Now, that is what I call emo-porn. (It only works when it's about something that's worth the strength of feeling.)
I left the CSPAN feed running on mute for the whole length of the repeat, just so I could turn the sound back on at the end and watch the thing with the fireworks and the movie music again. And whoever arranged for there to be an American flag waving across the field of the CSPAN cameras for all the long shots is a genius, in his or her quiet way.
I think this is what political conventions are supposed to do, in terms of stagecraft and rabble-rousing, only they never really manage it. If I were a Republican, I suspect I would be sick right now with rage and fear.
Yes We Can on some level always makes me roll my eyes. But this, this hits on the sort of deeper level that Lincoln must have meant by better angels and the mystic chords of memory: America is a grander, more beautiful experiment than this.
This was the speech I've been waiting for him to give, aggressive, lit up with an immensely focused sort of anger. The progressive case. And not 'we can' but 'we must.'
Did you see Buchanan on MSNBC calling it a total success and the best convention speech ever? He was squeeing over it. My god, Buchanan. Tonight Republicans must be dying a little inside and, really, it couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving group of people.
And the rest of the panel staring at him in stunned disbelief. It was a beautiful thing to see. I have to give Buchanan points for at least temporary honesty: it was the speech he'd spent the whole convention complaining about not yet having heard, and when he did hear it, he had the guts to acknowledge it. Unlike large numbers of wingnut diehards, who're still scrabbling to find something they can say about it that has traction
( ... )
Even when I wasn't much of an Obama fan, I did like how he was willing to call bullshit some of those obviously false things that for some reason beltway refuses to talk about -- and be a good enough speaker to pull it off. The swift-boating philosophy only works when no one will stand up and say, publicly, what most everyone knows -- this is bullshit -- when you let those insidious whisper campaigns and their implications stand unchallenged. There was that moment when Obama went, Listen. This is important. And then said it. \o/
I missed McCain's speech, but the Palin pick reads as such a huge fuck you to the republican party's inner elite. Either that, or he really does have a thing for former beauty queens //snark. The tragedy of John McCain is that he is, for all his many, many faults and failings, better than the Rove-level Republicans as a whole have sunk to. (And I think that's why he's going to lose where W won
( ... )
My pre-2000 self keeps thinking How can he lose? And yet the larger part of me keeps looking at these last eight years and answering, Very easily.
Like you say, I want to live in the America that elects Obama so much, but I no longer trust either the American people or the fundamental soundness of the democratic machinery of this country enough to avoid a certain baseline of blank terror when I think about November. How sad is it to live in a country that could elect this version of McCain, where after the last eight years it is even close?
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I left the CSPAN feed running on mute for the whole length of the repeat, just so I could turn the sound back on at the end and watch the thing with the fireworks and the movie music again. And whoever arranged for there to be an American flag waving across the field of the CSPAN cameras for all the long shots is a genius, in his or her quiet way.
I think this is what political conventions are supposed to do, in terms of stagecraft and rabble-rousing, only they never really manage it. If I were a Republican, I suspect I would be sick right now with rage and fear.
Reply
This was the speech I've been waiting for him to give, aggressive, lit up with an immensely focused sort of anger. The progressive case. And not 'we can' but 'we must.'
Did you see Buchanan on MSNBC calling it a total success and the best convention speech ever? He was squeeing over it. My god, Buchanan. Tonight Republicans must be dying a little inside and, really, it couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving group of people.
Reply
Reply
I missed McCain's speech, but the Palin pick reads as such a huge fuck you to the republican party's inner elite. Either that, or he really does have a thing for former beauty queens //snark. The tragedy of John McCain is that he is, for all his many, many faults and failings, better than the Rove-level Republicans as a whole have sunk to. (And I think that's why he's going to lose where W won ( ... )
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But. God. Wouldn't it be nice?
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Like you say, I want to live in the America that elects Obama so much, but I no longer trust either the American people or the fundamental soundness of the democratic machinery of this country enough to avoid a certain baseline of blank terror when I think about November. How sad is it to live in a country that could elect this version of McCain, where after the last eight years it is even close?
Reply
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