Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

[Incandenza]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

I didn't think that it meant what she thought it meant either, so I looked it up.

1 a: marked by transparency : pellucid b: clear and simple in style 2: absolutely serene and untroubled

I guess one could argue that she's using it in the "untroubled" sense, but I think we know what she's going for.

[Reed John]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

"Pantsuit" is an ugly word, isn't it? Say it a few times "PANNNT-soot."

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Quite apart from the Viagra thing, Fiorina just seemed to drop off the list totally. My best and probably libellous guess is that they found something too juicy in preliminary vetting.

Just watching Kathleen Sebelius again, it is quite staggering just how awful she is. Her material is actually pretty good - there are some very nice oneliners, there are good contrasts drawn between Obama and McCain. If you read it, you'd think it was a pretty good speech. But her delivery is shocking, it sounds like she's reading flight announcements at the airport. The tiny smatterings of applause she gets, she talks over. The audience are very audibly just talking to each other over her. And when she leaves the podium, there's actually a noticeable pause before the crowd realises she ahs finished.

I found Schweitzer irritating, smug, and excessively goofy. But he vey obviously killed, and gave some fantastic soundbites, which will have great life on the stump. So I'm prepared to put my patrician elitist aesthetics aside and say it was a fantastic speech.

So, the elephant in the living room, in so many senses. I have to say, I was fucking shitting it during the long backslapping video, and Ceaucescuesque applause that followed, but...

she absolutely fucking nailed it.

A great speech, plausibly the greatest of her career. Did everything it had to, and did it in spades. I have so much more respect for her today.

Watching Bob Casey now, it strikes me how nice the very pointed comment about disagreeing on abortion was. I increasingly think BHO is going to eat way the hell into the Evangelical vote, unless The Huck is on the ticket.

[Ginger Yellow]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

This is fucked up in ways I can't begin to describe.

[Ginger Yellow]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

I increasingly think BHO is going to eat way the hell into the Evangelical vote, unless The Huck is on the ticket.

I really can't seeing it happening. Evangelical voters have wised up to the fact that Supreme Court nominees matter, and whatever else they may feel about McCain, they know he's infinitely more likely to nominate anti-abortion judges than Obama. Now there may be some voters for whom other issues outweigh culture war stuff, but what the fuck would they be doing voting for McCain in the first place?

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

I think there's some reluctant appreciation of Doug Kmiec's argument that nothing likely to overturn Roe v Wade is going to happen during the next presidency. I think it's easy to underestimate the distaste pro-lifers have for this war, and for the Bush White House generally; they're extremely susceptible to the "More of the Same" argument. I think a lot of them approve much more strongly of Obama's marriage and family than McCain's, and see the strength of their faith mirrored much more clearly in Obama than McCain.

I'm under no illusions that they're going to switch en masse. But I think an awful lot of them, potentially, are habitual Republicans, but see little of what they value reflected in the Republican side this election. If that can be emphasised to them, I think there could be a pretty significant swing.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

She's just proposed him for the nomination by acclaim. Good fucking christ, perhaps this is all finally over.

[Incandenza]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Yep. Here's D-Day's rundown at the blog Calitics:

UPDATE: So Barbara Boxer and Art Torres announced that California passed on its roll call vote. There's a very good reason for that. First of all, the floor is being managed so that a certain state puts Obama over the top. Second, if California voted now, less states would be part of the process, because when Obama reaches the threshold for nomination the roll call immediately ends. So don't go reading anything into this.

UPDATE: Actually, Chairman Torres just explained it to me a little differently. A lot of the superdelegates never checked in with their vote with him ahead of time. He's legally required to go to their delegated proxies for a vote, and a lot of them didn't know about the voting either, so he would have had to announce significantly less votes than the 441 California is granted. Anyway, that's what he told me.

UPDATE: I haven't been totally keeping up with the count, but the overwhelming majority of votes are going to Sen. Obama. It's kind of fun to be in the room for this, but calling it a "floor fight" would be kind of absurd. I'm going to try and talk to Sen. Boxer soon.

UPDATE: Right next to me, Bob Mulholland and some CDP staffers are frantically tabulating votes from Representatives and their proxies. So that appears to be the reason for the pass.

UPDATE: Gasbag emeritus David Gregory is chatting with Boxer and Torres right now. I'm sure that, after the explanation, Gregory will claim that the pass was because of disunity and Democrats who hate one another.

UPDATE: Word is that New York will ask for a voice vote and Obama will be put in by acclamation.

UPDATE: They should really have a running total somewhere in the hall. Mistake. I guess Obama was up to 744 by the time they got to Kentucky, but it's hard to keep track.

UPDATE: New Hampshire, Arkansas, and a couple others have gone entirely for Obama out of unity. New Jersey is up now and they just did the same thing. Let's see if that rumor about New York is true.

UPDATE: So New Mexico yielded to Illinois. And Illinois will yield to New York. And there will be a voice vote... and Hillary has come out to call for it. The whole crowd is on their feet.

UPDATE: It's over. Pelosi moved quickly to do the ayes and nays. It was a nice moment. Lest California delegates worry, all votes will be counted.

[Incandenza]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Excellent post by Digby about Dowd, and the disconnect between the media coverage of the convention and what the delegates are actually talking about:

I know this will not come as news to any of you, but there is something truly wrong with Maureen Dowd. She obviously wrote most of today's column before she heard the speech --- or maybe she was just in her usual demented fugue state and couldn't separate fiction from reality again. Whatever the case, this column is far more indicative of her own obsessions and commitment to the little psychodrama playing inside her head than anything approaching relevance to actual humans.

The only question is whether she still has the juice to change the narrative of last night to reflect her Bizarroworld take on events. I would say that it's even money that by the end of the week we'll be hearing certain quarters of the media parrot her, if only because the "Dems are in disarray" theme is such a compelling nursery rhyme for puerile gasbags. (And others, like Dowd, have a twisted and unhealthy obsession with Clinton and will welcome any opportunity to nurse their delicious loathing.)

...

For instance, I was riding on a tram yesterday with a delegate from the midwest who was festooned with Hillary buttons. I asked her if she was excited about the speech to come and if she expected it to be controversial. She said that she hoped Hillary felt free to bask in the glory a little bit but that she knew she would come through for Obama. I asked her if she was going to vote for her in the roll call and she said she was sent there by people who voted for Clinton and she wanted to cast that vote. But she also said that as soon as he was announced the winner she was going to take off all of her Hillary buttons and put on her new collection of Obama buttons, which she pulled out of her bag to show me. I asked if she would work to get him elected and she chuckled and said, "of course I will, I'm president of the Democratic Club!"

The media see people like her as exotic birds or amusing chimps playing in the trees and consider them decoration for the real event --- the careerist posturings and gossip of the elite insider class, which they present as what these rank and file delegates --- committed Democratic activists and grassroots workers --- think about all this. For them, this is really just one big Georgetown party, displaced from "their town" by necessity in order to keep the serfs happy. The only story that interests them is the story they tell each other about themselves.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Bayh is belying his reputation and properly doing the business here. He's speaking very well, and passionately, getting good pops from the crowd.

Jack Reed's on now. Not a fun or rabble-rousing speech so far, but deeply impressive. He's showing what some of the buzz is about. Could Rhode Island one day be Famous for Him?

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

I -hope-Billy-Bob-comes-down-the-hall-with-the-Monday-Night-Raw-camera-angle(like-in-2004.)

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Bubba Time!

Fleetwood Mac is a nice touch...

[Anton Gramscescu]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Fuck that. We were all subjected to Bubba's Mick Fleetwood obsesssion far too much in '92.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

He is totally killing. This is a fucking fantastic speech.

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Allright-Billy-Bob.

At-least-he-said-the-obvious-shit-at-the-end,that-everyone-called-him-inexperienced-in-92.

Loved-the-neverending-ovation-in-the-beginning.

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

This-poor-military-family-lady-is-shitting-her-pants.

I-hope-she-is-not-Biden's-lead-in.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Wow, when did Kerry grow a pair of balls? Tonight is going very, very well.

Seán Quinn;

"Sound familiar?" Yeah, Bill, it sounds like January through early June, 2008.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

It's hard - I mean, really hard - to remember now how exciting it was when Clinton was elected President. 12 years of Reagan and Bush were over. Everything was going to change.

I was in Little Rock the night he won and it was an absolutely brilliant party (albeit one filled with people doing those sooo-ey noises...they really do that in Arkansas). The next morning, we were driving home through southern Illinois, and stopped in a Macdonald's outside Champagne. The lady behind the counter told us we looked like shit (which was true). We told her we'd just driven 7 hours straight from Little Rock. When she heard this, she started crying. The one promise of his she'd really latched on to was the one about improving student loans and grants. Clinton was President, and now her boy would get a chance to go to college.

I wish I still believed in politics to change people's lives the way I did that day. It's one of the sad things about growing old, I find.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

For a non-pol, this guy is pretty damn good. I don't know that he'll be a non-pol too much longer...

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Who-is-this-lady?

Im-scared-of-her.I-dont-want-her-to-yell-at-me.

and-those-Terminator-legs?

Sign-her-up.Now.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Intro of the convention, has to be. I'm typing this through tears.

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Kathleen-Eugene-O'Finnegan-Biden?

Now-that's-one-Oirish-lass.

And-this-is-one-Oirish-speech.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Well, here's the ticket's aggression...

Detail after detail on the "ready to govern", with specific contrasts against McCain. He's not only blowing that meme up, but also the one about about "all presentation, no substance". It's very, very impressive stuff.

[jason voorhees]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

Goddman,is-half-the-arena-the-Biden-clan?

I-thought-the-Irish-were-supposed-to-have-small-families.

[Ginger Yellow]

Fuck Off John - Endgame Edition

. I think it's easy to underestimate the distaste pro-lifers have for this war, and for the Bush White House generally; they're extremely susceptible to the "More of the Same" argument.

With Catholics, I can see that, but not conservative evangelicals. The most recent poll I can find (June) has McCain up 68-22 among white evangelicals. Similarly, 57% of evangelicals support the war, versus 40% of Catholics.