From a less objective vantage point here in Denver, I agree with J.P. Green’s assessment that the convention message operation is now fully on track. Bill Clinton fully addressed all the carping concerns expressed in the media (and by the McCain campaign) about the commitment of the Clinton’s to Obama’s cause, and also did an excellent job connecting the dots among Bush, McCain, and the conservative ideology of the Republican Party. The contextualizing of Biden’s speech–the video, Beau Biden’s intro, the “surprise” appearance of Obama–was perhaps even more effective than the speech itself. And in addition to the speeches Green touted, I thought John Kerry went after McCain quite well, particularly in the line about McCain needing to debate himself before debating Obama.
But it’s all a lead in to the Big Show tonight at Invesco Field. There are obviously some logistical challenges to this kind of event. In the Red Rehearsal Room yesterday, our speech trainer Steve Allen cleverly created a reverb effect to give speakers a taste of the acoustics of a football stadium. But I gather they’re going to have some sort of best-money-can-buy Grateful-Dead-style sound system, so it may not be that big a problem.
The biggest obsession for convention-goers yesterday was securing tickets for Invesco, which are very hard to come by. You can only imagine the hysteria that would have ensued had Obama delivered his acceptance speech in the much smaller Pepsi Center.

The Denver doings Wednesday night were surprisingly impressive. I was expecting a pretty slow night, if not a yawner, hoping for maybe a good Biden speech. Instead I was glued to the tube throughout, watching one powerful presentation after another, with few slow spots. Some of the shorter presentations were exceptional — Tammy Duckworth and Admiral John D. Hutson especially. Hutson, a self-described lifelong Republican until he recently joined the Democratic Party, was not an exciting speaker stylisticly. But his content was laser-sharp — his five word riff “Arrogance Abroad, Incompetence at Home” is about as good a short meme as we’re going to get for the Bush-McCain continuum.
Bill Clinton was polished, eloquent and delivered the requisite endorsement of Obama with panache. The Biden package — video bio, son’s intro, and speech — was very well-done and his speech was heartfelt and fierce. It’s hard to imagine Romney holding up well in comparison. The lesser-known Pawlenty may be a little harder for Biden to target. Obama’s surprise visit, joining Biden onstage after his speech, was a huge hit with the delegates and a nice capper for the evening.
C-SPAN proved a good way to go. You don’t have to listen to any lame commentary telling you what you see and you get to experience the spectacle unfiltered. Also the colors seem more vivid than the PBS broadcast.
Kudos to the program organizers for producing a tight, mediagenic convention program for Wednesday night. All in all, an excellent set-up for the big day.

Well, it’s hard to imagine much more Hillary Clinton could have done last night to explicitly and implicitly ask her supporters to actively support Barack Obama. Sure, maybe she coulld have gone after John McCain at more length, but she had to do a lot of complicated things in this speech–most importantly, thanking her fans and telling them to vote for McCain or sit out the election would be a betrayal of their own efforts and values.
Aside from HRC’s speech, the most notable thing that happened last night was the slow but steady introduction of some red meat for the ravening Democratic delegates in the convention’s rhetorical diet–most obviously in the speeches of Brian Schweitzer, Ted Strickland and–to a lesser extent–Mark Warner.
But my favorite speech of the night, because she had rehearsed with us in the Red Room, was that of Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabaman whose lawsuit against the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has become the contemporary symbol of the fight for gender pay equity. If you heard Lilly, you heard not only one of the purest Southern Appalachina accents around, but a strong personal story about the stubborness of sexism, and the need for leadership–executive, legislative and judicial–to overcome it. In a way, Lilly Ledbetter’s endorsement of Barack Obama should have been as compelling to women mourning Hillary Clinton’s loss as HRC’s own endorsement.
Check out Matt Yglesias’ reaction to Lilly’s speech, and be sure to read his quote from National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg deriding that same speech. And if you found Lilly’s speech powerfukl rather than ridiculous, you might not want to consider voting for Jonah’s candidate, John McCain. (UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

One of the time-honored traditions of national political conventions is the struggle between convention manangers, who wish to promote the image of a relentlessly united and enthusiastic party, and the news media in search of controversy.
Inevitably, the struggle in Denver revolves around the Clintons, Hillary tonight and Bill tomorrow night.
To read some of the news accounts, HRC’s speech will represent a moment of high drama and political peril. Will Hillaryites stage some sort of protest? Will the ongoing negotiations on the precise staging of the roll-call vote tomorrow break down and break into public?
If you’re in Denver, and want to get on television, the most direct route is to pose as an angry HRC supporter who’s mulling over a vote for John McCain.
The reality is that HRC will almost certainly deliver a rousing unity speech, to an appreciative audience, and will personally offer the motion on Wednesday to make Obama’s nomination unanimous. Yes, Bill’s speech on Wednesday will be watched (just as his last two convention speeches were) for signs that he’s “upstaging” the nominee, though this year the nominee will be exceptionally difficult to upstage.
And in the end, all the talk about Obama/Clinton discord could actually increase the perception of unity, when the discord fails to materialize.

Paul Begala and Chris Bowers lead the charge today, calling for a more attack-focused Democratic convention. At OpenLeft, Bowers asks,

…Other than Pelosi’s less than convincing “John McCain is wrong” call and response, do we have any plans to attack John McCain during this convention? I haven’t heard any of it so far. It would be a massive waste of an opportunity if we don’t really open up on him in this election. For example, the Carter video could have shown Bush and McCain sharing cake when Hurricane Katrina struck. But we decided to take a pass.

A sentiment amplified by Desmoinesdem in the comments following Bowers’ post:

I also feel like we need to build a strong narrative against McCain this week. The Obama campaign has issued a tough statement here and run a state-specific negative ad there, but they are not building a concise case against McCain comparable to McCain’s case against Obama (shallow celebrity politician who’s not ready to lead).

Writing at HuffPo, Begala adds,

This is a no-brainer. The political press is abuzz with overblown stories of a Clinton-Obama rift. There are some hard feelings, but less than you’d think, given the closeness of the primaries. But I have a seven-point plan for uniting the Obama and Clinton wings of the party:
Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.
Attack.
…If the Democrats do not spend the remaining days of their convention — hell, the remaining days of the campaign — in an all-out assault on the ruinous Bush-McCain policies, they will lose.
I was for Hillary in the primaries, but when she endorsed Sen. Obama, I proudly sent him a check for the legal maximum. On the memo line of the check I wrote, “FOR NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ONLY.” No matter what minor difference Hillary and Barack had, they pale in comparison to the corruption, incompetence, dishonesty and criminality of the Bush-McCain Republicans.
Democrats need to attack as if the future, the country and the planet depend on it. Because they do.

Begala and Bowers echo a concern shared by many Dems, including myself — that the Dem Convention may squander too much precious air time on “getting to know the candidates” and all that. Begala is also concerned by reports that Dem keynoter Mark Warner will avoid attacking the GOP ticket because he needs Republican votes to win his Senate seat:

To be fair, Warner is running for the Senate in a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson. Tearing into war hero McCain while running in a state full of military families could prove problematic for a guy whose reputation as governor was made on bipartisanship.
Democrats should not have put Warner in this bind. They should have chosen as their keynoter someone who, like Pelosi, can give voice to the anger and anxiety of hundreds of millions of Americans. Someone who will show McCain to be the Bush clone that he is.

Michelle Obama did an outstanding and necessary job last night. But Bowers and Begala are right that it’s time to engage the adversaries with the most withering attacks Dems can mount. Here’s hoping the Dems will draw some blood tonight, and that Warner will realize he needs to show some mettle to this audience if he wants to be perceived as a potential president. Certainly Senator Clinton has never been a wallflower about attacking the opposition. Dem leaders should not have to be reminded that this is the largest television audience they will get between now and November 4. We can be sure that the GOP convention will waste little time before they go on an all-out offensive against our ticket.

On the first formal day of the Democratic Convention, any pre-game jitters seem to be gone, and the show will soon begin.
Here in the Red Rehearsal Room (the other two, appropriately, are called White and Blue), we’ve just rehearsed AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, and the who speech prep system seems to be functioning well. The total number of speakers is down noticably from past conventions (a good idea, IMO), and the number of what everyone calls “real people”–some who have personal stories to tell about Barack Obama, and other who exemplify one or another of the major convention themes–is up. Nobody seems to have been told they can’t criticize George W. Bush or John McCain, which is a nice change from the message straightjacket in Boston four years ago.

They’re at it again. The National Black Republican Association is bragging that they have put up 50 billboards in Denver claiming that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. No doubt they hope to cast a pall over Obama’s acceptance speech, which will be delivered on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s total B.S., of course, and anyone who can read can see why by paying a visit to Chapter 23 of the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., in which America’s greatest ciivil rights leader has some disparaging things to say about the GOP and its candidate of the day, among them:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. The “best man” at this ceremony was a senator whose voting record, philosophy, and program were anathema to all the hard-won achievements of the past decade.
It was both unfortunate and disastrous that the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater as its candidate for President of the United States. In foreign policy Mr. Goldwater advocated a narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude that could plunge the whole world into the dark abyss of annihilation. On social and economic issues, Mr. Goldwater represented an unrealistic conservatism that was totally out of touch with the realities of the twentieth century. The issue of poverty compelled the attention of all citizens of our country. Senator Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated. On the urgent issue of civil rights, Senator Goldwater represented a philosophy that was morally indefensible and socially suicidal. While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.
While I had followed a policy of not endorsing political candidates, I felt that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented.

And just to clarify, Dr. King’s son and namesake, Martin Luther King III, had this to say about the same billboards put up by the same group in FL and SC:

It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest that he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states.

Given the record of Dr. King’s stated views, you would think Republicans would have enough sense to know that this type of disinformation and distortion will come back to bite them where it hurts. Hopefully some enterprising Denver reporter will figure out who is paying for the billboards.

I’m in Denver from now through the week, working in one of the convention rehearsal rooms, and will try to regularly do some posts giving a flavor of the backstage scene.
As always on the eve of the convention, there’s a fair amount of confusion, with thousands of volunteers trying to find out where they are supposed to be and how to get the credentials to get there. Security is pretty heavy; there was a two-hour line yesterday morning for access to the Pepsi Center (the main convention venue). Downtown Denver is saturated with police officers, many in riot gear (today is apparently the big day for demonstrations). Best line I’ve heard so far was from a coffee shop waitperson who said: “The SWAT teams all have scuba gear; guess that’s in case there’s trouble at the Aquarium.”

Ed Kilgore’s post (see below) about the inclusion of a timetable for withdrawal in the new U.S. Iraq status of forces agreement is right on target. In the real world of foreign policy, the agreement marks a fundamental shift to the policy outlook and world-view of Barack Obama.
The Neo-conservative fantasy was to make Iraq a stable, pro-western state economically oriented toward the U.S. and favorable to U.S. interests. To accomplish this inescapably implied a very substantial long-term U.S. military presence – possibly for decades – and any timetable for withdrawal or other explicit agreement that U.S. forces had to leave the country had no part in the Neo-con plan.
As political issue, however, the negative consequences for John McCain’s presidential campaign can to a significant degree be controlled. The administration and the McCain campaign are already redoubling their efforts to make convoluted semantic distinctions between “aspirational goals” and “inflexible deadlines” in order to maintain the fiction that there is some difference between what Bush and McCain have been forced to accept and what Obama has advocated throughout his campaign. They are also energetically promoting the notion that the demand for a timetable is actually a piece of superficial political theater the Iraqi leadership is employing to pose as nationalists in upcoming elections and not really a serious diplomatic demand.
These semantic games – unconvincing as they are to serious observers – will be sufficient to satisfy many ordinary voters because for a large number the specific issue of timetables is ultimately a small subordinate part of two larger political narratives.

Read more…

As our staff post reported yesterday, the latest New York Times/CBS poll indicates the selection of the vice presidential running mate is an important factor in the ballot decision of 25 percent of voters.
Any choice Obama made would disappoint some important constituency. And it may well be that the net number of votes gained and lost as a result of different choices wouldn’t vary all that much regardless.
The selection of Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate is nonetheless a solid choice that should help with some pivotal constituencies, including Catholics, the white working class, seniors and those concerned about Obama’s foreign policy experience. Biden’s home state, DE, doesn’t add any electoral votes. But his Scranton roots should help Obama shore up central PA and perhaps NJ, all of which Obama had a good chance of winning anyway.
Biden also gives Obama a savvy running mate, who can help Obama target McCain’s weak and strong spots more effectively. As the Senate’s top foreign policy expert, Biden will be in position to provide helpful counsel to Obama on a daily basis. Biden also has a gift for quotable sound bites and an ability to explain policy in simple terms without talking down to voters. I wouldn’t worry too much about gaffes, despite his “clean and articulate” blunder in the primary season. Biden is too smart not to have learned from it. The ’88 plagiarism controversy? I think most voters know that top politicians use speechwriters, and they sometimes screw up. Besides McCain’s “cross in the sand” story’s similarities to Solzhenitsyn’s account makes it unlikely McCain’s campaign will make too much of it.
The selection of Biden may hurt some with women, southerners and Virginians in particular. Kaine would have helped more with Virginia, and perhaps the south. As Ed noted yesterday, however, Obama has some strengths in VA that could provide a margin of victory, especially if Webb, Kaine and Warner campaign energetically for Obama. As for the south as a whole, Biden’s selection won’t help much, except possibly in FL, where Biden may help elevate seniors’ comfort level with Obama. It may be that Biden as veep may chill Obama’s southern strategy altogether. Obama can win without any southern states, but only if he wins just about all of the other swing states. As I noted in my 8/19 post, no Democrat has ever been elected without winning some southern states, and Obama has to win 72 percent of electoral votes outside the south if he is shut out in the region.
Perhaps the toughest problem posed by the Biden choice is winning the votes of women who are disappointed that a woman was not selected. As Ed pointed out yesterday, the NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll indicated that “among self-described Hillary Clinton supporters, 52% say they now support Obama, while 21% support McCain and 27% are undecided.” Worse, when that poll was taken, there was still hope that Obama would pick a woman running mate.
The Dem ticket’s strong pro-choice advocacy will help with women. Dems should miss no opportunity to point out that McCain supports criminalizing abortion. Few women, even some of those who have doubts about abortion, want women who have abortions to be subjected to criminal penalties.
The important question facing the Obama campaign now is, what can be done to win more support from women and southerners. Obama’s GA and NC campaigns may be crippled by the Biden selection. Perhaps the only hope in these states is that the African American and youth voter registration surges are big enough to justify continued investment of campaign resources. If Sam Nunn and Jimmy Carter campaign vigorously for Obama in GA, it might help with some white and conservative voters.
One thing that might help with both the south and women is to name his cabinet before the election, and make sure that women and southerners get a healthy share of the top posts. Paul Waldman suggested naming his cabinet at the same time as his veep pick. But Obama could still release cabinet nominees slowly between now and the election to good effect. It would give him a half-dozen or so days when he could dominate the news in a positive way, and it could make McCain look disorganized in comparison. Imagine the splash, for example, if Nunn and/or Clinton were Obama cabinet nominees going into November 4. The Democratic party is loaded with impressive women and southern office-holders. Obama can benefit by leveraging this resource before the election, and it would show a bold, innovative spirit that would inspire confidence in the electorate..