Democrats grabbed hold of Obamacare and held it high during the first night of the convention.
It’s one of the of the GOP’s most devastating rhetorical punches: Obama has not created a single net new job since taking office.
But how you calculate the numbers, which numbers you use, and how much longer Republicans will be able to make that argument give you a lot of insight into the recession, the anemic jobs picture, and the GOP strategy to torpedo the recovery as a way of defeating Obama.
Twitter reports that Michelle Obama’s speech generated nearly twice as many tweets per minute as Mitt Romney’s speech. And Julian Castro’s keynote speech almost matched Romney’s.
Full twitter press release after the jump … Read More
From TPM Reader AL …
With regards to reader ML’s comments on the convention:
I only have the 2004 and 2008 conventions to compare it to, and so far the democrats seem almost super-humanly organized on messaging. Every speech is hitting some kind of trifecta of explaining the party goals in philosophical terms, boasting of Obama’s policy achievements to move towards them, and taking a hit at Romney for having the opposite position.
I often wonder: how is it that political spouses often end up being such good speech makers? This was an amazingly good delivery. But Ann Romney’s was pretty good too. Giving a lengthy speech in front of millions of people is really, really hard. It takes a number of skills wrapped into one — timing, a good speaking style, coolness under pressure. It’s no secret that most politicians can do it reasonably well. That’s why they’re politicians. Baseball players are good athletes. Well, that’s how they became baseball players. But again, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the spouse is good at it too.
But man, that was pretty good.
TPM Reader ML likes what he’s hearing …
This is my first convention so I dont know if these are always like this …. But I doubt it. It’s as if someone in the Obama campaign has read your theory of bitch slap politics.
Our report on Julian Castro’s keynote address taking on “You Didn’t Build That”.
10:20 PM: Chuck Todd said the Obama campaign had to scrape the barrel to come up with Julian Castro as a non-white Keynote Speaker. I’m not sure about that. This strikes me as a pretty inspired delivery.
10:27 PM: I think this guy’s got a future in front of him. Julian Castro, 37 years old.
10:30 PM: Four very powerful speeches tonight: Strickland, O’Malley, Patrick and Castro. I’m not part of our team down in Charlotte. So I know that leaves a bunch of folks out. But I’ve watched through the prism of television coverage. On their own merits, I thought these were each strong speeches. But what strikes me most is their coherence as a set. Common set of themes, full-throated endorsement of a second Obama term and a common, thematically united set of knocks at Mitt Romney. All of this is what made this evening seem very different from the RNC last week. Quite simply, it lacked any coherence. It was a jumble. A number of the talking heads tonight have noted how infrequently most of the Republicans speakers mentioned Mitt Romney and how many seemed to talk mainly about themselves. Very different.
10:55 PM: A good reminder that Romney-speak seems to assume that success is only about your salary and bank accounts. Even your domestic ones.