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.
