2-1/2 speeches

I watched 2-1/2 political speeches last night. Hillary was Hillary. She’s gotten better from the podium, but what she had to say couldn’t have made anyone happy except a minority of the people who voted for her. And Barack was Barack. He had 20,000 people under a big dome in Minneapolis, and he knows how to fire them up. He didn’t start until around 10:30, and listening was a little like eating a big snack of empty calories late at night. When it’s all over and you ask yourself what he said, the answer isn’t really very substantive.

But it was John McCain speech that disappointed the most. The substance and specifics were there, and he certainly made it clear that he was no fan of George Bush’s policies on the war, disaster relief, fiscal policy, energy policy, international relations, and several other fronts.

But it was a badly delivered speech, poorly staged and poorly conceived. It used to be that whatever else was true, the Republicans could stage a hell of an event, with no detail too small to obsess over. But this was held in a small town near New Orleans in what looked like a high school gym. When the crowd of maybe a couple hundred cheered or booed the echoes were reminiscent of a homecoming pep rally.

Worse, the rhetorical theme he kept returning to was sighting something Obama said or did, that he would never do or say, and punctuating the point with the line, “that’s not change we can believe in,” a counter to Obama’s “change we can believe in” slogan. McCain is also now using the slogan, “A Leader We Can Believe In.”

Questionable grammar aside, it makes no sense to run a campaign that plays off your opponents themes, especially when your opponent is likely to outspend you more than 2 to 1. There’s a long way to go, but the national McCain organization has around 90 employees and Obama has over 700. McCain has raised $96.7 mm and Obama has raised $265.4 mm. These things matter. Republicans have usually had the most professional marketing organization behind them, but this seems very amateurish so far.

In case you’re thinking he can make up the difference with so-called free media, the reason I called this post “2-1/2 speeches” is that CNN broke in half way into the McCain speech last night for a “major, major projection” that Obama was going to get the nomination. Wow. There’s some breaking news for you.

I love Ralph

Ralph Nader announced his latest campaign for President today on “Meet the Press.” You can say what you want about him, but he’s the only person speaking out about the real foundation of most of our problems – money. Big corporations, interest groups, and rich people set the agenda for everything. They buy and sell Congress, and therefore control legislation and regulation. No one can run for public office without their support. And everyone is afraid to speak out in any way against the system that gives them this power.

Hillary has spent $100 million and it wasn’t enough. Obama is raising $40-50 million a month now! McCain may already be hopelessly behind in the money race.

Ralph pulls no punches, and nobody scares him. He’s a better debater than anyone else running; Tim Russert tried to nail him on costing Gore the 2000 election and Nader crushed the argument.

I don’t understand why more American’s aren’t angry about the buying and selling of our government. I though John Edwards would be a more effective salesman of Nader’s idea – and he was to a point – but we’re not mad enough yet.