{"id":6525,"date":"2012-09-07T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6525"},"modified":"2012-09-07T10:30:54","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:30:54","slug":"100-day-sprint-eight-reflections-on-charlotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/09\/07\/100-day-sprint-eight-reflections-on-charlotte\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Day Sprint: Eight reflections on Charlotte"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>That’s a wrap for the Democratic Party’s convention in Charlotte.\u00a0 Now we are truly in the last hurrah of this endless, exhausting and mostly uninspiring campaign.\u00a0 Before pivoting to the final days, here are some thoughts on the Democrats’ big pep rally.<\/p>\n

First, four Positives for the Democrats:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 The Democrats are now, officially, better at this stuff than the Republicans.\u00a0 I don’t just mean running a convention.\u00a0 I mean campaigning, messaging, packaging, all the things that feed a modern, state-of-the-art national election.\u00a0 Their guy, Barack Obama, is a black man running in a terrible economy with a very mixed record and he’s still in the game, maybe even poised for a handy win.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because Democrats are no longer the electoral patsies of the Mondale-Dukakis-Gore-Kerry variety.\u00a0 You may not like their story, but they’re telling it much, much better than Republicans are telling their story.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 I think we began to see the outlines of a real governing philosophy in Charlotte, one that I think Republicans may have a very tough time campaigning against in the final two months of the campaign.\u00a0 For the last three years, Democrats have mostly been in the trenches, fighting for specific things like the stimulus package, healthcare reform and bank regulation.\u00a0 Republicans have branded that stuff “big government” or “socialism.”\u00a0 Democrats took a bit step in Charlotte toward making an argument that all that stuff instead adds up to “fairness” and “opportunity,” particularly for the middle class.\u00a0 If that meme takes hold, it’s big trouble for Romney-Ryan.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Republicans have a gravitas problem.\u00a0 The tea party may mature into something deeper and more confident.\u00a0 All that energy is still very young and muddled.\u00a0 But for now, the contrast between the incredibly deep Democratic “bench” — Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Clyburn, Lewis, Granholm — and the sparse Republican one is striking.\u00a0 In part, it’s a reflection of the fact that the GOP is deeply nervous and conflicted about its most recent history.\u00a0 There’s a reason that Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney weren’t on the stage in Tampa.\u00a0 But it’s also true that the tea party has sent a lot of the Republican Party’s “grand old” leaders packing.\u00a0 Some people have been snickering about the disparity between Bill Clinton and Clint Eastwood.\u00a0 I think it’s a serious issue.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 I think this convention hit just about the right note for white people.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 A lot of the rhetoric has been about how diverse the Democratic Party is, vis a vis the GOP.\u00a0 But Democrats also have to find a way to be the party for average white guy Joes and Janes, who right now are leaning more and more toward the Republicans.\u00a0 Race is always a tricky dance.\u00a0 But the visuals and the messages from Charlotte struck me as offering a pretty comfortable seat at the table for white suburbanites worried about middle class security. White women, in particular — including married, older women who are drifting away from Dems — might be open to this message.<\/p>\n

Now the four negatives for the Democrats:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 The message about “patience” and job “incomplete” may be too little, too late.\u00a0 Barack Obama made a lot of promises about righting the economy quickly.\u00a0 Today’s jobs report is a needle poking, poking, poking at that balloon.\u00a0 I think if Republicans were offering a sexier, more coherent economic alternative — with a more likeable standard bearer than Mitt Romney — this would be a nearly impossible argument for Democrats to make.\u00a0 The best, though imperfect analogy here might be George W. Bush’s handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.\u00a0 By 2004, people were pretty disgusted with the direction of things.\u00a0 Running against a weak challenger, John Kerry, Bush eked out a narrow win by arguing a similar “stay the course” message to the one Obama is peddling.\u00a0 We’ll see if the country’s mood is similar this time.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Most of the people in that big room in Charlotte don’t have thick wallets.\u00a0 I know, I know, you don’t want that to matter.\u00a0 You wish that it was irrelevant that the Democrats have school teachers and union members waving flags, while the GOP has kajillionaires.\u00a0 But it does matter.\u00a0 Now that the conventions are over, we’ll see just how much those $100 million fundraising months (that’s per month) will lift the Romney campaign.\u00a0 Indeed, under current campaign finance laws, political parties and events like Charlotte and Tampa will likely continue to fade in importance, while Super PACs and mega-donors gain dominance.\u00a0 Advantage:\u00a0 GOP.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 Obama just wasn’t that great last night.\u00a0 I know, I know:\u00a0 Democrats wanted him to look more like a president, less like a rock star.\u00a0 And he had some tough acts to follow.\u00a0 But in a convention that generally exceeded expectations, I’d say the president underwhelmed.\u00a0 Clinton rose above the text on his teleprompter, Obama delivered the words well and serviceably, but not with the kind of engagement that energizes living rooms and gets people talking at the water cooler.\u00a0 If Romney were better, and had delivered a speech that lifted his audience (the way Obama did four years ago), I think the Democrat would be in tough shape.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Democrats need to see the numbers move their direction in the polls and so far that hasn’t happened.\u00a0 In fact, in recent weeks the race has tightened to the point where their “big blue wall” advantage is now perilously thin.\u00a0 Yes, Obama leads in 9 out of 10 battleground states, but in almost every case the difference is within the margin of error – and in nearly half the states, it’s under 1%.\u00a0 That’s pretty scary for an incumbent.\u00a0 To be a huge success, Charlotte needs to help Obama get some breathing room in at least one big battleground state — Florida, Ohio or Virginia — and so far we haven’t seen that kind of bump.<\/p>\n

So as to avoid false journalistic equivalencies, I’ll close by returning to my very first point under “positives.”\u00a0 Charlotte was an extraordinarily effective week of political theater and messaging.\u00a0 Tampa much less so.\u00a0 I’m guessing Team Obama feels pretty good going into the debates.<\/p>\n

Now over to you:\u00a0 your impressions?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s a wrap for the Democratic Party’s convention in Charlotte.\u00a0 Now we are truly in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}