Last night at the convention, Democrats unveiled a new kind of economic patriotism. It wasn’t offered as a substitute for what we might call traditional gung-ho patriotism, because there was plenty of that still on display. But unlike past efforts by Democrats to redefine patriotism, this new-style patriotism was muscular, aggressive, and didn’t back down. And it gave a structure and context — a spine perhaps? — to a range of Democratic Party themes, encompassing policy proposals like a more progressive tax system and political attacks on Mitt Romney like his use of offshore bank accounts.
Take a look at how it was woven into speeches by four different Democratic luminaries– Cory Booker, Martin O’Malley, Ted Strickland and Harry Reid: Read More
Forbes.com calls PollTracker Mobile one of the “5 Essential Mobile Apps for the Election Season.”
Mitt Romney is doubling down on a claim he made earlier this year: that the President’s successful bailout of the auto industry was actually Romney’s idea. This from today’s interview with Carl Cameron of Fox News.
My view from the beginning was the auto companies needed to go through a managed bankruptcy. And ultimately, that’s what the president did. He finally took them through managed bankruptcy. But it took him six months to get there.
For some six months, Romney’s has been trying to retrospectively change his position on the autobailout, to position himself as the originator of a plan that proved successful. In fact, Romney supported a form of bankruptcy that most experts agree would have led to the liquidation of most or all of the US auto industry.
How Dems almost lost control of the voice vote in favor of putting God and Jerusalem back in the platform.
White House intervention on ‘Jerusalem’ platform appears to at least slightly change the President’s position on the charged and perennial issue.
Secret Service looking into alleged Romney tax return blackmail attempt.
This has been bubbling up in tech blog circles much of the day: claims by unknown persons on a website popular with hackers that they broke into an office of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Franklin, Tenn., accessed a computer, and stole the tax returns of Mitt and Ann Romney. It’s a fantastical claim, made all the more so by the accompanying extortion demand: pay us $1 million not to release them.
But here’s the thing.
One of the posts going around claimed that thumbdrives containing the tax returns were delivered to the local county offices of the Republican and Democratic parties in Franklin. Both offices have now confirmed receiving packages containing thumbdrives in recent days.
Today the Secret Service visited both offices and took the thumbdrives and confirmed to TPM that they are investigating. Eric Lach pieces it all together.
Here’s the lineup for this evening at the DNCC. You can watch along with us here.
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.