Democratic National Convention 2012

[CeeKay]

it kicks off tomorrow.  several key notes:

Republicans failed to generate their own hurricane to disrupt the days leading to the convention.

Joe Biden is planning on ripping off his shirt to upstage Ryan by revealing his nickname is indeed 'Joe Sixpack'.

Hulk Hogan is going to gently chide a bean bag chair.

One section for VIP's will include mini-kegs under each seat filled with Obama's White House Honey Brown Ale.

[Eel Snave]

From Conan O'Brien's Twitter:

The Democrats are in Charlotte. Wouldn’t you know it, Bill Clinton showed up in the wrong Charlotte.

[Ironrod]

Deval Patrick did a nice job of skewering Romney's record in MA. He didn't need to lie to make his case; Romney was a mediocre governor at best, and deeply unpopular by the end of his term.

Michelle Obama nailed her speech, too. Compare her hardscrabble story with Ann Romney's strained populism ("We had to sell stock to get by and even stooped to eating tuna fish!").

Unless the Dems reveal a surprise celebrity lecturing to some furniture, I probably won't tune in again until Obama's speech on Thursday, but I am glad that I caught those two performances.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Michelle's speech was hit out of the park. I'm looking forward to Clinton's speech tomorrow, but unfortunately it coincides with the first NFL game of the season...

[Gratch]

Fact checkers so far.

Nothing as "pants on fire" as we saw at the RNC, but there's still a long way to go.

[Ironrod]

— "The keynote speaker and others claimed the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would raise taxes on the 'middle class.' He has promised he won't. Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn't necessarily lead to that conclusion."

Enacting Romney's tax plan would either require higher taxes on the lower brackets or increase the deficit, at least according to the sketchy detail that he has provided. If he keeps his promise not to increase our taxes, then he needs to show how he will not finance his tax cuts with deficit spending, as Bush did. Either way it's a fat target for the Dems...which is why the Romney camp will withhold further details.

The accusation is an extrapolation from flimsy details of a semi-secret plan. It's a stretch to call that a falsehood.

[CeeKay]

Michelle's speech was hit out of the park. I'm looking forward to Clinton's speech tomorrow, but unfortunately it coincides with the first NFL game of the season...

you'd think they'd have scheduled that better 

[Scraper]

Michelle's speech was hit out of the park. I'm looking forward to Clinton's speech tomorrow, but unfortunately it coincides with the first NFL game of the season...

you'd think they'd have scheduled that better 

No shit, no way I'm watching the DNC over football.

[Teggy]

Oof - they just held a voice vote to amend the platform to include one mention of "God" and to state Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The had to hold the vote 3 times because the "no"s were pretty much as loud as the "yes"s. The guy at the podium looked pretty puzzled about what to do. In the end, they just called it 2/3rds "yes", but that was definitely a stretch.

[hepcat]

So much for the concept of separation of church and state.  and why we need to enforce the issue of another country's capital in this venue is beyond me.

[Teggy]

LOL, Kerry's been working on his one-liners.

[Eco-Logic]

So, were you all pleased with Obama's speech?

I thought Michelle and Clinton did a pretty good job, Biden was weak and Obama's wasn't nearly as good as it needed to be.  Especially with today's jobs report.  It'll be interesting to see if he receives any bump at all.

[Ironrod]

I thought Michelle and Clinton did a pretty good job, Biden was weak and Obama's wasn't nearly as good as it needed to be. 

I mostly agree. Thought Obama did a good job of reminding people that there is more at stake than just the economy, and of showing some passion. He did an inadequate job of defending health care reform, as has been true all along. If the objective was to draw sharp contrasts with Romney and show that he's on the right side of the class and culture wars, then he succeeded.

[hepcat]

I found it odd that Obama had a group of weight lifters accompany him onstage for his speech.  That they then would jump in front of the POTUS to tear a phonebook in half or bend a metal bar each time Obama made a promise was also offputting.  I will say that Michelle dressing up as wonder woman and someone dressed as Ryan throwing copies of the healthcare act at her while she deflected them with her bracelets was cool. 

[CeeKay]

Obama and the polls after the conventions:

The state of the race after Tampa and Charlotte:

 President Obama went into the two conventions with the lead over Mitt Romney, and he comes out of them with the lead. (And he may very well have expanded his lead if you believe the Gallup tracking poll and other robo-surveys, about which we ALWAYS preach caution). You can tell from the quotes who's ahead in the race. “The Romney campaign … said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers — most glaringly in Ohio — are working in the president’s favor,” Politico reported over the weekend. You can also tell from the body language, as the Romney camp jumped all over Friday's jobs report to try to change the narrative from the two weeks of conventions. And you can tell from the map, too, with the Romney camp now advertising in Wisconsin but not in Michigan or Pennsylvania. Romney’s next chance (and maybe final one) to change the contours of this race will be that first presidential debate on Oct. 3 in Colorado.