DNC

I was on the Cape at the beginning of this week so wasn't following the convention all that closely. It's not like there were any surprises. I did TiVo it and watch the few speeches NBC felt the need to broadcast. Seriously just 1 hour a night and they felt the need to fill it with 40 minutes of pundits and 20 minutes of speech. My barber told me Fox News managed to show all of Bill's speech.

So I've caught up on TiVo and watched the Daily Show. Kennedy's speech was fine. A 4 day event for one moment has to have some filler. Michelle's speech was good too. Biden did fine. I'd like to see him debate McCain but it looks like he'll be going again Sarah Palin (who's wikipedia page is growing every minute).

I found Hillary's speech to be a bit marginal. I'm bitter that she ever said that McCain had more experience than Obama and that all he'd bring to the position was "a speech he made in 2002" and that now McCain is using that in his ads. For me, she needed to say she was wrong and sorry to say it. She did say she was a proud supporter of Obama and called for party unity but she spent more time talking about herself rather than Obama. I guess she's still bitter. Maybe that was the best way to pull in her supporters?

Bill on the other hand gave a really good speech. "Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States." He then spent most of the time giving specifics, which really helped.

As expected, Obama's speech was best of all. He did a really good job saying what he'd do (within the constraints of giving a speech) as well as attacking McCain ("It's not because John McCain doesn't care, it's because John McCain doesn't get it", "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow [Osama] bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even go to the cave where he lives", etc.). Perhaps it wasn't as good as his speech on race, but it was a very good start to the final leg of the campaign.

I did read this month's Atlantic and they had a great article, The Front-Runner's Fall about how Hillary blew the campaign. It was a clash in her campaign staff, many of which did not have presidental campaign experience, and her failure to make decisions to deal with the problem. There was also a frightful mismanagement of money. "The campaign wound up raising more than $100 million—but, according to The New York Times, by the time Iowa was lost, $106 million had been spent. The $25 million reserve had vanished, and the campaign was effectively insolvent."