Two days down in the Democratic convention and we've already seen a damn-the-doctors appearance by Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama's I-am-not-a-Black-Panther introduction and Hillary Clinton's attempt to sway the most irrational bloc of her supporters to vote Obama. All of this just days after Senator Joe Biden was announced as Barack Obama's running mate.
Let's take all these things one at a time, shall we? The first one's easy - I didn't see Ted Kennedy's speech, but he's party royalty and he no doubt got the crowd fired up. Moving on to Michelle Obama, I have to say I was impressed but not entirely convinced that she presented the "softer" side of herself and her husband, which I think was one of the main objectives of the speech. The fact is, she's just too accomplished, intelligent and independent to play the demure, cuddly Political Wife, and no amount of talk about family could distract me from the fact that she's a fierce force. In other words, she's a lot like Hillary Clinton! Considering that Hillary helped Bill win two elections, the Democrats should be grateful to have a tough, no-bullshit potential First Lady in the campaign and should stop trying to soften her edges. And maybe Hillary, if she's serious about stumping for Barack Obama, should draw more attention to the evident parallels between Michelle and herself.
Which brings us to Hillary's speech. It was as forceful, charismatic and crowd-pleasing as any that I've ever seen by her. Like a lot of pundits, I was a bit surprised that she didn't make more of an attempt to sell Obama's character, but her job was ensure that Clintonistas become Obamaniacs on election day, no matter how reluctant they are to do so, and so it made the most sense to focus on the fact that anyone who agrees with her policies should think of the bigger picture and check off the box marked "Obama." Did it work? No way of knowing, but I'm a little skeptical about how big the contingent is that would support Hillary in the primaries and vote for John McCain in the primaries. Then again, America's recent electoral history is a history of people voting against their own interests.
At first, I wondered if Obama had voted against his own interests by choosing Biden as his VP candidate. His whole message has been about change, and Biden's been in the Senate since the Paleozoic era. His campaign has been obsessive about staying on message, and Biden's got a notorious penchant for speaking his mind, which means he sometimes blurts out some very unfortunate things - such as his description, early in the primary season, of Obama as "clean" and "well-spoken," a revealing and common backhanded compliment doled out by white people who expect nothing but G-Unit clothing and street slang from black people. However, all of the other VP candidates had fatal flaws. Obama needed to balance his relative inexperience with experience, and Biden has that. He couldn't pick a woman that wasn't Hillary, because that would look like shameless (and ineffective) pandering. And he couldn't pick Hillary, because as popular as she is, she's guaranteed poison to many voters and too easy for Republicans to attack. Also, I don't think she was very much interested in the job.
So I'm warming to Biden. He's a principled guy and he's also not shy about the streetfighting tactics that campaigns sometimes require - tactics that Obama claims to oppose. Now, Obama has a surrogate who can go into the trenches and yet can be plausibly denied or rebuked if he goes too far. The first clue as to how Biden will be used comes tonight, when he addresses the convention. I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch, so someone might have to tell me about it.
By the way, the definition of nerdiness is being tempted to skip out on a party with free booze in order to watch speeches at a political convention in a country that you can't even vote in.
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