Not to mention the freakshow factor. How many people tuned in just to point and laugh?
None, I’m guessing. Nobody watches stuff like that unless they have an actual interest in it, positive or negative.
The first post McSame speech Daily Rasmussen poll Has Obama up +3. The Daily Gallup will be out a little later.
It was the negative viewers I was trying to get at. I wouldn’t have watched any of the RNC coverage (whereas I was glued to the DNC coverage), but when Palin was put forward I was interested in seeing the debacle. She did much better with the delivery than I expected, but gave tons of ammunition to the online chattering class. I was sitting in my bedroom knitting and listening to my iPod when McCain came on, but my husband came to get me when the protesters started making noise. I ended up watching the rest of the speech and the commentary afterward out of fascination more than anything else.
I wonder how many others whose minds are made up already tuned in just to see the spectacle, give themselves fodder for the water cooler or the message boards, or with the hope of seeing a train wreck*?
*not that it necessarily ended up being that
You’re kidding, I don’t know why he or his minions never mention it.
I tried to watch the speech, but was incredibly distracted by the visuals in back of him. I one time went out to make some popcorn and came back and came back and there were some ancient indian cliff dwellings in back of the candidate. I said, “What is that?” My wife had been for the most part ignoring the television and had been reading a book. She looked up from her book and saw the cliff dwellings and said offhandedly, “I think it’s one of his houses.”
Bwa-hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Oh, my, that’s a good one!
I watched tiny snippets of the RNC, couldn’t stomach more than that, but each time I clicked in it struck me just how powerfully that bare stage with its immense backdrop screen diminished the stature of the tiny human figures who occupied it.
Whenever I looked at that giant monitor, I just kept thinking about how kick-ass it would be if somebody could hack the system and start uploading gay porn onto the screen. Surely the lefties have someone geeky enough to be able to figure out how to do that. A great opportunity lost. Some Stephen Colbert style “Word” commentary would have been awesome as well.
Just to update this. Today’s Daily Gallup has Obama +2.
McCain is getting a small Convention bounce, but not enough to pull even with Obama yet.
Speaking of Gallup, let’s take a look at what they have to say about swing voters as of September 4:
Notice that Obama’s getting a higher percentage of now-decided swing voters than McCain, as is also shown by the graph in the linked article.
Who are these swing voters?
McCain’s chosen a hard-right running mate rather than a moderate. How will that play with voters like these? And what about the diehard Hillary bloc?
Olympia Snowe quite likely could have peeled off a decent chunk of these undecideds. Instead, McCain’s chosen a running mate even more antithetical than he is to the positions and values that Hillary has championed, and given Clinton even more incentive to work her butt off swinging her voters to Obama.