10:34 PM: Still weird to me, as a Clinton diehard from the 90s, how suddenly Bill is not only universally revered among Democrats. But even Republicans fall over themselves apparently to profess his awesomeness, if only to trash his would be successor.
10:37 PM: Still a mystery to me why Republicans spent the last month building Bill up when he’s going to slip them the shiv like no one else.
10:44 PM: “It turns out advancing opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because of poverty and ignorance restrict growth.”
10:53 PM: Brings it back to the key question: Are you better off?
10:53 PM: Folks with a hard copy of the speech tell me it bears little resemblance to what Clinton’s actually saying.
10:56 PM: “I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it.”
10:57 PM: Hard for me even to fathom how much Clinton is relishing this. Like a caged animal let back out for a brief run in the wild.
11:10 PM: Shorter Bill Clinton: W’w’wait! There’s more!
11:11 PM: Shorter Bill Clinton: Hey, I got a million of these!
11:12 PM: This is excellent news for Mark Halperin!
11:18 PM: This is starting to remind me of when my Daddy taught me to gut and clean fish. I think we’re at scraping off the scales now.
11:22 PM: Okay, I think we’re rising to the finish here. But how can you know?
11:23 PM: Wow, like every great Bill Clinton speech, incredibly long but incredibly good. At post-1988.
“This convention is done. This will be the moment that probably re-elected Barack Obama.” — Top Republican strategist and CNN yacker Alex Castellanos just after Clinton’s speech.
At the point in the movie thriller when they break into the offices of a Big 4 accounting firm and steal the tax returns of the presidential nominee is when I roll my eyes, so I’m still assuming this is an elaborate hoax. But …
This disaster of a “Fact Check” by the Associated Press is almost a testament to the broad accuracy of Bill Clinton’s speech last night.
Not that Clinton didn’t spin facts in Obama’s favor or assert things that deserve real scrutiny — he did. But when you’re forced to fill a content gap with non-sequiturs, beltway bromides about partisanship, or, say, reminding readers that the speaker once lied about extramarital fellatio — yes, really — it suggests you don’t have a lot of material to work with. Read More
But not quite as hard when you’re a GOP staffer and you’re “breaking up” with President Obama.
Not quite as good as Eastwood and the chair, but close.
It’s too far away from Election Day to say Romney and Republican groups have conceded Michigan and Pennsylvania because polls could still change and out them back in play, but make no mistake that this is a big deal. Not earth-shaking. Because most people has both states penciled in in blue. But important.
With the news that Romney is standing down in Michigan and Pennsylvania, now’s a good time to check out the TPM Electoral Scoreboard, powered by PollTracker. Bookmark it. It’s a great way to check in on the state of the race a bit removed from the noise of the national head-to-head polls.