistics.
LikeLike
I expect that there’s also a “Bowling Alone” aspect to the large number of “independents” I see mentioned in recent presidential polling–in general, people are simply less inclined to belong to organizations and be involved with them.
LikeLike
The pandering to AIPAC on the issue of Jerusalem is sickening. The fact is the US has always supported the position established by the UN that the 1980 annexation was illegal and no state should maintain any embassies in the city. So far no US president since 1980, not even Clinton has been stupid enough or so craven to the Israelis to change our policy of not having an embassy in Jerusalem.
LikeLike
I come from a cradle-to-grave Democrat family (I am an ex-pat) but several members of my family, including my cousin about my age, and several Boomer-aged members, have become Republicans, usually around when their incomes went over $100k.
LikeLike
But what I’m wondering is whether there really are “swing” voters or if we’re talking aboutt recruited voters. It seems to me that changing someone’s mind is a different strategy than getting someone to vote.
LikeLike
There is definitely scholarly research on wo these indepenents are. I remember reading an article in grad school (read a long time ago) that looked at opinion data and sorted them into categories. Some paid no attention, while others were very well educated about politics and so on. I’d look for those articles, but I only have a few more minutes before the kids get up. I totally agree about the Star Search comment though – I suspect the Democrats won’t get much of a post convention bounce either. So now, conventions are about rally the base and looking forward 4 years.
LikeLike