DNC DAY 2

DNC Convention, Days 1 & 2, August 27, 2008
The Democratic convention in Denver has been rather strange as compared to “normal” national party conventions. Most of the press coverage has been over the perceived rift between the Obama and Clinton campaigns. The fact that everyone is talking about the rift, should cause the Democrats a lot of concern. In this election year, the Democrats should be ahead of all Republicans by a wide margin. According to public polls, the Obama and McCain campaigns are within the margin of error, 44-43. Obama has a slight lead, but one would expect him to be up by at least 7 or 8 points at this point.
The Obama campaign did not get any bounce after the Biden announcement. In fact, on Tuesday, the daily tracking poll had McCain ahead by a point. Michelle Obama’s speech Monday night was an impressive speech by a non-politician. However, the one thing that she did not really speak about was who Senator Obama really is. A lot of us believed that she should give us a little background or stories to personify Senator Obama. The only “story” she told was of the drive home after the birth of their first child. This type of story, I think, is what America was striving for. Americans don’t know Senator Obama that well and the person that knows him the best, didn’t really tell us much about him. Last night, the Democrats moved the time of the keynote address by former Virginia Governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner since he decided he was not going to be a hatchet man for the Obama campaign. I can’t remember a time when a party switched the schedule due to the fact that a speaker wasn’t aggressive enough. Governor Warner was thought to be a serious Presidential candidate and many also thought that he would be on most short lists for Vice President. Obviously, the Obama campaign had other thoughts.
The big speech on Tuesday was by New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton gave Obama her full support, but spent the majority of her speech talking about herself, not Senator Obama. Her basic message was that Senator Obama basically agrees with her on most issues, and in fact has taken her position on most issues so he can’t be too bad. She did not talk about how her opinion during the primary campaign of Senator Obama that he was not qualified to be President, was wrong or that he was in fact ready to be President today. The speech seemed to be a speech laying out her 2012 or 2016 campaign for President. She struck the liberal positions on health care, trade, taxes, corporate greed, and women rights. She gave a positive speech for her possible upcoming campaigns.
The speeches shown on the news have been impressive in terms of the way they were given. However, many issues were missing and not much was given in terms of what the Obama-Biden ticket would do for the American people. There have not been policy proposals that would address concerns of America – energy policy, foreign policy, national security issues. Nothing has been said on the issues that Americans care about. Is it because the Obama campaign doesn’t have the experience and the policy positions that Americans want? He has changed his view on drilling to appease the strong American concern with $4 a gallon gasoline, however this position is not the position of the liberal, environmentalists that support the Democrats. I guess they didn’t want to alienate some of their strongest supporters even though most Americans believe that this position is wrong.
I guess that is what this convention is all about, not rocking the boat. In the meantime however, the McCain campaign has been aggressively portraying Obama as inexperienced. They are out in force in Denver and have been putting out a new television ad every day. The ads have a Clinton delegate to the convention (who lost her spot at the convention) talking about her support for McCain. Today during the “national security” portion of the convention they released an ad, “Tiny” where the words of Obama about Iran being a tiny country and not much of a threat. This ad doesn’t really do much to strengthen the view of Obama’s character and show his foreign policy experience. The McCain team seems to have won the first few days of the campaign; this seems evident in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll that has the race tied 44-44. If I were part of the Obama team, I would be rather worried at this point.