Observations on the 2012 Election 9.9.1

I wanted to quickly wrap up my convention thoughts before they fade into the distant past as the campaign heads into the final stretch run. As I said at the end of my last post the Democratic Convention was something totally different from the Republican one. Mainly because what they did in three days totally surprised me. Whether by plan or by luck the combination of Bill Clinton and President Obama, both of whom are the best politicians of their generation, changed the race from a personal referendum on the President to a decision on what kind of world we want to or do not want to live in.

It was rather fitting for Clinton to quote Ronald Reagan in his speech because probably nobody has been able to captivate an audience like Clinton since at least Reagan and before that JFK. I say again, the man is just the political equivalent of a rock star. Among the Democrats Clinton did the best job of describing the RNC saying their message came down to "We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in." Than he did the same with the Democrats message which he said was "We believe, 'we're all in this together,' is a far better philosophy than, 'you're on your own.'" Clinton also added the word arithmetic to the political discourse as the knowledge of said is something the wingnuts are totally lacking in.

The next night President Obama followed with an acceptance speech that was more theory than Clinton's arithmetic. Where we have been, where we are, and the like. It wasn't one of his best speeches he has ever given but it was a good one and good is all that was needed to top Willard's. One short line that was nice to hear, and got my brother to send a 'hell yeah' text, was "Climate change is not a hoax." Obama also spoke at length about the military, veterans, and the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan which was something Willard didn't mention even once. That brings me to another surprise of the DNC, patriotism once seemed totally owned by the flag draped GOP. Today the President actually leads Willard among military and veteran voters.

So the election comes down to this. Do you want to live in the GOP dream world none of us remember and probably never existed or do we try and work together to climb out of the rabbit hole that was the dubya years? Well do ya punk?

I apologize for the bad Eastwood analogy.