The Democrats sure know how to put on a glitzy party, that's for sure, but their convention was all glitz, and no substance. They failed to astonish anyone with bold new initiatives, and was nothing short of a full-scale victim pity party.
And there was Bill Clinton retelling old lies and rewriting history...again. All one has to do is look at the first quarter of 2001's growth rate to tell the story of record surpluses and economic growth: the economy grew backwards at a rate of -.49%. He handed off an economy with decreased GDP to George W. Bush. His surpluses were already on the way out the door while Clinton was still in office.
I wasn't impressed with the rhetoric. All I heard was "poor us, poor us." They delivered on the "why" but not on the "how" except in the most generic terms possible. "Obama has the experience to put people back to work!" How, exactly?
And the Temple of Obama thing on the last night was utterly ridiculous; it's cannon fodder for the opposition, who has already taken great advantage of how it looked, even before the One even appeared on the stage. And when he did take the stage, he announced nothing new, other than some new criticisms of McCain.
For all that trouble, Obama got a six point bounce in the polls, which is considered a moderate outcome. The candidate who gets the bigger bounce in the polls following the respective conventions usually wins the election. In 2004, Bush got a 15 point bounce, Kerry got a five point bounce. Kerry was also dealing (ineffectually) with the Swift Boat ads, which came on the heels of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
I took more enjoyment out of watching MSNBC with it's on-air personality conflicts. THAT was more interesting watching than the Democratic Convention.
I wonder if the networks will monitor the GOP convention next week as closely as they did Obama's. I seriously doubt it. And I also wonder if the GOP convention will be as generic as the Democratic one was. We'll see.
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