{"id":251,"date":"2008-08-29T22:29:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/08\/29\/251\/"},"modified":"2014-10-06T18:56:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T23:56:30","slug":"251","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"CONVENTION AFTER-THOUGHTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I agree with the liberal pundits that the Democrats had a good convention this week. Obama’s acceptance speech yesterday at Mile High Stadium was a bit stern and preachy, but overall the public was impressed. This can be seen by Obama’s bump-up in the daily tracking polls. <\/p>\n

Obviously the blogging world has said a whole lot about the political festivities in Denver over the past four days, and there isn’t too much that I can add. But I will offer a quick review of Al Gore’s speech early yesterday evening. First off, Al was introduced by an old tune from the Fifth Dimension, recorded way back around 1969; i.e., the second half of “Age of Aquarius”, a.k.a. “Let the Sun Shine In”. Yes, the song was appropriate; Gore is both an oldie and a solar powered child (at least at heart; his large carbon footprint<\/a> is repeatedly noted by the conservative bloggers and talk show cranks). After a quick round of applause, he gave a speech that was surprisingly animated. Some pundits claim that he was rushing through it, but I think he was actually putting on some enthusiasm, as compared with his usual plodding speaking style. Also, he now speaks with a slight southern twang in his voice, something entirely lacking during his vice-presidential term and his run for the Presidency in 2000. Who knows, had he used that verve and twang back in 2000, perhaps he would have gotten the extra 530 votes that he needed to win Florida. Ahhh, what might have been. <\/p>\n

One more odd thought: Al Gore now looks a lot like the late, great comedian Rodney Dangerfield. I would have loved it had Gore fingered his collar while complaining about the heat from climate change, followed by a few one-liners about how he gets no respect<\/a> from the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the Democrats traditionally haven’t had much of a sense of humor (and Obama continues this grim legacy). McCain recently made a comment about how his campaign is trying to inject some levity into his messaging. He may be on to a Democratic vulnerability.<\/p>\n

As to McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for GOP vice president: I perused the NY Times and Washington Post web sites, and the reviews of McCain’s choice were unrelievedly negative. Ah, but this is the liberal media, after all. It must mean that they are quite worried about Palin! (And ticked off at McCain for stealing the afterglow of the Dem convention with a bold VP pick; as to Palin’s particulars for the job, I won’t get into that at present. But whether or not she would be right for the job, it certainly was a gutsy move on McCain’s part).<\/p>\n

P.S. — The Democratic criticisms about Palin are that she is inexperienced and that she’s not ready for national politics let alone being one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency. Hmmmmm, sounds much like what people were saying twelve months ago about a young tyro from Illinois (and Kansas, and Hawaii, and the world at large perhaps) who had national ambitions. Hilary Clinton banked her national ambitions on the experience rationale — and lost. Time will tell if Sarah Palin turns out to be as masterful (and lucky) a politician as Barack Obama is. <\/span><\/p>\n

In sum — the Democrats would seemingly describe the Palin pick with the following word: <\/span>audacity<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

P.P.S. — I’ve already seen liberal pundits accusing McCain of tokenism. If I were part of the liberal cheerleader team for Obama, I would NOT go there. And ditto for the conservatives who hope that Palin will make Biden look like an old fossil. Now that these surface issues have reached deadlock, perhaps the candidates and the national audience will get on to the policy issues? Oh, sorry, this is America. What was I thinking?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I agree with the liberal pundits that the Democrats had a good convention this week. Obama’s acceptance speech yesterday at Mile High Stadium was a bit stern and preachy, but overall the public was impressed. This can be seen by Obama’s bump-up in the daily tracking polls. Obviously the blogging world has said a whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4753,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/4753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}