All right, he told us who he was, differentiated himself from McCain while still showing him respect, hit back at those who’ve maligned him without getting down to their level, laid out some of his priorities - I think he did everything he needed to do. It wasn’t as moving or inspiring as his 2004 address, but it had more work to do. He presented himself as sincere, compassionate, patriotic, tough, and intelligent.
A bow with a bible wrapped inside of it.
Nice speech, of course, but did it reach the people who “just don’t trust him”?
I think the ones who truly just don’t know may have been somewhat reassured. This wasn’t just pie in the sky; it was a pretty concrete list of the things Obama hopes to achieve during his first administration. I admired the way he was able to weave in both the inspirational and the down-to-earth in this speech, and in that respect, think it may well have surpassed the speech in 2004. The 2004 speech was undoubtedly a better keynote address. But I think this was a better candidate acceptance speech.
The truly undecideds may have been swayed. but there are a whole lot of people who claim to be undecided, but aren’t really; they’re afraid of Obama because he’s so young, so new, so bright, so foreign to their everyday lives. They’re people who are terrified of what they perceive as intellectuals in their day-to-day lives as well. Fortunately, these people seem to be fairly rare, and getting rarer. I live in a neighborhood where I may be the only person on my block to have a college degree. To the best of my knowledge, insofar as anyone knows or cares, I’m admired and respected, not feared or despised. But then, I live in a blue state, New Jersey, where you’re permitted by law and custom to admire things like education.
On the whole, I think it was a very good convention. It did an excellent job of firing up the rank and file, and we can hope it did a decent job of bringing over some new converts. It provided lots of sound bytes for future commercials. What more could we ask of a convention?
I’ll be at an “Obama House” or residential campaign center Saturday night here in CT. It’s going to be food, drink, good conversation…and legislators. There will be a couple CT legislators there who live in my town, talking candidly about what we are going to do to get the word out. Last night’s speech did was it was designed to do. Now it’s up to the teeming millions who are Obama supporters, or fence sitters to not be afraid to elect a new, young politician to the white house…If we can actually get out the legions who say they will vote Obama or simply democratic, we will win this election. But it’s not going to be a cake walk sorry to say. That’s why I go to “support groups” for democrats…really campaigning groups but we call them support groups! 