Last Night At The Convention

History became official yesterday when Barack Obama was formally nominated as the 2008 Democratic Nominee for President.  Throughout my life there have been all kinds of little things that have happened that may or may not make it into the history books.  However, yesterday was one of those moments when you can say for certain, “That’s one for the history books.”

When it came to speeches last night I was intrigued by several.  Including some that a lot of people might have missed.  I really enjoyed Senator John Kerry’s speech when he compared Senator McCain to candidate McCain.  I really wish that one had been in prime time.  Hopefully a lot of it will make the rounds to the undecided voters.  It was very interesting hearing about how candidate McCain is against bills that Senator McCain wrote.  Always interesting to hear considering how much the Republicans try to make it out that changing your mind on something is bad.  (The rest of the world of course knows that it’s okay to admit you were wrong.)

Former President Clinton gave a pretty good speech.  I think he could have attacked McCain a little more directly but, I liked how he attacked the Republicans overall.  That lays the ground work for helping win some of the Congressional and Senate races this fall.  It was very smart of him to again point out how good things were when the Democrats ran things and how the Republicans through it all away.  That the Democrats had this country on a great path and it was all wasted.

I especially liked when he called McCain and his party buddies extremists.  That part about how for decades they had all these plans that were going to do so much good for the country but, they could never implement them.  And that now we all know just how much “good” those plans really do.  All those plans do is keep the rich, rich and make them richer while hurting the people who work to make the rich all their money.  That is exactly why we have got to take back this country.

As for Senator Biden I was very impressed with his speech.  I was also impressed with him overall.  I still have some worries about whether he hurts or helps with certain groups of voters but, those worries are smaller now.  I think anyone who writes bills to stop violence against women is going to help with women voters.  Clearly this is a man that cares about women.  He is also a man who cares very much about family and that is always a plus.

He too did some comparing of Senator and candidate McCain so that helps.  While he probably still could have gone a little harder at McCain and how similar he is to Bush I feel he did a good enough job of getting the point across.  I’m always for a little hardball in politics.  I don’t enjoy out right smear campaigns where things that don’t matter are brought up or things are twisted almost to the point of being lies.  However, I think we can play hardball by really hitting at how McCain doesn’t really seem to know where he stands on anything.  He’s clearly changing his views on things just to get elected and that is an area we can attack and that is exactly what Biden did last night.

One more big speech to go and I’m pretty sure most of the world will be watching that one.