Last night was good in the Hall. I don't see how any Democrat could watch all that and still vote for McCain. I enjoyed all the speeches from a blogger perch at club level. Hopefully tonight they light into McCain even more.

Places are a far walk here from eachother, and to go from the Big Tent, to Dean's BBQ to the Green Room to the Hall yesterday seemed to take the whole day. I've got a bunch of photos that I'll have to put up later, time to go get a ride downtown.

I'm hoping for a bounce of Obama on the Gallup tracking to 49 percent. It should be doable, but its interesting how to date there's just one showing up today. The Republicans are on full attack mode here, I ran into the bulldog Giuliani in the press elevator. Realize, that he is the one giving the RNC's Keynote convention speech, and here he is bashing Obama already.

I've been pretty busy and not a lot of downtime for blogging the last two days. I wound up getting into the hall yesterday right before Ted Kennedy spoke, the security lines were abominable in their length. Definitely though, that presence was the crowd energizer of the night. The later speeches were good, just not as exciting in the Hall. One thing I watched was the people handing out signs, they have quite a job, and a lot of them go unused. The 'Kennedy' ones and the 'Michelle" ones, which were first and last, got lots of use. But inbetwee, they handed out "One Nation" and "Common Values Common Purposes" neither of which the crowd on the floor wound up using during the speeches in-between.

Prior to the speech, I stopped by for Jared Polis, who spoke with a couple of other congressional candidates about their endorsement of the "Responsible Plan" along with Matt Stoller. And before that, hung out in the blogger tent, which is what you might imagine what someone would come up with if they wanted to put together a blogger sweat shop, with free meals and free beer so as to keep the bloggers on their couches happy. I got a pass from Arianna for Huffington Posts free massages that I need to schedule. There are yoga classes at 7 am where I will likely only participate in spirit.

I'm staying at a Ramada hotel down a bit from downtown, and yesterday thought I'd walk out Colfax to the hotel from the arena, instead of the parties, but wound up walking the wrong way... what else. I saw a couple of great bands on Monday, going up to Red Rocks for a concert with Crow and Matthews, and then a B St Band that played Springsteen till late.

I'm gonna try and go by Energy caucus today at 11, before stopping by a Warner function and a Dean BBQ with bloggers, before heading into the Arena and blog something of substance. Mostly here, I feel like I'm wondering how I'm gonna get to the next place on time, and if I'll ever blog it all.

McCain's new ad, 'Passed Over':

Well, for one thing, this pretty much should rule out McCain choosing Romney, as what the latter said about McCain was much more scandalous.

Second, is this effective?

Maybe in the short-term, but for this to have any type of long-term traction, McCain is going to have to actually do something to appeal to the disgruntled Clinton supporters. He may just be trying to reinforce their resentfulness, but its dangerous to do that in a cynical way. McCain choosing an anti-choice rightwinger would signal just that too. As Markos points out:

There's no way that McCain is going to make all sides happy with his VP choice either. We are just as likely to come out of it on the other sides with both sides just as disgruntled as they were heading in.

OK, time to go pick up some credentials. There's not much to do till later tonight, so maybe I'll head over and watch a ballgame this afternoon.

Also, we should hear more, as a talking point/slogan, that this ticket represents "a new direction", which builds into the brand advantage of Democrats.

Here in Denver, I've been asking around for the thoughts about the speeches that are going to be given during the convention. As Michael Scherer writes about here.

From what I gather about the big speeches, Monday will be about telling the story of Barack Obama, Tuesday will be about coming together both as a party and a nation, which leaves Wednesday.

Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bill Clinton. They are the ones that know John McCain close enough to do it.

I spent part of yesterday wandering around the Blog Tent, which is still being built. That, put together by Bobby Clark, is going to be terrific. I dropped by a party put on by a local consulting firm, and then put off going to the Salon party in order to finish writing a CSM article and get some sleep before the week began.

Two contests come to mind. 1908, it was 100 years ago that the last convention was held in Denver. Amidst seeing cops ride around, 12 standing atop metal extensions off the side of big trucks-- ready to pounce atop convetioners a dozen at a time, there are some interesting memorabilia about the last '08 convention. Except that William Jennings Bryan got blown away by Taft, and John Kern was the forgettable Democratic VP, there's not a lot to remember, except that Bryan got his third nomination, and The Nation thought him too radical. There's apparently a fountain that was built then, which has been re-built for the 2008 convention.

The second is the 1928 election, which I refer back to in the CMS article I wrote. The '28 election was a brutally personal campaign, Al Smith vs Herbert Hoover. Smith's being Catholic was the topic of an ongoing, below the cover, smear campaign. It's why, even 32 years later, people wondered if JFK could win as a Catholic. In turn, Democrats played the race card against the Republicans, with such things as claiming that Harding danced with a black RNC member. The source for much of my understanding of the election is Allan Lichtman's Prejudice and the old politics: The Presidential election of 1928.

The reason for latter is because, for all the talk of an era of 'new politics' that 2008 could be, it will undoubtedly, in my mind, be the most ugly one we've had since then in its personal attacks.

I gotta pack to go to Denver in a few hours, next post from the DNCC! (bumped -- jonathan)

Well, you can forget about hearing it first via a text message. The old media has scooped the story of Biden being the VP. Apparently, they have known about it since around 8 pm est, when the secret service detail showed up at Biden's house. A 'blackout' of the news held for a couple of hours, and then CNN was able to confirm that Obama asked Biden.

That aside, here's the report on the wire. It's not all that great, the pick framed that "an Obama administration would be inexperienced on foreign policy" and Biden will help out on that end. The short bio that they give for Biden reads like a mortuary note:

I've always thought that was a pretty low barrier to be crossed, given the ones asking the question are the same who gave us a Bush for 8 years as President.

Let's not fool ourselves that Biden in any way reinforces the message of Obama of change. The choice of Biden as a VP is not a sympatico choice in the way that Gore was for Clinton. Nor is it generational. This choice acknowledges the Obama campaigns need to go out on a ledge here and jump to a new place. They realize that their strategy wasn't working, and are pivoting to something different.

There is a huge hesitancy among the public to embrace Obama. McCain's favorables are at least as high as Obama's, even in some states where Obama leads. Obama trails the generic match-up by 10 percent. You should read Jay Cost for a realistic understanding of this contest.

A month ago, this race was in a very different place. John McCain realized he had a losing strategy, and drastically shifted to another one, and has been gaining on Obama ever since. This week, its become clear to everyone that the Obama strategy wasn't working, and the choice of Biden is a recognition of the current landscape. Most likely, it's not the desired one by Obama, but its probably as good a counter as we could expect given the environment, and McCain's recent moves.

McCain would have loved to just jive it up with the press and get monkey love, but it didn't work like it did in 2000. Obama would have loved to ride above it all while the media sang his praises, but it didn't work like it did against Clinton in the primaries.

There are complications in this choice; many. And a lot to overcome. But one thing it does well is recognize the 2008 GE landscape. Biden can fight a partisan war. He will engage the Republicans on the turf.

I sorta get a chuckle of the traditional media's response to the McCain-Obama match-up. You'll recall the articles that would herald it as a contest that would be 'above reproach' and one that would rise above the Bush and Clinton 'scorched earth' campaigns of the past few decades. Well, it's actually going to be the most dirty and ugly campaign of the last 80 years. I think there's a very real shot of the turnout being lower in '08 than it was in '04 among those who watch a lot of television. And given the demographic turnout model that would favor Obama, that's probably not a bad thing either.

Update [2008-8-23 2:35:24 by Jerome Armstrong]: Now the NYT's, its official. The framing of the choice is not beneficial:

McCain on Obama: Ready to Lead?

Biden on Obama: Not yet Ready.

A friggen silver platter.

And closes with this:

You know, there's a part of this choice that's a Friday night news dump, as in, 'if I gotta make a choice here's one' and with the thought that the VP choice is quickly overshadowed by the convention. Though the partisan-attack lack of Obama is the real gap this fills now, my guess is that the Obama campaign is going to frame this as a governing ticket; but from the early reports, they have some work to do.

There it is...

I am writing an article on this for CSM. Something about what this reveals about how Obama will govern (this is a governing pick), the signal this sends to Democrats and voters, and yes, how is this gonna help Obama win?

What do you think?

Update [2008-8-23 1:48:56 by Josh Orton]: CNN's got it here. Biggest slo-mo drama since Favre. Bayh = Vikings, Kaine = Bears, Biden = Jets. Relief, more than anything.

Also to consider: Biden's the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Next in line on the Dem side? Chris Dodd.

It would be sorta funny if two straight nominations were figured out via navigation clues ahead of time. This potential clue from Ambinder noting the charter flight in progress. Makes sense, flying the VP team out to bring in the candidate.