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The Oba­mas talk to Dad Jetsons-​​style on stage at the Demo­c­ra­tic Convention.

Last night the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion kicked off in Den­ver, Co. last night. Every­one who has put pen to paper since has raved about Michelle Obama’s strik­ing per­for­mance and the emo­tional appeals to the Amer­i­can Dream from a ter­mi­nally ill Ted Kennedy, a guy who has been to so many Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tions that it’s hard to imag­ine that any one could ever be his last. Both their speeches were inspir­ing to be sure, though the whole expe­ri­ence was blunted by the mas­sive wall of cyn­i­cism that stands between me and admi­ra­tion for any fig­ure in national pol­i­tics. I was slow to join the Obama band­wagon (not out of any love for Hillary Clin­ton, mind you) and now I’m just as reluc­tant to give into any idea other than we’re get­ting ready to send a seri­ously badass moth­er­fucker to the White House.

So, mostly, what strikes me about this con­ven­tion is that for the first time in a while it actu­ally seems like a gath­er­ing of win­ners. All of a sud­den, thanks chiefly to George W. Bush and sec­on­dar­ily to Obama and his star-​​power, the Democ­rats are behav­ing like a party that can win and a party that can gov­ern. They know they’re the shit and they’re going to flaunt it.

I think the best moment from the con­ven­tion so far that illus­trates this point is the one I pulled the pic­ture up top from. This was a moment of pure polit­i­cal stage­craft wherein the Michelle and the girls checked in with Barack in Kansas City via satel­lite, where he is, it seems, watch­ing the con­ven­tion with the com­mon folk. Pretty nice touch and also not a bad cam­paign move. Barack isn’t even in atten­dance at the con­ven­tion, which gives them all the rea­son they need to move it into a 70,000 seat sta­dium when he gets there. It also gives them this mech­a­nism with which he can check in and out of the pro­ceed­ings peri­od­i­cally via satel­lite. And it also gives him a bit of a com­mon touch: at the gath­er­ing of party insid­ers, Barack Obama isn’t even there.

Posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

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One Response to “Obama’s Convention”

1. Christine Says:
   September 1st, 2008 at 6:29 pm

   It was unspeak­ably cute see­ing the girls (espe­cially Sasha) steal the show. They hid their dis­ap­point­ment well.

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