Quick Democratic Nation Notes

CSPAN is calling its Democratic convention coverage "Democratic Nation." A few quick convention highlights from where I stand:

• A star is born: Barack Obama delivers a huge speech
• Howard Dean Takes Back the Scream
• Michael Moore Raises Democrats' Temperature
• Everything Joshua Micah Marshall is writing at Talking Points Memo, especially this little snapshot:

  Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn't even need to be explicitly evoked. The headline of Susan Page's piece in USA Today reads: "Speakers offer few barbs, try to stay warm and fuzzy." But the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.

  I think that's true. I hope it is.
• And of course there are always the aggregators if you have time to sift through the snippets at Technorati, CNN Blogwatch, and Convention Bloggers

On one hand, the convention is so meaningless as to be absurd, plus it verges on some sort of demagoguery to have such an expensive, elaborate, and lengthy rah! rah! event focused so much on one man (Kerry). Wouldn't it be great if the convention was a four-day national discussion about how to improve health care, protect the environment, improve the lives of workers, and create real peace in the world? Oh yeah, that would be great. Wouldn't it be great if we could just hop into a parallel universe anytime we wanted to? Yeah, it sure would.

Posted July 28, 2004 06:15 AM | election 2004