Election and convention thoughts (with video)

I watched most of night 3 of the Democratic convention last night. On C-SPAN, of course, so that I can actually hear what the convention speakers have to say. It was a great night. Bill Clinton gave a tremendous speech and a powerful endorsement of Obama. When he was President, I was just too young to care about politics and both my parents are Republican-leaning, so I never cared much for him. But his speech last night was powerful and intelligent. He linked the past twenty-some years of Republican ideology to the problems we've faced in the last eight years since Republicans have been in power. He spoke about the challenges we now face and why Obama is the best man for the job.

Similarly, John Kerry gave a surprisingly powerful speech that clearly laid out why McCain is not what we need right now, and how the candidate McCain is different from the Senator McCain on key issues. Yes, flip-flop would be the right word for it.

Biden's speech wasn't as eloquent or as tight, but it was still authentic and passionate. He also speaks from a unique place when he criticizes McCain - apparently they're friends.

Meanwhile, McCain continues to run the kind of campaign he said he wouldn't. He's amping up the fear mongering with a new ad accusing Obama of not taking Iran seriously enough. Problem is, he takes Obama's words horribly out of context. He also recently accused Obama displaying too much confidence in himself and not enough in his country during his speech in Germany. Problem is, when you actually read what Obama said, you just can't reach that kind of conclusion unless you're into "hyper-nationalistic chest-thumping" like McCain. This is GOP fear mongering at its worst, trying to portray a sane, intelligent Democrat as a weak, unpatriotic elitist. I hope people see right through it.

He also continues to release silly new ads almost daily. The funny thing is that he's not paying for them to air - he just relies on the major news networks to run them all day and talk about them. Speaking of the media, Eric Alterman has been tracking how crazy they get at convention time, and how viewers pay the price.

Just one more thing that's been bugging me. A new poll shows that 53 percent of Americans think Obama will raise their taxes. This is incredibly frustrating. First, it shows how effective Republicans have been at convincing people over the years that Democrats only want your money. Second, maybe McCain's misleading ads have been working. Most importantly, it's flat out wrong!! Obama's plan would put taxes back to Clinton-era levels for the most wealthy, and everyone else would get pretty big tax cuts. McCain, on the other hand, would cut taxes the most for the wealthy and barely help out everybody else. See for yourself.

Here are last night's speeches. Clinton:



Kerry:



Biden: