Wake Up, America!

So, there WAS some fire-spitting rhetoric at the Convention — but it was buried early in the program, and not covered by anyone (except CSPAN).

Sure, it was Dennis Kucinich, who has all the speechmaking style of Kermit the Frog on crystal meth, but it was as close to a barn-burner as the Convention has seen so far.

What needs to happen, though, is for one of the prime-time headliners (Clinton, Biden or Gore), to deliver the same sort of message, with the same passion, married to their far superior speaking skills….which would be carried by the major media outlets.

Here’s hoping.

Hillary’s Speech, and Rhetorical Violence

As some who can’t stand Hillary Clinton, even I think that she nailed that speech last night. She directly pointed her finger at her die-hards and told them to get over themselves (and get over HER, to an extent), and vote for the candidate who is in their best interests.

I also thought that the Twin Cities zinger was brilliant.

However:

My biggest problem with the Convention so far is that they’ve had ZERO fire-spitting, partisan rhetorical attacks against the Republicans. They’re being far too nice, which was pretty much the same problem in 2004, and, in my opinion, a contributing factor to why Kerry lost. They need to be blasting 8 years of Bush/Cheney — tagging McCain as a continuation, and, bluntly, being outrageous and over-the-top — which will get the base fired up, get soundbites covered in the media, and speak to the “plain-speaking, just folks like us” dumbass segment (who respond to anger as honesty).

Tonight we’ve got Clinton — I doubt he’ll go on the attack. He’s too desperate to reclaim his reputation as statesmanlike after his behavior in the Primaries. Then we have Biden — who has to do a lot of the whole “VP introduces himself to the nation” prefunctory stuff before getting to the sort of attack-dog stuff which VPs are supposed to do (and Biden is suited for). So I worry it won’t be enough.

Tomorrow night: Gore (who is capable of fire, so I’m hopeful), and Obama — who will undoubtedly be in “Inspirational and Historic” mode.

There needs to be more “rhetorical violence” done to the Republicans, and I fear that the Dems are making their usual mistake of taking the high road.