Here's NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter on why Sarah Palin is all but set up for failure in the fall.

(READ STUMPER'S TAKE ON THE "EXPERIENCE" QUESTION HERE; MORE THOUGHTS ON PALIN HERE.) 

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's debut in Dayton on Friday was good political theater. She delivered a pitch-perfect speech (presumably written by McCain's ghost writer, Mark Salter) with a panache that suggests she could be a natural on the national stage. The well-kept secret of her selection let the GOP step on the story of Obama's boffo acceptance speech in Denver. It's not hard to see why she appealed to McCain: her middle-class roots; her older son headed for Iraq with the U.S. Army; her opposition to the earmarked "bridge to nowhere," which is arguably the only domestic issue that gets McCain excited. If camera-ready Palin helps McCain close the gender gap and win in November, she'll be history's hockey mom.

But there's a reason that rookies rarely score hat tricks. It's not her lack of name recognition; America loves a fresh face, especially one that's a cross between a Fox anchor and a character on "Northern Exposure," the old TV show about an Alaska town about the size of Wasilla. The problem is that politics, like all professions, isn't as easy as it looks. Palin's odds of emerging unscathed this fall are slim. In fact, she's been all but set up for failure.

"What is it exactly that the vice president does all day?" Palin offhandedly asked CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow in July. Kudlow explained that the job has become more important in recent years. Palin knows the energy crisis well, even if her claim on "Charlie Rose" that Alaska's untapped resources can significantly ease it is unsupported by the facts. But what does she know about Iranian nukes, health care or the future of entitlement programs? And that's just a few of the 20 or so national issues on which she will be expected to show basic competence. The McCain camp will have to either let her wing it based on a few briefing memos (highly risky) or prevent her from taking questions from reporters (a confession that she's unprepared). Either way, she's going to belly-flop at a time when McCain can least afford it.

Even on energy, Palin has her work cut out for her. First she has to convince McCain to do a 180 and support drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Her much-repeated sound bite that ANWR is only the size of the Los Angeles airport and thus not environmentally destructive sounds good, but won't do much to counter the argument Obama made in his acceptance speech, which is that drilling is only a "stopgap" measure for achieving energy independence. Palin will benefit from very low expectations in her debate with Joe Biden, but she's going to have to have a photographic memory for new information to avoid getting creamed...

It's hard to know how many women will flock to the GOP ticket because of Palin. She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over George W. Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools. Women are not likely to be impressed by her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape and incest. In 1984, Ronald Reagan carried 56 percent of female voters, despite Ferraro's candidacy on the Democratic side. The balance between work and family, always a ticklish issue, will be brought into bold relief by the fact that the Palins' fifth child, Trig, was born with Down syndrome in April. Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman, may shoulder the bulk of the child-rearing duties in their family. But many voters will nonetheless wonder whether Palin should undertake the rigors of the vice presidency (and perhaps the presidency) while caring for a disabled infant. The subject will no doubt arise on "Oprah" and in other venues.

One way or another, an African-American or a woman will hold high office next year for the first time. That's progress. And it's possible that Palin is so talented that she will prove to be the face of the GOP's future. More likely, this "Hail Sarah" pass won't do much to help John McCain get into the end zone. He'll win or lose for other reasons.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

[Ed: Guess this means that Palin--and McCain--won't playing the "gender card" anytime soon.]

By Karen Breslau 

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin arrived backstage for our NEWSWEEK Women & Leadership Event in Los Angeles last March, John McCain had just wrapped up the GOP nomination. Palin had yet to endorse McCain—she liked Mitt Romney—and as we waited in the green room, I urged her to "feel free" to make some news on stage. She grinned broadly—looking back, I guess it was a grin of the Cheshire Cat variety—and thanked me for the offer.

Once onstage, together with Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Palin talked about what women expect from women leaders; how she took charge in Alaska during a political scandal that threatened to unseat the state's entire Republican power structure, and her feelings about Sen. Hillary Clinton. (She said she felt kind of bad she couldn't support a woman, but she didn't like Clinton's "whining.")

I joked with her about being on McCain's short list for vice president, and we had a good chuckle. We also talked about the challenges of running a government while also raising a large and young family. At the time, I didn't know that Palin, clad in a loose, dark dress, was seven months pregnant with her fifth child. An aide called me the next day to tell me that Palin would be announcing the pregnancy at home in Alaska and that she had wanted me to know as a courtesy. She was sorry she hadn't mentioned it the night before.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

The Kerry States: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin
The strategy starts with holding the 251 electoral votes that John Kerry won in 2004; of those states, four are currently on Obama's battleground list. Even though McCain has been leaning hard in Pennsylvania, Plouffe noted, the polls currently show Obama with a five to 10 point advantage. What's more, the Democrats have gained 316,000 new registrations since January, while the Republicans have lost 60,000. The result, says Plouffe, is that "in a state where we already have a demographic advantage, where our base vote is higher than McCain's, he's going to have to win a massive amount of the swing vote to have a chance." He's less confident, however, about Michigan, which was off-limits to Obama during the primaries. "Obama is less formed in Michigan as a campaign and as individual," he says, "so we've had to play catch-up." That's why Obama held his two biggest endorsement rallies--John Edwards and Al Gore--in the Great Lakes State. Asked whether selecting Mitt Romney as his running mate could help McCain clinch it, Plouffe was ready with a red-meat retort. "Presumably the reason to pick Romney would be to help on the economy," he said. "But boy, that would be the greatest job-killing machine in the history of American politics. Mitt Romney is an expert on Cayman Island tax shelters. You couldn't have a more out-of-touch ticket."

The Tipping Points: Ohio and Florida
One major benefit of Obama's expanded battlefield, according to Plouffe, is that "there are a lot of scenarios where we don't need" Ohio and Florida to win the election. Still, Team Obama is "pouring everything we can into those states." The reason? because "if we win Ohio or Florida, I don't think John McCain has any chance to win the presidency," he said. Regarding Ohio, he confessed that "it's close now, it'll be close in September and it'll be close in October." Surprisingly, Plouffe seemed more "bullish" about Florida--a state that many Republicans have said belongs to McCain. Asked why, he pointed to the the 900,000 voters under 40 and the 600,00 African-Americans who were registered but didn't vote in 2004--as well as a combined total of more than a million unregistered voters in both demographic groups. "The places where you have the highest number of base voters are the places you have the best chance of winning," he said. "We think there's going to be slightly more than 10 million people voting in Florida. Our base, we think, is more than 5 million. You gotta like that. Now, I'm not saying we're going to turn everyone out. But it lessens the amount of the swing vote you have to get."

The Targets: Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, New Mexico, Iowa
Confident that Obama will win two of 2004's closest red states, Plouffe noted that his boss is polling outside the margin of error in New Mexico and Iowa. "They're the most likely to flip," he said. Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina will be trickier. Plouffe is buoyed by the recent influx of young professionals to the suburbs of Northern Virginia, but admitted that registering new residents is tricky and said that Obama can win without them provided he turns out the youth and black votes. "We're not just trying to increase turnout," he said. "We're trying to get the highest percentage of African-Americans to vote in our electoral history, and the highest percentage of voters under 30." Claiming Obama has a "slim lead," Plouffe plans to target voters who say they're supporting former governor Mark Warner's Senate run but still aren't sure about Obama. "Warner gives us a clear sense of who's available," he said. Meanwhile, Plouffe was confident that Obama can catch up in North Carolina, where he trails by a few points--again thanks to black voters and young whites. As for Colorado, Plouffe pointed to last night event's at Invesco stadium, where each of the 60,000 additional attendees--25,000 of who hail from the Centennial State--agreed to serve as neighborhood captains or volunteers in exchange for a seat. "While the Republicans criticize, we choose to organize," he said. "McCain's going to have a very, very hard time winning in November if he can't win here."
 

1. The West: For a Dem, Obama is unusually strong in the Mountain West, running close to or ahead of McCain in the Red states of Montana, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada and North Dakota. It's obvious that Palin complicates Alaska. But I wonder whether she'll have an impact in the rest of these races. With all that hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and moose eating, she's certainly the most culturally Western of 2008's four ticket-topping candidates, and it'll be interesting to see if she's able to counteract Obama's efforts to expand the map in this crucial region.

2. The Women: One of the most promising lines of attack against McCain--that he chose the "underqualified" Palin solely for the crass political purpose of expanding his share of the women's vote, thereby underscoring how "desperate" the "original maverick" has become--won't really work. Why? Because Palin is actually, you know, a woman. I suspect that most undecided voters will see it as a good thing that America now is poised to make history no matter who wins--regardless of what sort of political calculations went into the pick. Your average voter doesn't dig deep into strategy; they see the broad strokes, the pretty picture. Whether McCain actually wins over more women because of Palin is another story. That he expects Hillary Holdouts to vote for a green governor who disagrees with them on most of the issues after they raised hell about the prospect of Obama putting any woman but Clinton in the White House--even though, say, Kathleen Sebelius shared their stances on everything from abortion to equal pay--strains at the boundaries of reason. But who said any of this was reasonable? And I agree with Marc Ambinder that "undecided women, weakly partisan Democrats, independent suburban women, women between the ages of 30 and 50, will now take a hard second look at John McCain because of his choice of Sarah Palin." Not necessarily votes, just second looks. Such are identity politics.

3. The Counterargument: Reader K.S. of Denver presents the strongest possible case against Palin:

The selection criteria for a vice president, by both parties' definition, is the ability to immediately and effectively assume the responsibilities of the presidency. That's a critically important criteria given McCain's age and health. Can you imagine this self-described soccer mom negotiating with Putin or Maliki or whomever is in power in Iran or China or North Korea? Working with NATO?  Serving as commander-in-chief in a time of war? Has she ever met with any of our allies? Has she ever visited a foreign country? Does she have any understanding of economics? Has she even walked down Wall Street? How does being a mayor of a town of 8,000 or so and then serving a 2-year-stint as head of the country's smallest-populated state qualify her for these tasks?

Going forward, the challenge for Democrats is following K.S.'s lead without a) seeming too eager to imply that McCain is on the verge of croaking, which older voters will find offensive or b) reminding swing voters that they're still sort of unsure whether Obama's three-year stint in the Senate and decade or so in Springfield qualify him for those tasks, either. As I wrote earlier, most folks think an underqualified president is worse than an underqualified vice-president, so it's not necessarily a topic that Chicago wants to dwell on. That said, the Biden-Palin debate is going to be must-see TV.

P.S. For a comprehensive Palin profile, I highly recommend the Almanac of American Politics.

 

Here's the witty and wise Jeremy McCarter on Obama's acceptance speech:

The view from Stumper's seat as Obama arrived on stage.

Someone should invite Barack Obama to give an explanation of particle physics while wrestling a gator. Short of that, I don't what could make him give a flat or faltering speech. The oratorical challenges that life has thrown at him over the last four years—the 2004 convention, the race speech, Berlin—have given chance after chance to flop, but the man seems incapable of doing so. Thursday night's challenge was one of the tallest: bringing the Democratic National Convention to a crescendo without providing fodder for those who think him a preening, grandiose celebrity. So he took his inside voice with him to the cavernous Invesco Field, and used it to deliver what might be the most intimate talk ever offered to a crowd of 80,000.

Obama described the speech as "workmanlike." That's true, in the sense that it didn't have the rhetorical flights of some of his previous talks. But it also implies a level of strain, of visible effort, nowhere in evidence. (It sounded workmanlike only in the way that Tiger Woods going eight under for the round is workmanlike.)

He needed all his gifts for this one, beginning with the agile, dynamic voice—an instrument that lets him, like a singer with a four-octave range, hit notes and make tonal shifts unavailable to the rest of us. "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me," he said, using a pianissimo note to draw people closer, before booming: "It's about you." There's also the sheer quality of the writing, not just the arc and the rhythmic drive of the overall speech, but little flecks of language, as when he described the promise of a democracy "where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort." Grace, the unexpectedly delicate word, recasts the whole sentence, makes you listen anew.

The good news for the Democrats is that Obama did what they needed him to do; the bad news is how much they needed him to do.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

By Holly Bailey 

(AP Photo / Stephan Savoia)

DAYTON, Ohio--Preceded by Van Halen's hit "Right Now," John McCain just took to the stage here in Dayton, where he introduced his new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. According to the campaign, about 15,000 people are on hand this afternoon, easily one of McCain's biggest crowds this campaign. Before he could begin speaking the crowd began serenading the senator with "Happy Birthday," as today is also McCain's 72nd birthday. "Thanks for reminding me," he joked.

In introducing Palin, McCain praised his pick as someone that has a record of fighting against "corruption and politics of the past." "She's got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today," McCain said. "She's exactly who I need. She's exactly what this country needs." In taking the stage, Palin praised the women who had run before her, citing Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton. "She left 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling," Palin said of Clinton. "But it turns out women aren't finished. We can shatter that ceiling."

Already, the Obama campaign has criticized the Palin pick, raising questions about what likely will be a big issue heading into the final two months of the campaign: Palin's status as a political newcomer. "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in an email to reporters. Yet it appears the McCain campaign anticipated this line of argument. The official release announcing Palin as the pick is after the jump—expect much more to come:

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--John McCain really, really wants to win. So badly, in fact, that he choose a veep who has the same handicap he's always criticizing Obama for--inexperience. Only worse.

I just landed here in North Carolina after taking a 6:45 a.m. flight out of Denver.  This meant, of course, that I didn't get to experience the revelation of McCain's new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in real time. But the awkward timing did afford me an interesting vantage point on the announcement, as all of the Democratic delegates, strategists and various and sundry other politicos on board my Airbus A321 learned the news simultaneously, the moment the plane touched down, from the tiny flickering screens of their trusty CrackBerries.

The best way to describe the reaction aboard U.S. Airways Flight 1520: shock and awe.

I've done eight or nine "Veepwatch" profiles of McCain's possible picks: Romney, Pawlenty, Portman, Ridge et al. I never bothered to include Palin. The main reason: with only a small-town mayoralty and less than two years of governoring under her belt, the Alaskan, I suspected, would have a tough time passing McCain's "is she ready to be president?" test--the candidate's (oft-repeated) top criterion for picking a veep. "I'm aware of the enhanced importance of this issue given my age," McCain told Don Imus in early April, and it was hard to see how asking someone with an even shorter C.V. than Obama to stand a mere (septuagenarian's) heartbeat away from the Oval Office wouldn't hinder the Republicans' ability to attack the Illinois senator for his alleged "inexperience."

But now my gut tells me this won't be a huge problem for Crystal City--even though the Dems will rightly do their darndest make it one. "Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton in an immediate statement (watch for the coming swipes at Palin's ties to Big Oil). The problem, though, is that every time Chicago calls Palin green, it gives McCain yet another opportunity to question Obama's own resume. The pick presents Democrats with a knotty challenge: how do you argue that a fresh, groundbreaking Washington outsider is too inexperienced to be second fiddle while at the same time arguing that Obama--a fresh, groundbreaking Washington outsider himself--is ready to lead the free world?

The truth is, no one votes against a ticket topped by someone as seasoned as McCain solely because the No. 2 isn't an old Washington hand--especially when she's as compelling and complementary a character as Palin, a youngish former beauty-queen and mother of five who hunts, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, eats moose hamburgers, owns a float plane and has branded herself as a candidate of "reform" and "change." But plenty of folks are willing to reject a No. 1. because of a skimpy resume. In other words, experience is an argument McCain WANTS to have--and Palin, oddly enough, helps him have it. And it's no coincidence that the people Palin was chosen in part to woo--disaffected Hillary Dems--tend to think that Obama is not qualified for the White House. She's a political pick meant for maximum electoral impact. Whether she'd make a good vice president is another story.

As thumbs twiddled over trackballs and Beltway types barked into their phones, I overheard a few telling reactions. "It's very savvy," said a black strategist heading to Washington, D.C. "Biden can't really hit her hard because she's a woman. He risks looking sexist." A stewardess said she was "pissed": "Does he think we're stupid enough to vote for a woman just because she's a woman?" Meanwhile, the man seated next to me, also en route to the capital, read a quote from Karlo Rove about the pick "reshaping both parties' coalitions" and pumped me for more info. A few rows back, a woman called a colleague to ask if Palin is "attractive." "Is she attractive?" she repeated when her interlocutor misheard. "IS SHE ATTRAC... nevermind." But the most revealing response came from a tall gentlemen with reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. "Whooooaaaa," he said into his phone. "Sarah Who?"

By Holly Bailey 

Running Mate: Palin

DAYTON, Ohio--If there’s one thing you can say about John McCain’s campaign today, the senator and his aides certainly know how to keep a secret. With just a few hours to go before McCain hits the stage with his vice presidential running mate, reporters on the ground here in Dayton are still unsure of who the potential veep might be. There’s much buzz about a private flight that landed near here last night. CNN is reporting that a man, woman and two teenagers got off the plane and boarded vans late last night. With Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty not anywhere near Ohio this morning, the buzz suggests McCain may have picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his ticket. MSNBC reports that information is solid, although campaign aides still aren’t confirming anything officially.

No question, Palin would be a surprise pick. Though she was reportedly one of the first people interviewed by official McCain vetter Arthur Culvahouse last May, Palin has been off largely off the veep radar of late. Many Republicans ruled her out because, at 44, she’s younger than Obama and has only been governor for two years. (Before that, she was a city council member for four years.) Some insiders believed Palin, a relative newcomer, might undermine McCain’s lack of experience argument against Obama. Then there have been personal issues. Palin recently became a mother again. In April, she gave birth to her fifth child, a son diagnosed with Down syndrome. More recently, she has been caught up in a controversy over whether she or her staff tried to get her ex-brother in law fired as an Alaska state trooper. She has denied any wrongdoing, yet it was widely assumed the probe, which is still on-going, may have harmed her chances of being named to the GOP ticket. We’ll know for sure in a few hours.

Yet Palin, in hindsight, looks like an obvious pick for McCain. Not only is she one of the most popular public figures in the country—her approval rating, according to the Anchorage Daily News, tops 80 percent—Palin came to office running a clean government campaign and has fought for ethics reform. Among other things, she supports drilling in Alaska, with limits, she's pro-life and she's a fiscal conservative. And she’s a lady—something that, if she’s the pick, surely figured into the McCain strategy of hoping to woo upset Hillary Clinton supporters. Plus, Palin's an interesting character: a former beauty queen, she was a star high school basketball player (she was known as “Sarah Barracuda” for her intense play). Palin married her childhood sweetheart, a blue collar oil field worker (who is on leave, so as not to create a conflict of interest). She hunts, she fishes, and earlier this year, she posed for Vogue. Could Palin be the one? We’ll know soon enough.

UPDATE 10:35 a.m. ET: A campaign aide says it's Palin. More to come.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories. 

IN SPEECH, BRINGING LOFTY WORDS DOWN TO EARTH
(Patrick Healy, New York Times)
Mr. Obama showed real fire, and directed memorable fire at his opponent, even on Mr. McCain’s signature issue, national security. “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have,” he said.

OBAMA MASTERS HIS MOMENT
(Roger Simon, Politico)
He did a little inspiration, he did a little substance, he did a little attack, he did a little defense, he did a little everything except let his audience down.  

OBAMA GETS SERIOUS
(Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
The speech itself lacked lift but had heft. It wasn't precisely long on hope, but I think it showed audacity. In fact, by the end of the speech I thought it was quite a gamble. This was not a "Happy Days Are Here Again." This was not Smiling O. He was not the charmer or the celebrity, and he didn't try much humor. Mr. Obama often looked stern, and somewhat indignant, certainly serious throughout.

FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF KING’S DREAM, A NEW DAY DAWNS
(Kevin Merida, Washington Post)
Forty-five years ago, many of those who jammed the Mall in Washington to hear a young Baptist preacher exhort the nation to be better were just trying to get the foot off their necks, win the right to vote, stay at a highway motel, eat at a decent diner. They were trying to send injustice packing. Not elect a black man president. Most had not yet envisioned that.

THE PERFECT STRANGER
(Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)
The air of unease at the Democratic convention this week was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments -- bearing even fewer witnesses.So where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others? The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 
 

DENVER--Barack Obama just wrapped up his nomination speech here at Mile High stadium, and it's already clear that the chattering classes are content. "Magnificent," said Pat Buchanan. "Awfully impressive," added Bill Kristol. "A masterpiece," concluded David Gergen. The reaction in the stands--shouting, stomping, phoning loved ones, snapping photos, weeping--wasn't much more equivocal. That said, it's worth remembering, despite all the understandable uplift, that neither pundits nor partisans will decide November's election--and worth wondering what the people who will (that is, undecideds) thought of Obama's performance.

Considering that Chicago distributed the evening's 60,000 civilian tickets solely to supporters who'd agreed to volunteer for the campaign, I wasn't expecting to find many Nobamans in the crowd. Fortunately, I stumbled upon Malissa Garcia. Her path to Mile High was somewhat circuitous--to say the least. Last weekend, CNN asked Garcia, a 23-year-old hairstylist at the nearby Oxford Club Salon, whether she'd be willing to spend the convention primping, preening and priming on-air Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and her headful of extensions. She immediately accepted. After four days of follicular service, Sanchez rewarded her loyal tresswoman today with a ticket to the show--and Garcia, reluctant to miss "history," was soon sitting in Section 133 with a tray of chicken fingers on her lap and a camera (one video, one still) in either hand.

She arrived a skeptic. Unlike the hyperinformed true believers who make the most noise online and on the air--and, incidentally, like the vast majority of Americans--Garcia "hasn't been paying much attention to politics this year." Before tonight, in fact, she'd never seen Obama speak. Still, as a committed Clintonista during the Democratic primaries--"the country was in good shape when they were in the White House"--she told me she wasn't sure she'd be voting for the Illinois senator come fall. It wasn't her Republican family giving her grief--Garcia( defied them to support John Kerry in 2004--and it wasn't anything she knew about the nominee. Instead, it was what she didn't know. Saying she was "worried" by an email she'd received, Garcia, a "serious Christian," ran through an abridged list of familiar false Obama rumors: he "doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance"; he may be "a Muslim"; he was "sworn in [to the Senate] on an Iraq Bible." (I take back that "familiar.") Do you believe them? I asked. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe I won't vote. I'll just let God figure it out."

Then came the feature presentation, with all its pundit-pleasing magnificence and impressiveness and masterpieciosity. As confetti mingled with smoke above the stadium and the Obaman hordes shuffled towards the exits, I asked Garcia whether Obama's performance had changed her mind. "Actually, yes," she said. "I really liked it." So if you had to vote today... "I think I'd vote for Obama," she interrupted. "I'm, like, 75 percent sure." Garcia said she was hooked when Monica Early of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio--one of a series of "ordinary Americans" who spoke before the senator--confessed that she too had received a "scary email," but had discovered, after checking the facts, that "Barack Obama is a man of faith, a man of values and a man of action." She didn't love Obama's line about civil unions ("I don't agree with that"), but his armada of generals and riffs on education and health care more than made up for it. "My husband and I pay $400 a month, and that's only with partial dental and partial eye," she told me. Before the speech, Garcia associated Obama with "inexperience." But now, she said, "I think he can make change. And middle-class people like me really need change."

This is, of course, exactly what Chicago wants to hear. In fact, Garcia's reactions were so on message, I began to wonder whether David Axelrod had taken to creating cyborgs in his spare time. All kidding aside, Garcia is proof positive that Axelrod and Co. know their targets. They know that the most voters are only tuning in now. They know that a lot of early support is soft, and easily swayed by biographical details, strong surrogates and an isolated policy or two. They know that most former Clintonites aren't dead-enders. And they know that the best way to compete with a caricature of your candidate is to expose as many people as possible to the real thing. What happened to Garcia at Mile High tonight undoubtedly happened to voters all across the country (only without all the confetti). But the flipside of such an easy swing--which will likely show up soon in the polls--is that John McCain has a chance to swing the same people back his way next week in St. Paul, Minn. As Garcia told me, "now I'm going to have to watch the Republicans."

Curious, I asked whether she knew anything about McCain. "Just that he's just like Bush," she said.

Somewhere, David Axelrod is smiling.  

*We exaggerate.
 

By Tom Watson

In the upper reaches of Invesco Field, there is a collision of cultures afoot. Here in the stands, reporters and editors sit cheek by jowl with Obama delegates. Their interests diverge. One group whistles, screams, and stomps its feet so hard it moves one's insides around. The other sits and stares at little screens, flailing away at laptops and BlackBerries, trying to capture the moment and keep their bosses happy.

This behavior baffles the party faithful. "You call that journalism?," one puzzled partisan exclaimed, as fingers flew over the tiny keys. Elsewhere, the journalists' tendency to leave much-in-demand seats to track down outlets for their many plugs created tension with the die-hard Obama fans seeking the best vantage point from which to hail their hero. When you sit mute while everyone else is raising the roof, people look at you funny. Then, the moment of truth: a surge of enthusiasm swept through Section 133. The partisans looked over expectantly. The journalists huddled: Is it a conflict of interest for the Fourth Estate to do the wave?

The unanimous decision: Yes we can't.
 

DENVER--Barack Obama may not look like the presidents on our printed money--but there's at least one guy out there who looks a lot like him.

With more than 50,000 people packed into Invesco Field and security everywhere, it isn't easy to get around. But be thankful you're not Gerardo Puisseaux. A young Cuban-American PR rep for Miami's Americateve 41, he has the unfortunate burden--at least for today--of bearing a striking resemblance to the newly-minted Democratic nominee.

I spotted Mr.Puisseaux on the stairs of Section 134 struggling to escape from a Ukrainian TV interviewer determined to capture him on camera. "I'm not the man," he told the reporter, pointing to Obama's stage. "He's the man." Soon, the entire section was snapping photos. Behind me, a woman in a red Obama t-shirt said that she had buttonholed "the lookalike" earlier. "I asked Obama if he'd take a picture with me," she said. "He even kissed my hand!"

Maybe being Obama isn't so bad after all.
 

It goes without saying that there was much suspense on John McCain’s campaign plane this afternoon as it traveled from Phoenix to Dayton, Ohio, where McCain is expected to unveil his vice presidential running mate tomorrow. But campaign aides weren’t talking. “I will not discuss the process,” McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told anxious reporters. “I’m going to have to refer those questions to Baskin-Robbins.” Come again?

Let’s start from the beginning: Shortly after 3 p.m. EST, McCain, joined by his wife, Cindy, boarded his campaign plane in Arizona. Noticeably absent were the cadre of senior aides McCain huddled with in Arizona this week, including strategists Steve Schmidt and Charlie Black and speechwriter Mark Salter. Shortly after take-off, Steve Duprey, a longtime McCain friend and self-proclaimed “chief morale officer” wandered back to the press cabin, where he exhibited a few new t-shirts he recently designed for the campaign. (“Barack Obama and Paris Hilton,” one read. “At least one of them has a good energy policy.”) Duprey grinned and announced that he had come up with a new song in honor of the day. Humming it to the tune of Bobby McFerrin’s 80s cheeseball hit, “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” he sang:

You say you don’t know news to write
And your editors are uptight
Don’t worry… be happy
Say you have veepstakes blues
Just sit back and have some booze
Don’t worry… be happy
Deadlines come, deadlines go
Well soon enough you’ll know
Don’t worry… be happy
You could stay up all night
But you might not guess it right
Don’t worry… Its Duprey
Be happy… Its Duprey

Mid-flight, Kimmie Lipscomb, who handles press advance for the campaign, began walking the aisle with a tray of Baskin-Robbins ice cream cups filled with the chain’s latest flavor, “Straight Talk Crunch.” (Obama, it seems, will also get his own flavor, “Whirl of Change.”) McCain’s concoction, produced with no input by the candidate, is a swirl of vanilla ice cream, caramel, white chocolate and, subject of much dispute among the press corps, a nut or a crunchy candy bar. “I believe it's almonds,” one reporter said. “No, it’s a walnut,” another insisted. Meanwhile, Buchanan insisted there was a hint of Heath Bar. “There’s some toffee in there,” she said. But after some intense questioning about the exact recipe, she declined to answer any further questions. “We will not talk about the ice cream process,” she declared. What did McCain think of the concoction? “It’s delicious,” he said, according to Buchanan—though even that was of some dispute. “Is he saying it's delicious or is that you saying it's delicious,” a reporter asked, his fingers positioned on the keyboard of his laptop. “He said it. He said, quote, 'it’s delicious,'” Buchanan said, a trace of annoyance in her voice. A short while later, McCain deplaned in Dayton, where the pool of reporters there on hand to film his arrival had nearly tripled from its usual size. “Have you made the decision? Will we know tonight?” reporters shouted. McCain waved off the question, shooting members of the media a thumbs up.

DENVER--The Democratic convention has already moved to Invesco Field, but that hasn't stopped the GOP from making mischief back at the Pepsi Center. On my walk from the parking structure to the NEWSWEEK workspace this afternoon, I stumbled across a posse of young men and women wearing togas, waving "The One" placards and chanting, in the adoring drone of brainwashed Branch Davidians, "Change! Hope! O-BAM-A!" One sign read "The Temple of O." I figured they were referring to the neoclassical stage where Obama is planning to accept the Democratic nomination tonight.

"Look to the clouds!" shouted one worshiper.

"Is he descending yet?" asked another.

"He must descend so we can change," the first one intoned. Then they began singing "O-bam-a" to the tune of Handel's "Messiah."

When they stopped, I approached and asked if they were representing anyone in particular. "Obama," said a tall goateed gentlemen. "Obama," repeated a shorter, clean-shaven woman. "He is 'The One.'" "What about that McCain sticker on your toga?" I asked, pointing at the McCain sticker on another man's toga." "I'm not worthy, so I'm supporting McCain," he explained. I didn't bother to mention the RNC credentials--complete with the party's "A Mile High, One Inch Deep" slogan--dangling from everyone's belt loops.

As I walked away, a woman who'd traveled from Montana to see Obama's acceptance speech sidled up beside me. "What did you think of those Obama fans?" I asked. "Stupid," she said. "All the negative people are voting for McCain." Then she joined the throngs for the long walk to Invesco.
 

When Machiavelli warned “before all else, be armed,” he probably couldn’t envision how a Youtube videoblogger known as richprince78 would use his advice a few hundred years down the line. Armed with his camera and the support of a buzzing new media presence at the DNC, Iowa City-based Rich Peters, the winner of a joint Youtube/DNC video competition, is one of thousands of new media troops swarming the Democratic National Convention this week to promote their cause.

Shameless DNC PR stunt? Absolutely. But if you’re looking for an on-the-ground look at life at the convention, the kid-with-camera strategy is nifty enough. Peters, a recent law school graduate, has been chronicling his adventures stumping for the Obama campaign since he joined up last November. After Youtube fans voted him in for the DNC slot, he hit the trail with the traveling press pool and roamed the halls of the Pepsi Center, picking up interviews with delegates, activists, protestors, and even NEWSWEEK’s very own Jonathan Alter along the way. All of which is to say that his Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/richprince78, is pretty well stocked, while maintaining that down-home raw footage charm.

NEWSWEEK's Matthew Link files this report from Denver



As a longtime friend of Rep. Barney Frank, I was offered the chance to bunk on an extra bed in his driver’s room at the Denver convention--giving a whole new meaning to the idea of a literally embedded journalist.

Following Frank around the convention has been both eye-opening and exhausting, not only because of the crazy schedule and hours (three or four worthwhile events, parties, speeches or caucuses happen concurrently at any given hour of day or night), but for the incredible access to the stars of the Democratic Party. I plopped myself down at a delegate luncheon, and realized my tablemates were three Democratic members of Congress--Frank, Lynn Woosley of California and Jerry Nadler of New York, with Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin waving to us from the next table over. At Nancy Pelosi’s ballroom party on Monday night, I watched Tony Bennett and James Taylor sing a duet, and that afternoon I nearly spilled my Sprite on a smiling George McGovern as I passed him in the hallway of the Pepsi Center.

Like many journalists, I was expecting at least some drama at the convention--maybe not as tumultuous as the riot-heavy 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, but at least some shouting matches between Hillary and Obama supporters. Instead, protestors were hard to spot in Denver. The only skirmish I witnessed was a predictable shouting match between pro-choice and anti-abortion proponents, politely occurring across one of Denver’s clean, spacious downtown streets. Police in riot gear on horseback quickly showed up, but seemed unfazed by the goings-on. The city seemed quiet and intent and focused on one goal: Getting Obama into the White House no matter what. I’m sure there are some Republicans somewhere in Denver, but I didn’t see much of them.

After Ted Kennedy’s appearance on the convention floor on Monday, which electrified the audience of the Pepsi Center, Frank was invited to join his fellow Massachusetts resident for breakfast Tuesday morning. It was a small, intimate get-together with family and friends of Kennedy. I asked how the senator was doing, and Frank told me, “Ted looked great, and his memory was amazing. He remembered a letter I had sent him some months ago. I think he’ll be around for a long while.” Perhaps the torch wouldn’t be passed as soon as people think.

Later, I followed Frank to a gay and lesbian delegate luncheon he was hosting. Michelle Obama showed up and the crowd went insane with standing ovation after standing ovation. Frequently peppering her speech with the pronouns “we” and “us” when talking about LGBT citizens, Obama finished her pro-gay oration by proclaiming, “Change never happens easily. We need you. I am grateful to you.”

Even though it’s my first convention, I had a feeling that something profound is happening in Denver. No matter what the outcome, history has occurred before my eyes. As Barney so understatedly put it to me, “The first convention I went to was in 1968. I can tell you this one is a little bit different.”

Into a political season that has already seen the McCain campaign put out its share of sharp and sometimes misleading anti-Obama ads comes this higher note: John McCain congratulating his opponent on his nomination.

By Holly Bailey 

(AP Photo / Mary Altaffer)

Within the hour, John McCain is due at the Phoenix airport, where he will board his campaign plane en route Dayton, Ohio. The big question: When will we know who McCain has picked as his running mate? So far, McCain and the small circle of campaign aides with whom he has been consulting on the decision aren’t talking, not even hinting, at who his No. 2 might be, though it’s presumed whoever he or she is knows by now.

One thing is clear: The campaign is making no effort to stop the intense speculation over when McCain will announce. It has been widely assumed that McCain will appear with his No. 2 at a rally in Dayton Friday morning, although aides have pointedly refused to confirm that. A few days ago, the rumor mill suggested that the senator could push up that announcement to today, in an attempt to steal some of the thunder from Barack Obama’s speech tonight in Denver. Asked about the plans, an aide again said, “No comment.” More recently, speculation has centered on scheduled 6 p.m. rally at a ballpark near Pittsburgh on Saturday night. Reporters traveling with McCain quickly took note of the late starting time, as McCain rarely does night events, especially on the weekend. Of course, the campaign won’t say anything.

A few days ago, a senior McCain aide insisted the campaign looked to Thursday as “Obama’s night”—suggesting, though not outright saying, McCain would not appear with his VP pick today. (Hey, there’s always an airport arrival in Dayton, folks.) But what the campaign has done is partially divert the press’s attention away from a night that should have been ruled by the Democrats. But the McCain campaign may face a little trouble of its own next week, as a tropical storm (and possible hurricane) Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, taking aim at New Orleans as early as Monday. Ironically, that’s the night President Bush is scheduled to speak to delegates at the GOP convention in St. Paul. So far, GOP officials are waiting to see what happens with the storm, but a McCain aide, who declined to be named, says the campaign has a “contingency plan” in place and is examining various scenarios including possibly postponing aspects of the convention. “We’re monitoring the situation very closely, and we’ll make plans accordingly,” McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told NEWSWEEK.

DENVER--The official theme of last night's festivities, according to the Democratic National Committee, was "Securing America's Future." But "Changing the Subject" is a more accurate description of what went down here in Denver.

Unless you've been living in a steel-encased hyperbaric capsule embedded in the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, you're probably aware that for the first three days of the convention the media has focused most of its time, talent and money on the "conflict" between Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Nevermind that that actual conflict is rather minimal--a molehill being sold as a mountain, as I wrote on Monday.

Since the opening gavel, we've been treated to stories on the "heated" negotiations over Wednesday's roll-call vote, the speech-related "tensions" between Bill and Obama, the "struggle" of Hillary dead-enders to accept her loss and, of course, the hidden meaning of HRC's "very limited hand gestures." Cable news-chatterers like Keith Olbermann and Wolf Blitzer were happy to spend hours "analyzing" whether the Dems were "being too soft on McCain" and "obscuring Obama's message"--at the same time, incidentally, that a parade of Democratic governors, senators and congressmen were whacking McCain and delivering Chicago's economic talking points up on stage. As NEWSWEEK's Jeremy McCarter wrote in these pages, "the resulting coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot put." By Wednesday morning, no one would've been surprised to read in the New York Times that Hillary had secretly "delivered [a] non-endorsement [of Obama] by blinking it in morse code."

Thank goodness, then, for last night's marquee speakers: Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and--most surprisingly--John Kerry. In the days leading up to Denver, much of the punditocracy predicted that Bill--physically incapable, according to them, of conveying anything but utter disdain for Obama--would spend his speech indulging in yet another homage to Hillary's historic near-nomination and reminding everyone of what an awesome president he was. They forgot, it seems, that they were talking about the preeminent political tactician of the last 20 years. The only moment of blatant self-regard in Bill's speech--saying "I love this" when the crowd greeted him with three minutes of sustained applause and frantic flag-waving--was unscripted, and in its puppyish earnestness, endearing. Relying on meaty paragraphs rather than easy applause lines, the rest of his remarks were about Obama--or, more accurately, they were about framing the election as a choice between the Democrat who will "lead us away from division and fear of the last eight years, back to unity and hope" and the Republican who "still embraces the extreme philosophy which has defined his party for more than 25 years." Bill went far further than Hillary in describing why Obama himself--and not just any old Dem--would make a better president than John McCain, praising the Illinois senator's "intelligence and curiosity" where Hillary praised his party affiliation. And because there was still a "hint of jealously and rue" in Bill's voice, as NEWSWEEK's Howard Fineman wrote last night, his compliments sounded completely convincing. He hadn't been force-fed or coaxed or cajoled. He wasn't just doing his duty. You got the sense, rather, than Clinton really (if begrudgingly) respects Obama, another Democrat said to be "too young and too inexperienced," for outwitting him--even if he hasn't completely "gotten over" the first loss of his career. Ultimately, the "surprising" warmth of Bill's speech was irresistible storyline for a press corps seduced into expecting too little from him; and oddly enough, their resulting raves have, at long last, shifted the spotlight away from the Clintons. "Now eyes turn, and finally, to Obama," wrote Peggy Noonan in the morning's Wall Street Journal. "This was one of the great tee-ups."

The primary purpose of Biden's speech was to focus those eyes where Chicago wants them to focus: on the economy. Peppered with references to his middle-class roots in Scranton, Penn. and Wilmington, Del. and his elderly mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden--who taught him to respond to bullies by "bloody[ing] their nose so you can walk down the street the next day," and exclaimed "That's true!" when her son mentioned the episode on stage--the first section of Biden's acceptance address was the strongest. In it, the Delaware senator continued to cast himself as a blue-collar average Joe, precision-calibrated to "feel the pain" of the struggling American family; channeling their concerns into a fanciful collage of kitchen-table conversations. "Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone?" he asked. "Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars just to fill up the gas tank?" The goal, of course, is to convince wary "white ethnic" voters that Biden is one of them (sources say that Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden is an Irish-Catholic name), and then to let Biden convince them that the guy at the top of the ticket isn't a total space alien. As former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet notes, "he presented resilience as the great story of his own life, the great virtue of working Americans, and the great goal of an Obama-Biden administration." It's too early to say whether the strategy is succeeding. But last night, the power of his personal narrative, and the media's curiosity about what sort of sidekick he'll be. was more than enough to move the ball beyond the Clintons--for good.

Speaking before Bill and Biden, Kerry wasn't broadcast on the cable news channels. But his may have been the most impressive performance of the three. When the Massachusetts senator and failed 2004 nominee started speaking, few people in the hall were paying attention. In fact, Kerry emerged in my conversations this week with Democratic officials as a sort of party pariah; everyone in Denver seemed determined not to repeat the mistake he made at 2004's Boston convention, when he demanded that no one utter an ill word about Bush. Turns out no one was more determined than Kerry himself. Happy to perform the time-honored senatorial two-step of praising a colleague--"I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years"--before ripping him to shreds, Kerry delivered the single most effective critique of McCain I've heard to date, highlighting in remarkably clear and concise language the gap between McCain circa 2002 and the McCain who's running for president. "Let’s compare Sen. McCain to candidate McCain," he said. "Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Sen. McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Sen. McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it." That last line--a reference to the famous flip-flopping charges leveled against Kerry in 2004--got big laughs in the Pepsi Center's press box. Although Biden also attacked McCain, Kerry was a story. The former admirer--he wanted McCain to be his running mate--turns the tables and delivers "by far the best speech [we]'ve ever seen from him." The result: a swarm of hacks (like me) repeating the only fully crystallized critique of McCain to come out of a convention cluttered by a "mish-mash of objections" to Obama's Republican rival. And that's one thing Obama wants Wolf and Keith to chatter about.
 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Michael Hirsh on how Joe Biden would compare to George W. Bush's No. 2.

During the hard-fought primaries last spring, Barack Obama swooped in from the campaign trail for a brief stop at the Senate hearings on Iraq. With Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker giving testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, it was one of those rare moments when the spotlight panned back to Washington. And Obama didn't disappoint. Even with all the distractions of taking on Hillary Clinton, Obama asked one of the most penetrating questions of those two days of hearings: How much of an Iranian and Al Qaeda presence in Iraq would be acceptable before we would leave? Both Petraeus and Crocker seemed caught by surprise by this realpolitik reckoning, and Obama received kudos in the media for his smarts. Even Petraeus acknowledged that Obama was "exactly right" in saying that the most the United States could achieve was not to wipe out Al Qaeda entirely but to leave behind a "manageable situation."

What was not reported at the time was that Obama's line of questioning was suggested to him by Sen. Joe Biden, the Committee chairman who had quietly become one of the Illinois Democrat's main foreign-policy consiglieres after abandoning his own presidential bid. "I discussed with Sen. Obama how to proceed with Petraeus and Crocker," Biden told me in late May. "He asked for my advice."

This week, Obama's choice of Joltin' Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate, particularly coming after the tenure of perhaps the most powerful veep in U.S. history, Dick Cheney, raises a few serious questions. First, is Obama really as confident about his commander-in-chief and foreign-policy credentials as he says he is? During his now-infamous remarks to a San Francisco fundraiser last spring, Obama cited his international upbringing and travels and declared that "foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain." His pick for veep, Obama added back then, would likely be "somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on." The Biden choice, however, would seem to suggest otherwise—or at least that Obama believes he has a public-perception problem on foreign affairs...

Biden's long record of counseling deep engagement in trouble spots and pushing nuanced, intensive diplomacy—especially talking to enemies—conform in many ways to Obama's world view. In an interview with me in late 2004, Biden sketched out what later became Obama's own position on Iran, saying that Bush should open up direct diplomacy with Tehran "because he has no alternative. The terms [of the talks] should be wide open. This administration spends too much time arguing over the shape of the table. They don't get anything done." He also insisted that Bush open up bilateral talks with North Korea—which the administration later reluctantly did. If Obama and Biden win, it is easy to imagine that they could enjoy something like the one-on-one rapport that George W. Bush is said to have with Cheney.

Despite his reputation for long-windedness, Biden also has a gift for getting to the heart of an issue quickly (recalling Winston Churchill's description of FDR's most trusted aide, Harry Hopkins, as "Lord Root of the Matter.") It was Biden who lectured Rice at her confirmation hearings: "Don't listen to Rumsfeld!" In 2003, when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz indicated that Iraq looked more complicated than Bosnia. "We've been in Bosnia for eight years," Biden snapped back: "That would seem to compute that we're likely to be in Iraq for a long time--a long time." And even though Obama touts his early opposition to the war in Iraq while Biden voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002—and the two have differed on how fast U.S. troops should withdraw—the Obama camp was very impressed with Biden's handling of the Bush administration's shift in focus to Saddam Hussein. Biden was aggressive in urging that the Democratic caucus "take its time on the Iraq debate, and couldn't just let the president dictate the timing of it," said one Obama advisor. "That whole summer, and in the fall, he said we've got to make sure we kick tires on this. He is a real pro."

Above all, perhaps, it is Biden who has been most vociferous in urging Obama and other Democrats not to repeat the mistakes of John Kerry in 2004—and to fight back against GOP attacks with brickbats and bare knuckles. The failure of Kerry and the Dems of '04 to seize control of the national-security agenda and counterattack Bush was a mistake "that was emblazoned in my mind," Biden says. Now, with John McCain criticizing the 2008 Democratic contender ever more viciously—"Obama: dangerously unprepared to be president," the latest GOP ad intones—Obama needs Biden out in front more than ever. If he gets to the White House, will Obama repay Biden by giving him Cheney-like access and influence? Biden himself would vociferously reject such an idea; he makes no secret of his abhorrence for Cheney and "the neocons." But as a man who's run for president himself twice—and has 35 years in the Senate to Obama's three and a half—it's difficult to imagine Joe Biden is going to be happy reverting back to the traditional veep's role and flying to funerals.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

Answer: So that hacks like me--and more importantly, my hacky brethren who endlessly "analyze" the 2008 election on TV--would spread the video posted above.

"Hello Democrats!" Obama said as he strode on stage, amid screams and squeals and a roar of applause. "I just wanted to come out here for a little something to say." Incidentally, that "something" was not his praise for "Joe Biden and Jill Biden and Beau Biden and Mama Biden and the whole Biden family." Nor was it his kind words for wife Michelle, who "kicked it off pretty well"; for Hillary Clinton, who "rocked the house last night," or for her husband Bill, who "reminded us of what it's like when you have a president who actually puts people first." Instead, it was the short statement he delivered last. "We are going to be moving to Mile High Stadium tomorrow, and I want to let you know why," Obama said. "At the start of this campaign, we had a very simple idea, which is: change in America doesn't start from the top down, it starts from the bottom up. That change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things. So we want to open up this convention to make sure that everyone who wants to come can join in the party and join in the effort to take America back."

In other words, Obama was playing pre-emptive defense. With Democrats worried that the move to Mile High contradicts Obama’s convention goal of "connecting with average Americans" and offers Republicans yet another opportunity to characterize the Illinois senator as "a narcissistic celebrity candidate"--after all, the GOP is already calling his be-columned, classical-style stage set the "Temple of Obama"--the campaign clearly wanted a chance to frame the decision to its advantage, and chose the most visible moment (prime time) and most famous surrogate (Obama) to do so. Moving the convention to a 75,000-seat football stadium isn't about showing off my celebrity, Obama said. It's about conveying my message of inclusiveness and grassroots organizing.

Whether voters will agree remains to be seen. It's worth noting, for instance, that Obama's riff about "mak[ing] sure that everyone who wants to come can join the party" was a bit hyperbolic--the event's 60,000 tickets sold out within 24 hours, forcing the campaign to turn away hundreds of thousands of fans. And to viewers watching at home, the difference between a 75,000-person grass-roots organizing event and a 75,000-person rock concert will probably be imperceptible. That said, when the pundits and prognosticators take to the airwaves and the Internets to speculate about the "risks" of Obama being seen with all those voters--as if being popular were a bad thing in an electoral democracy--they'll now have to include Obama's own rationale, conveniently captured on video, in their reports.

Kind of like me.

UPDATE, 1:26 p.m.: Hat tip to reader SMS67: "The stage at Invesco that is being ripped by the GOP" may have been designed "to recreate the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous ['I Have a Dream'] speech on this day 45 years ago." Developing, as they say...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories, coming to you live from the Cherry Creek Hotel in sunny Denver, Colo.

TROPIC BLUNDER
(Jason Horowitz, New York Observer)
The thing about the conventions is that so many reporters come to them. The result is that it’s rare for anyone to write anything important. “I don’t like events where there are a gazillion reporters,” Mr. Nagourney said. “If you come here and David Axelrod came walking down the aisle over there, there’d be 500 people around him, and you’d be getting the most boilerplate quotes. So what’s the point?” What is the point? “I feel like this is the dumb state of reporting in a presidential campaign,” said Michael Scherer, a writer for Time magazine. “Everyone is spending time and millions of dollars to break something six hours before it’s announced." Adjustments have to be made. Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News anchor, spent Aug. 25 blogging—“I like the blogging!” she said—and produced 10 blog posts, including an online poll: “What do you think Michelle Obama thinks about Hillary Clinton?” “There is no intrigue [at the convention],” she said. “But the networks can’t not be here, which is a problem. Not a terrific amount of news is going to happen. We have to be here in case something does happen. It’s the same reason we send reporters down to Crawford to sit there during the president’s vacation. In case something does happen.”

FOR VETERAN SPEAKER, THE CHALLENGE OF A LIFETIME
(Eli Saslow, Washington Post)
On the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Obama will become the first African American to accept a major party's nomination for president when he addresses the crowd Thursday night. His campaign has gambled on the historic moment by creating a stage that will magnify his performance. Succeed here, in front of the largest Democratic National Convention crowd in nearly 50 years, and Obama's speech will be remembered as one of the most powerful moments in modern politics, a perfect launch into the final stage of the general election. Fail, and Obama risks fueling Republicans' criticism that he is an aloof celebrity, fond of speaking to big crowds but incapable of forming genuine connections. Obama wrote the speech last week in his customary manner, crafting a first draft by hand on yellow legal paper. He studied past convention speeches and found inspiration in remarks by Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, advisers said. Then he sequestered himself in a Chicago hotel room, preferring it to the chaos of his house or campaign headquarters.

BIGGEST STEP YET FOR A LIFELONG STRIVER
(Jodi Kantor, New York Times)
In the way Mr. Obama has trained himself for competition, he can sometimes seem as much athlete as politician. Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger: to do so would be an indulgence, a distraction from his goals. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses. “He doesn’t inhale,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist. But with Barack Hussein Obama officially becoming the Democratic presidential nominee on Wednesday night, some of the same qualities that have brought him just one election away from the White House — his virtuosity, his seriousness, his ability to inspire, his seeming immunity from the strains that afflict others — may be among his biggest obstacles to getting there.

DEMS NERVOUS OVER INVESCO RISKS
(Charles Mahtesian, Politico)
Senior Democratic officials are expressing serious concerns about the political risks posed by Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium Thursday evening. From the elaborate stagecraft to the teeming crowd of 80,000 cheering partisans, the vagaries of the weather to the unpredictable audience reaction, the optics surrounding the stadium event have heightened worries that the Obama campaign is engaging in a high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment. A common concern: that the stadium appearance plays against Obama’s convention goal of lowering his star wattage and connecting with average Americans and that it gives Republicans a chance to drive home their message that the Democratic nominee is a narcissistic celebrity candidate. 

MCCAIN SELECTS HIS VP
(Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin, Politico)
John McCain has chosen his running mate and the person will be notified on Thursday, a senior campaign official said. A friend said McCain had pretty much settled on his selection early this week, and it crystallized in the past few days. Campaign manager Rick Davis flew to McCain's cabin in Sedona, Ariz., a few days ago to confer, and another meeting about the choice was held with top aides Wednesday. The news leaked on the third night of the Democratic National Convention, detracting attention from speeches by former President Bill Clinton and the Democratic ticket mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. McCain's selection process has been conducted mostly in secret, but officials said he was considering one or more candidates who support abortion rights. The disclosure set off a fracas on the right wing, with talk-show host Rush Limbaugh saying such a selection would destroy the party. McCain is planning to roll out his vice presidential nominee in three battleground states this weekend, with large-scale rallies planned for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri, according to aides and advisers.

AVOIDING A LONG, DISAPPOINTING FALL
(John Judis, New Republic)
What Obama has to do above all is find a way to focus on the economy--which is voters' main concern--and to do so in a way that reflects his best abilities and deepest beliefs, and that is cognizant of the obstacles he faces as an African American candidate. To begin with, that means Obama cannot run as a Huey Long-style red meat populist. That's not who he is, anyway. And in making promises, he has to be careful to avoid endorsing programs that could be interpreted as irresponsible acts of tax-and-spend liberalism. He can propose a detailed plan for national health insurance once he is elected. For the moment, he should avoid anything that appears to require new taxes, or that appears to send a lot of money to inner-cities. Of course, Obama has to propose programs and attack McCain's outrageous tax-or-spending proposals, but he needs to do it using a simple economic theme that highlights what he wants to do and draws a contrast with McCain. If you look back at Bill Clinton's campaigns in 1992 and 1996, they were based on very simple themes. In 1992, "putting people first" highlighted Clinton's middle class tax cut and drew a contrast with the "patrician" Bush. In 1996, "building a bridge to the 21st century" highlighted Clinton's economic successes and drew a contrast between the youthful Clinton and the aging Bob Dole.

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague Howard Fineman on Bill Clinton's just-completed convention speech. Especially smart: Howard's point about Clinton "not laying it on too thick." He went far further than Hillary in describing why Barack Obama--and not just any old Democrat--would make a better president than John McCain. But with a "hint of jealously and rue" in his voice, Clinton's compliments sounded totally credible. He hadn't been force-fed or coaxed or cajoled. He wasn't just doing his duty. You got the sense, rather, than Clinton really (if begrudgingly) respects Obama, another Democrat said to be "too young and too inexperienced," for outwitting him--even if he hasn't completely "gotten over" the first loss of his career. After all, what better testament is there to someone's skill as a politician than defeating the Natural? I'll pass the mic to Howard:

I just watched a master at his craft. It was like watching Michael Jordan in his prime. Bill Clinton showed the world—and Barack Obama—how it's done, and he made it look easy. Better than anyone else at this convention so far—and better than the nominee himself on the campaign trail to date—the former president made the case for the senator from Illinois and for the Democrats to take back the White House from the Republicans.

I sat five seats away from Clinton Tuesday night as he watched his wife speak in the Pepsi Center. Afterwards, I had a chance to chat with him. He said he'd read his wife's speech " a hundred times." As for his own, he said, "We'll have a good time with it tomorrow."

He was right. He enjoyed the hell out of himself. In a speech that he wrote—and rewrote—up to the last minute (what else is new?), he praised Obama directly and personally far more than his wife did (she didn't, in fact); he described elements of Obama's character in ways that made them seem just what the country needed; he described in clear detail what he saw as the devastating consequences of Republican policies; and he described with a sweeping sense of history much of public life in the last quarter century.

Clinton looked every inch a president—and not quite a "former" one at that. He told me Tuesday night that he had worked hard to lose the Campaign-Trail Ten (or Twenty) he had gained crisscrossing the country for his wife. He looked tanned, rested and ready to do it all  again.

He did not lay it on too thick. His praise of Obama's inclusive character and toughness had just a hint of jealously and rue about it—just enough to make it credible. Clinton's description of Obama's historical role was apt without being histrionic. His tone and touch were perfect—even as his wry, tongue-in-cheek smile seemed to tell, the world: boy, I'm good at this!

This convention needs above all to explain to middle-class white voters in swing states why their economic best interests lie with the Democratic Party and Obama—and why those voters cannot afford four more years of "extreme" GOP policies. Clinton laid out the problem and the case clearly. He did the same when discussing foreign policy, arguing that we do better as a nation when the world sees the "power of our example" rather than the "example of our power."

As I watched from the NBC balcony, I saw below in a sea of flags a white-haired lion not quite in winter, and not angry at his fate. I covered his first convention speech in Atlanta in 1988. I was bird-dogging him and was up close and saw what happened. He was young and hungry and afraid, and the speech was disastrously long because he had asked every friend to contribute a paragraph—and then read them all. He was also, back then, distracted, shall we say.

What I saw tonight was a testament to the fact that we all can grow up. Bill Clinton finally, impressively, has.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

In case you couldn't tell on TV, the Pepsi Center went absolutely wild when former President Bill Clinton strode on stage. After more than three minutes of sustained applause and frantic flag-waving, Clinton started his speech with a line not included in his prepared remarks: "I love this." You could tell.

Here, courtesy of NEWSWEEK Washington Bureau Chief Jeffrey Bartholet--and his trusty BlackBerry Curve--is the view from the floor.

 

DENVER--Remember the Hillary holdouts--the 48 percent of former Clinton supporters who tell pollsters they're either undecided or backing John McCain? (I'm assuming that this evening's "Love Train" roll-call vote didn't erase every trace of Clinton-Obama drama from your memory.) Well, at least one Obama supporter doesn't believe they ever really existed. Her name? Kansas Governor--and vice-presidential shortlister--Kathleen Sebelius.

Asked this afternoon during a lunch with NEWSWEEK's convention team whether the Hillary holdouts spell trouble for Obama in November, Sebelius said the entire conversation was "oddly anti-feminist." "The notion that women who are passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton's would honor her by voting for John McCain seems to me to be totally insane," she said. "It keeps being raised as real, but I haven't ever found anybody that can confirm that. I'm absolutely convinced tht 99.9 percent of the people who supported Hillary Clinton will support Barack Obama. All the things she fought for will only be achieved if Barack is president."

When we pressed her on the issue--noting that numerous surveys show a sizable number of defectors--Sebelius questioned whether people were lying to pollsters.  "How do people even identify who are Hillary Clinton supporters in those polls?" she asked. "And are they Democratic Hillary supporters? I'm not at all convinced that some of this isn't ongoing mischief being played by the other team. There was certainly that crossover vote in some of those later primaries that kept showing up. The Limbaugh Effect, right? Are those the folks now being polled who say, "I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, now I support John McCain?"  At this, NEWSWEEK columnist Jonathan Alter mentioned that he'd spoken to some delegates--Democrats--who said they wouldn't vote for Obama. Sebelius was incredulous. "They're seriously going to support John McCain?" she asked. No, Alter said. They're just not going to vote. At this, the governor snapped. "Well, that's a very effective strategy," she said.

It's clear that Sebelius is a true believer. Despite a pair of personal calls from Clinton--the first in early 2007, the second a year later--Sebelius caused something of a stir in January when she became one a small group of Democratic women governors to endorse the upstart Illinois senator. It was a decision she had made much earlier. "Hillary was not the kind of candidate who was going to galvanize independent and Republican support in Kansas, which is what you have to do to win," she said. "The last time Kansans voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was FDR in 1936. They didn't like him after that, apparently. Even Bill never won Kansas." Of course, Sebelius thinks Obama can break the curse. Helping him, she says, will be an armada of "magnificent" women surrogates headed by his wife Michelle. "It was tricky in the primary to use a lot of women and not appear to be women against Hillary," she said. "But now we'll be out there against John McCain." For Obama, that's a good thing--just in case those Hillary holdouts do, you know, exist.
 

By Eleanor Clift 

Women of all ages had tears in their eyes as Hillary Clinton commanded the stage Tuesday evening at the Pepsi Center. This wasn’t supposed to be her night. She had hoped to speak Thursday night to accept the nomination of her party. But whatever anger and disappointment she may feel was not visible. She did what she had to do, and then some, putting party and country ahead of her personal ambition. Maybe women identified with her deferred dreams, and her game face, perhaps more so than men; an informal poll taken by NEWSWEEK’s reporters of convention-goers suggested that women rated Hillary’s speech a triumph while men were unmoved, picking apart sections of the speech as “too wonky” and totally missing the masterful way Hillary spoke to women with her closing peroration on suffrage.   

The evidence is mixed on whether Hillary succeeded in unifying the party. The Obama camp seemed pleased. Senator Obama called her after the speech and spoke to both Hillary and Bill. Joe Biden headed to Hillary’s holding room to congratulate her. But the glow of the evening only emboldened some Hillary supporters to continue to carry her banner. At a morning meeting of the Tennessee delegation when a Hillary supporter stood up to say she would switch her vote to Obama in tonight’s roll call, a verbal brawl broke out with other Hillary delegates declaring their allegiance to Clinton and assailing the turncoat. “She’s lucky she has her arms attached to her body,” Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen told NEWSWEEK.

Relations are smoother at the top with Clinton operative Craig Smith running Hillary’s floor operation out of the Obama office with a whip team in place to make sure the true believers don’t get out of hand. With President Clinton speaking tonight in prime time, the media spent much of the day parsing his past behavior, wondering how sincere he’ll be in endorsing Obama, and speculating how the Obama team will use him over the next two months. If the Clintons are really committed to party unity, shouldn’t we have seen a picture of the three of them together before now? “Have you seen a picture of the Clintons together?” a Clintonite responded, sarcastically touching on the widespread notion that Bill Clinton was a major factor in his wife losing the nomination.  

Still, key players in both camps think Obama would be wise to tap into the former president’s wisdom. “If I were Obama, I’d talk to him every night,” said one Clintonite, if only to show respect and keep him on the reservation. The two men have talked periodically over the last few weeks and the Obama campaign said they expect to dispatch Bill Clinton to the battleground states to campaign for the ticket, something he did not do in any significant way for either Al Gore or John Kerry. As for the personal relationship, says a former Clintonite with ties to both camps, “There can’t be a matchmaker. Either it will happen or it won’t.” Knowing how Clinton hates to be on the sidelines, the betting is on a shotgun marriage.

For many voters, especially women, the Hillary campaign was a crusade that they have trouble putting behind them. Hillary emerges a stronger figure for having run while her husband has been diminished. How he deals with that, knowing his competitive nature, has implications for Obama, his party and the country. Bill Clinton has always been best when the chips are down, and those who love him or loathe him expect him to meet the test this evening.   

Jonathan Alter delivers the dish:

John McCain is the least popular person at the Democratic convention. But if bad-mouthing by Obama forces is a way to keep score, James Carville, the ragin' Cajun, is a close second.

Carville has been all over CNN and ABC News trashing the Democrats for lacking a message and not choosing Hillary Clinton as VP. Even Terry McAuliffe--once the most impassioned of Cinton backers, but now a force for party unity--told me he thought Carville was out of line.

Carville said on TV that he was "neither impressed nor pleased" with the first night of the convention because it lacked a theme beyond the Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama speeches, adding that Obama's "got to show some respect and graciousness toward the Clintons. " As for her supporters? "I don't know if they're going to get behind the ticket."

No one should expect Carville to be an Obama cheerleader. That wouldn't be good TV anyway. But Carville was totally misreading the mood of the convention, as the overwhelmingly pro-Obama roll call showed. And the question is why.

The Obama campaign is already furious at Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, for editing and pushing "The Obama Nation," Jerome Corsi's bestselling hatchet job. (Matalin has her own conservative publishing imprint.) Obama supporters don't want to be quoted on the subject, but they believe that Carville and Matalin are looking at the demise of their long-running, lucrative road show if Obama wins. In effect, this takes their strange cross-party act to a new level--one that is angering a lot of convention-goers. It's one thing for Mary to work for President George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney; it's another for his wife to participate in the Swift-Boating of the Democratic nominee (Corsi co-wrote the book, "Unfit for Command," that sunk John Kerry with a fusilade of falsehoods in 2004).

I've always liked James, but the contradictions of his life have finally caught up with him.
 

DENVER--After a somewhat shaky debut alongside Barack Obama last Saturday in Springfield, Ill., Joe Biden made his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tuesday at a roundtable on Economic Security for American Families. Flanked by a quartet of struggling women preselected by the campaign, Biden offered a preview of what's sure to be his central role on the campaign trail from now until November: using his own trials and tribulations to reach out to working-class voters who are still wary of Obama. "My mom says, you have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to understand them," he said. "Now, I haven't walked a mile in the shoes of these incredible women, but I think I understand them."

By asking Biden to pull a Bill Clinton and feel voters' pain, Obama is betting that his running mate's straight-shooting style will pay off. But what was clear from Biden's initial performance as empathizer-in-chief is that the only thing more important to the Delaware senator than speaking his mind is letting everyone in the room KNOW that he's speaking his mind. Typically, Biden accomplishes this feat by prefacing everything he says with a word or phrase meant to emphasize his own honesty. Although his supply of such qualifiers seems limitless, his favorite is clearly "literally." During his speech in Springfield, for example, Biden used the word a grand total of eight times, including twice in a row (while testifying to Obama's ability to "literally, literally change the direction of the world"); Tuesday in Denver, he one-upped himself, exclaiming that "your children's futures" are "literally, literally, literally at stake." Remarkably, Biden managed to pack six other "I'm being candid now" catchphrases into his brief 12-minute debut. His attack on McCain's tax cuts was "literally factual." (A twofer.) "I'm not making this up," he added, in case there was any confusion. Praising Michelle Obama's eloquence, Biden informed the audience that "I mean this sincerely," and before addressing the cost of health care, he tossed off an "I'm serious" or two. Other statements were qualified with "I'm not joking" and "this is not hyperbole."

If at all possible--and that's a big if--Biden might want to curb his verbal tic before November. His tendency to constantly repeat that he's being sincere runs the risk of undercutting, rather than underscoring, his sincerity. That said, McCain also indulges in a similar shtick, and so far he's only been able to come up with one slogan: "here's a little straight talk, my friends." At least Joe gets points for creativity. Literally.

 

Spotted by NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Darman:

"Rep. Rahm Emanuel and entourage, making their way into the Politico/Glover Park Group party on Tuesday night after exiting a black suburban with a three police-car escort. For good measure, as Rahm worked the room inside, his motorcade picked up a fourth car that joined the others in blocking part of Market Street. Clearly, Democrats will do whatever it takes to avoid the Constitutional crisis that would no doubt ensue in the event of something unfortunate happening to the House Democratic Caucus Chairman. Rest easy, independent voters, Rahm and the Republic are safe."

DENVER--The punditizing began--predictably--before Hillary Clinton even stepped down from the stage. As the woman wearing the tangerine pantsuit and the firm Colgate smile waved to a sea of shaking signs--white Hillary signs, blue Unity signs, long polelike signs that said her name on one side and Barack Obama's on the other--the chattering classes rushed to the airwaves and the Internet to deliver their verdicts. There were--also predictably--two main reactions: the sigh of relief and the nitpick. "She gracefully marked her place as one of America's premiere politicians with a firm, commanding, gracious argument on behalf of Barack Obama," wrote Time CW-monger Mark Halperin (the former). "Hillary Clinton obviously doesn't like Barack Obama," countered the New Republic's Jonathan Chait (the latter). "She's clearly hesitant about the prospect of him as president." And never the twain shall meet.

So where does Stumper stand? Somewhere in between.  

All the gushing coverage--the lines about it being "the best speech she could've possibly given"--strikes me as the product of unreasonably low expectations (and the power of the moment). A full week of watching the MSM hyperventilate over the "Clinton-Obama conflict" seemed to have convinced some observers that Clinton would take the stage attired in the revolutionary garb of some maniacal Third World dictator and seize the nomination by bloody force--even though, as I wrote Monday, "the chance that she'll deliver an off-message speech (like Pat Buchanan in 1988) or give Obama the cold shoulder (like Kennedy did to Carter in 1980) is exceedingly slim." But thanks to the manufactured suspense, a speech that did the obvious--honoring her fans, making her support for Obama clear and putting distance between herself and John McCain--played in the hall, on television and, I suspect, in living rooms nationwide as something more like Cicero. I'm not saying Clinton's speech wasn't good. It was. From the start--"I'm here tonight as a proud mother, as a proud Democrat, as a proud senator from New York, a proud American and a proud supporter of Barack Obama"--her passion for party unity and commitment to convincing her supporters to vote for Obama was clear. And the section about Harriet Tubman--"even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going"--was graceful and moving. But it's worth noting, as the nitpickers do, that while Clinton personally praised Joe Biden ("A strong leader and a good man ... He is pragmatic, tough, and wise") and even McCain ("John McCain is my colleague and my friend. He has served our country with honor and courage"), she didn't say anything positive about Obama as a person. And she certainly didn't make any "clear, flat assertion that Obama is qualified and prepared to be commander in chief from day one"--her central criticism of the Illinois senator, and now McCain's.

That said, I think Clinton was right not to pretend that she and the nominee have suddenly become BFFs. Simply put, her best bet for achieving party unity was persuasion, not propaganda. Consider her audience: reluctant, mourning supporters who need to be convinced--not commanded--to consider her former opponent. As the polls constantly remind us, many of them still don't like Obama--and they probably suspect that Clinton shares their skepticism. As Hillary supporter Jerry Straughan told The Washington Post this morning, "Who knows what she really thinks?" So instead of gushing, Clinton played the lawyer, presenting a passionate but pragmatic case perfectly calibrated to connect with this particular jury: you are Democrats, you care deeply about Democratic issues, and there's only one Democrat left in the race. "Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked. "Or were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?" The implication, of course, was that her supporters didn't need to be "in it" for Obama, either--as long as they accept the fact that helping those "invisible" people will be "impossible if we don't fight to put a Democrat"--any Democrat--"in the White House." Anything more effusive would've required the audience to suspend disbelief. At its heart, the speech was convincing because it was credible.

Going forward, a few Hillary holdouts--the ones who were, in fact, "in it for her"--will continue to hold out. But last night, Clinton delivered the savviest argument in her arsenal. That it played like poetry was just icing on the cake.
 

By Jonathan Darman 

For months, I’ve listened to die-Hard Hillary Clinton supporters talk about their candidate’s special bond with the white working class. Around Denver in the first two days of the Democratic convention I’d heard disaffected Hillary delegates wonder, loudly, if Barack Obama could relate to all the Bubbas out there who felt so fondly for their girl. And so, I set out to find some place in Denver where I could watch Hillary’s big convention speech among her people. With four other journalists—three women and one man, I headed to a Denver Hooters.

The nearest Hooters to the Pepsi Center is at the Intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Arkansas Ave.—Clinton country. The plastic, illuminated palm trees outside were adorned with red, white and blue streamers and the sign on the highway showed Hooters had its eye on the convention: “Welcome Donkeys, Come Inside, We’re Open Late.”

But, for some inexplicable reason, inside of Hooters we discovered the good patrons didn’t seem to have Hillary on their minds. The restaurant was lined with large flat screen TVs but none were tuned to the convention. We scrambled around the restaurant, in search of CNN. “You can have our table,” said two men who saw us hovering. “We’re hoping to watch Hillary Clinton at the convention,” we replied. “In that case, you can’t have our table.”

Finally, after securing a guarantee from the manager that he would tune in enough televisions to the convention for us to be able to hear, we settled down at a table in the corner where we sipped Blue Moons (Hillary’s favorite!) and ate fried pickles. Our waitress, Ashley, was, like every Hooters girl in America, clad in a tight white t-shirt and orange booty shorts. What do you think of Hillary Clinton, we asked her. “I don’t get cable,” she said, “so I don’t really know.”

In a couple minutes’ time, Hillary took to the podium and, thanks to our chat with the manager, her voice flooded half of Hooters. But no one seemed to notice. The only applause all evening came when the cable blipped out for a moment and Hillary temporarily disappeared.

Ashley, though, was getting interested. After bringing us our greasy fare, she waited at a nearby table with a colleague. Looking at the television, they pointed and joked and even mimicked Hillary, turning to each other and pointing: “No way. No how. No McCain.” Mostly though, they just watched. In a couple of minutes time, the woman on television in the orange pant suit disappeared from the convention floor, her speech was a triumph, her work was done. The women in the orange booty shorts, though, were still on the clock. As Ashley cleared our plates we apologized for all the inconvenience our need to see the speech had caused. “Are you kidding, I loved it,” she said. “It gave me chills.”

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories, coming to you live from the Cherry Creek Hotel in sunny Denver, Colo.

FOR OBAMA, A CHALLENGE TO CLARIFY HIS MESSAGE
(Jackie Calmes, New York Times)
The challenge for Mr. Obama in establishing his identity as the best economic steward for a hurting nation was evident with Tuesday night’s highlight: the speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, who nearly won the Democratic nomination with a late appeal to middle-class anxieties, used her formal concession to restate those campaign themes and to make a rousing case for reversing eight years of conservative economic policies — though with Mr. Obama as president. But it is not clear whether her substantive case would break through the story line about how well she would do in easing tensions with Mr. Obama and unifying the party. And just like on Monday night, when an emotional appearance by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and a speech by Michelle Obama dominated the coverage, the roster of speakers seeking to promote Mr. Obama as the answer to the country’s economic ills and Mr. McCain as worse than a third Bush term was barely seen on television. That blurring of the intended focus on Mr. Obama’s economic message captures a continuing struggle that Mr. Obama is having: With four nights of free prime-time television coverage, he is trying to define himself personally for voters, and to win over holdout Clinton supporters, while at the same time seeking to define himself substantively. Failing at either could cost him the election.

MCCAIN PLANS 3-STATE VP ROLLOUT
(Jonathan Martin, Politico)
The GOP nominee-in-waiting will move to immediately change the campaign conversation from Barack Obama’s football stadium acceptance speech Thursday to the new Republican ticket, to be revealed at a noontime Friday rally in a Dayton, Ohio, basketball arena. McCain and his running mate will then travel by bus to Pennsylvania, where they’ll hold an outdoor event at a minor league baseball stadium in Washington County, just southwest of Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the duo will head to suburban St. Louis for another event to be held at a minor league baseball stadium, this one in O’Fallon, Mo. The Missouri rally is being billed to local Republicans as something of a unity rally, since it will feature McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — the GOP presidential finalists who effectively divided the vote three ways in the Show Me State’s Super Tuesday primary. A McCain aide warned not to read too much into McCain’s planned guests, however. The campaign’s leadership has imposed a strict rule on staffers to not discuss the process and have further guarded the selection by parceling out very little information. The decision, though, has been all but made, according to one top adviser. “If he hasn’t, he’s very darn close,” said this source.

CLINTON DELIVERS EMPHATIC PLEA FOR UNITY
(Patrick Healy, New York Times)
Mrs. Clinton, who was once certain that she would win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps on Tuesday — deliberate steps, aides said — to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp. But the main task for Mrs. Clinton at the convention — reaffirming her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language — dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends say, and that has especially haunted her husband.

DID HILLARY HEAL THE WOUNDS?
(Roger Simon, Politico)
Yes, some 18 million people cast their votes for Hillary Clinton. But they did not do so in the expectation that there would be some kind of power-sharing arrangement if she lost. We are now asked to believe that a significant number of Hillary supporters will vote for John McCain in November rather than vote for Barack Obama. That is what some polls show and it has become a major media story line. To which I say: Hooey. Maybe that is the kind of thing you tell pollsters and reporters, but I don’t think it is the kind of thing that happens in real life. I don’t believe that people who once fervently supported Hillary Clinton’s progressive Democratic agenda will now turn to John McCain’s conservative Republican agenda.I don’t believe that those Hillary supporters who are women, and who believe Hillary was treated disrespectfully because she was a woman, will now turn to a candidate who opposes Roe v. Wade and, presumably, would appoint Supreme Court justices who agree with him.Hillary Clinton is only 60 years old, and she has a political future. She could run again for president or for reelection to the Senate in 2012. Or she could run for governor of New York in 2010. I have no idea whether Hillary Clinton really wants Barack Obama to win in November. It doesn’t matter. What does matter for her sake is that she not get blamed for his defeat if he loses.

MANY CLINTON SUPPORTERS SAY SPEECH DIDN'T HEAL DIVISIONS
(Eli Saslow, Washington Post)
Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations. Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed. There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech's predictability. "It's a tactic," he said. "Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I'm still bitter."

ONE FIRST IS CELEBRATED. WHAT ABOUT THE SECOND?
(Alessandra Stanley, New York Times)
History is being made in Denver, but so far, it has been slipped under the carpet during prime time. Tuesday night was tailored to pay homage to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s barrier-breaking near-miss, yet there was no overt celebration of the bull’s-eye: Barack Obama is poised to be the first African-American presidential nominee... On Tuesday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas praised Mr. Obama’s hardscrabble Kansas roots at some length and never mentioned that his father was African. Neither did the keynote speaker, former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, nor Mrs. Clinton. When Mrs. Clinton declared her support for Mr. Obama, she focused on their shared ideals, not the presumptive nominee’s unique place in history. And that seemed to suit the Obama team just fine. While African-Americans on the convention floor — and in the commentators’ booth — express feelings of pride and exhilaration, convention organizers design the pageantry on the air to mute racial distinctions and veil novelty, focused it seems, on reassuring those white viewers who find the 2008 spectacle jarringly different from past ones.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

Warner keynotes the Democratic convention

DENVER--The most telling line of Mark Warner's keynote address here at the Democratic Convention came near the end. It's "daunting," he said, "delivering the keynote speech four years after Barack Obama [and] speaking before Hillary Clinton."

Warner was right to feel daunted. Aiming to link his background as a successful tech businessman and wildly popular former Virginia governor with the theme of the night ("Renewing America's Promise") Warner may have hit the right notes tonight--but he did so with little authority, agility or verve. It was partly his reliance on halfhearted speechwriting devices that disappointed. Under Bush, he said, a "fair shot" has become a "long shot"; under the Dems, a "fair shot" could become a "shot in the arm."It was partly his overuse of threadbare cliches, from "you ain't seen nothing yet" to "it's not where you came from that counts, it's where you want to go."  It was partly his willingness to recite rote Democratic platitudes--"cover everyone," "restore America's leadership," "get off foreign oil," "recruit an army of new teachers"--without any memorable specifics. And it was partly the fact that Warner's own biography--start one business, start another, make hundreds of millions in the cellular industry--is neither a moving tale of triumph over adversity nor a he's-like-us homily. In the end, Warner made some good points--his story about bringing high-tech jobs to the small town of Lebanon, Va. was especially effective--but the speech as a whole fell totally flat. In the hall, the crowd muttered over his thin, reedy voice. The applause was sparse, and when it came, it felt dutiful rather than inspired. The fact is, Warner was an excellent governor--an admirable, able technocrat. But the moment--a moment of theater, after all--required either a spellbinder (like Obama) or a force of nature (like Clinton). Sandwiched between the two, Warner was dwarfed. "Atrocious," one journalist told me. Overhearing, another chimed in. "Not atrocious," he said. "Just boring."

For Dems, the most depressing part of the whole debacle must've been realizing, approximately 20 minutes after Warner finished his keynote address, that the right guy for the job had been there all along. The night--or at least the night B.C. (before Clinton)--belonged to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. A nonideological, plainspoken pragmatist who has come represent the rising Democratic tide out west, this former rancher and irrigation specialist delivered an old-school stemwinder that blended policy, politics and personality in the proper proportions. Like any good raconteur, Schweitzer relied on showing, not telling, to sell his story. "When I was elected governor, I chose a Republican to be my lieutenant governor simple with the simple proposition that we could get more done that way," he said. "Three-and-a-half years later, we've worked together and cut more taxes for more Montana ever before; we've raised energy production to new levels; we've invested more money in education than every before; and we've created largest budget surplus in history of Montana. That's the change that we brought to Montana and that's the change that Barack Obama is going to bring to America." Point taken. Schweitzer also harnessed the power of the telling detail, noting that while "there wasn't much in our house growing up," there was "a crucifix on our kitchen wall and framed picture of President Kennedy." He relished ragging on the Republicans, launching a call-and-response chant--"Can we afford four more years? (No!) Is it time for change? (Yes!) When do we need it? (Now!)"--and exhorting the party, amid rapturous applause and his own Tammany Hall gesticulations, to "stand up!" He even managed to sneak in an eloquent explanation, grounded in his Montana governorship, of why "we need new energy system that's clean and green and American-made." "We simply can't drill our way to energy independence" he said. "Even if you drilled in all of John McCain's backyards--including the ones he can't even remember." One idea, one hook. And he did all while wearing a bolo tie. As Schweitzer finished his remarks, the hall went crazy. "That's what's supposed to happen at the end of a keynote speech," said one of my fellow hacks. Seriously. It was like watching a waistcoat-wearing rabble-rouser circa 1934. It was, in other words, fun.

When I returned from the arena to the NEWSWEEK workspace--we're located in a tent across the street--I learned that the networks had shown Warner's speech but skipped Schweitzer's. It's too bad they got it backwards tonight--I mean, talk about good TV--but, really, it's understandable. After all, Obama and his fellow Dems made the exact same mistake.

UPDATE, Aug. 27: One reason Schweitzer didn't keynote--he wrote his final speech at the last minute. Politico's Mike Allen reports:

Originally, Schweitzer had a much blander script. But convention officials told him that he was going to be yanked from prime time and put in a much less desirable earlier spot if he didn’t go after McCain hammer and tongs. With hours to go, Schweitzer -- a farmer and rancher who held no elected office prior to being elected as the first Democratic Governor to serve Montana in 20 years -- decided to play ball, and now will get a bunch of profiles as a rising Dem. 

NEWSWEEK's new cultural critic Jeremy McCarter--late of New York magazine--posts a must-read essay on the insanity of cable TV convention coverage. This is exactly what I'd say on the subject if I were as smart as Mr. McCarter:

DID DEMOCRATS WASTE FIRST DAY? blared a graphic beneath Larry King's chin. The Monday-night program of the Democratic National Convention had ended a couple of hours earlier, and King wanted the assembled pundits to tell him whether the party has mishandled its big event. The question is rich with irony. Precisely because of the pundits, who can even tell what the Democrats did on their first day, much less decide how well or badly they did it?

Time after time last evening, I flipped from the wall-to-wall coverage on C-Span—which is viewed, I imagine, largely by shut-ins and political completists—to see how CNN or MSNBC or Fox News broadcast a speech or performance. Time and again, they weren't broadcasting it at all. Instead, talking heads were talking to other talking heads about Hillary's dead-enders, or some other overblown story, at self-parodying length. The resulting coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot put.

Consider the early conventional wisdom about last night: that the Democrats didn't spend much time hitting the Republicans. That's true, insofar as organizers didn't think it would be dignified to have two history-making speakers share the stage with a McCain piñata. But just because nobody got to hear the whacking doesn't mean no whacking occurred. Multiple members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Sen. Amy Klobuchar blasted McCain before prime time. Later, America caught a glimpse of Nancy Pelosi getting off a good line, saying that McCain does indeed have experience—"experience in being wrong."

It's like the old koan about a tree falling in a deserted forest, except this time, there are a bunch of witnesses swearing that it didn't make a sound. Welcome to the team, sir. 

READ THE REST HERE. 

DENVER--It's not often that the fourth longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate gets to be a rookie again. But that's exactly what happened to Joe Biden today at the Colfax Event Center here in Denver.

After a somewhat shaky debut alongside Barack Obama last Saturday in Springfield, Ill.--during which his fluent assaults on John McCain were followed by marble-mouthed paeans to 'Barack America"--the senior senator from Delaware made his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee at this morning's roundtable on Economic Security for American Families. The name of the event was telling. Flanked by a quartet of struggling women preselected by the campaign and who's who of leading Obama surrogates--Michelle, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and others--Biden offered an early taste of what's sure to be his central role on the campaign trail from now until November: using his own trials and tribulations to reach out to working-class voters who are still wary of Obama. "My mom says, you have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to understand them," Biden said. "Now, I haven't walked a mile in the shoes of these incredible women, but I think I understand them."

Today's empathy strategy--which owed more than a little to the example of Bill "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton--represented a sharp break with Biden's previous political persona. Campaigning last fall as a consummate foreign-policy pro, Biden told me that "this election is about 'Who's going to make us the safest?'--and "not about health care." But it should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Biden's past--or his record, which includes authoring the Violence Against Women Act--that the senator acquitted himself rather well at this morning's event. And the obsessive Obama campaign did more than its part to help. In his introductory remarks--which seemed, in true Biden style, to be entirely improvised--Biden addressed each of the working women individually, linking their stories to his own. Ashley Dart of Michigan is a single mother raising five children after her husband passed away; Biden told her of losing his own wife in a car crash in 1972, and how hard it was to raise his two sons alone. Shandra Jackson of Texas was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst in her brain, followed by an aneurysm; Biden told her of his own near-fatal aneurysms, and lamented that while "doctors think it's bad publicity if a senator dies on the table," ordinary Americans have to fend for themselves. And Leisha Karl of Colorado recently returned to community college after leaving 15 years ago to raise her son; Biden told her of his wife Jill, who "for 27 years has taught community college, and calls people like you her heroes." To a cynical hack like, well, me, the campaign's aggressive choreography--something tells me that these tidy biographical symmetries weren't coincidental--seemed a little overwrought. But the pain in the room was real, and no one else seemed to mind. "Listen to these women, not me," Biden said at the end of his statement--as if the event hadn't been designed around him. The crowd roared its approval.

Expect Team Obama to keep maximizing Biden's biography and emphasizing his empathy. I've seen Obama participate in several of these stagey roundtables over the past 12 months, and he's nowhere near as convincing as his new partner was today. Restrained by his cooler, academic temperament, Obama tends to nod approvingly while his guests relate their stories, then pose a probing follow-up or pivot to a relevant policy point; he rarely feels the urge to establish an emotional connection by sharing a similar experience of his own. Given that Biden was wrong about this election--it IS about health care, and taxes, and gas prices--his new role as Obama's economic empathizer may turn out to be more important than his attack dogging or his foreign-policy expertise. Of course, it remains to be seen how convincingly Biden can feel voters' pain in a less choreographed setting; empathizing always borders on pandering, especially in the hands of a politician as bombastic and mercurial as Biden. But today, in his first at-bat, the new No. 2 did Bubba proud--even if he was swinging at softballs.
 

By Jonathan Darman 

Days before he takes the stage in St. Paul, Minn., at the GOP convention, independent Democrat Joe Lieberman’s being constantly rewritten on both the left and right. In a New York Times column last Monday, conservative commentator Bill Kristol floated the notion that Lieberman was still in the running to be John McCain’s running mate. Lieberman, Kristol said, could acclimate with the McCain era-GOP in spite of having a “moderately liberal voting record.”

But conservatives who care more about a candidate’s economic orthodoxy than his support of the war in Iraq might have a hard time seeing what’s so moderate about Lieberman. In Connecticut, Lieberman has long counted on strong ties to organized labor, the bête noir of movement conservatives. In 2007, according to the National Journal, he supported a liberal economic agenda 76 percent of the time. The National Education Association, the powerful teachers union, gave Lieberman an “A” for 2007, and he supported the interests of the AFL-CIO 84 percent of the time that year.

In 2006, Lieberman won re-election to the Senate after losing his party’s primary in part because lunch-pail Democrats in Connecticut’s cities stuck with him, even after the state’s Democratic Party did not. That year he voted with the interests of Americans for Tax Reform, the conservative tax-watchdog group, only 15 percent of the time. Grover Norquist, ATR’s president, has made no secret of his distaste for a McCain-Lieberman ticket and his contempt for Lieberman. After Lieberman spoke out against the Bush tax cuts in 2002, ATR released a press release titled “Joe Lieberman to Taxpayers: Drop Dead.”
 

Back in the old days—i.e., four years ago—presidential nominees used to lay low during their opposing candidate’s convention week, leaving the attacking up to campaign surrogates and the national party committees. But, as the New York Times notes this morning, those days are long gone. Though he spent several days largely out of sight at his Sedona, Ariz., cabin this weekend, John McCain has been anything but off the radar the past two days. On Monday, he hit “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Today, McCain spoke to the American Legion National Convention here in Phoenix, where, among other things, he accused Barack Obama of “confusion” about America’s role in the world and quoted Obama's statements on the Cold War and the Russian/Georgian conflict to suggest he’s too inexperienced to lead. McCain noted that, despite the anti-Americanism around the world, people still look to the United States in times of global crisis. "They know the strength of America remains the greatest force for good on this earth,” he said. But in a line that will no doubt raise questions about whether McCain is attacking Obama’s patriotism, the presumptive GOP nominee suggested Obama should have expressed confidence in America’s leadership during his recent speech in Berlin. “He was the picture of confidence, in some ways,” McCain said. “But confidence in oneself and confidence in one’s country are not the same.” In defending similar attacks, McCain has repeatedly said he is not questioning Obama’s patriotism, but rather “his judgment”—though Democrats likely won’t see today’s speech that way.

Here’s an excerpt from the speech:

There are those who say that our day as the free world’s leader has passed, that our moment is waning.  They point to the anti-Americanism that is sometimes heard in Europe and elsewhere, and take this as a sign that America no longer has the strength or the moral credibility to lead.  The criticisms tend to pass or quiet down when global threats and dangers appear.  In times of trouble, free nations of the world still look to America for leadership, because they know the strength of America remains the greatest force for good on this earth.

My opponent had the chance to express such confidence in America, when he delivered a much anticipated address in Berlin.  He was the picture of confidence, in some ways.  But confidence in oneself and confidence in one’s country are not the same.  And in that speech, Senator Obama left an important point unclear.  He suggested that the end of the Cold War proved that there was, quote, “no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”  Now I missed a few years of the Cold War, as the guest of one of our adversaries, but as I recall the world was deeply divided during the Cold War – between the side of freedom and the side of tyranny.  The Cold War ended not because the world stood “as one,” but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership.

All of this is more than an academic debate.  For the sake of our own security, and the defense of our values in the affairs of the world, American leadership is critical.  While we have our share of critics around the world, when people in the oppressed nations of the world need support, and solidarity, and hope, they look to America.  When they talk about our country, it is not with distrust or disdain, but with respect and affection.  They do not resent or resist America’s democratic influence in the world – they thank God for it.

Just days after the Russian invasion of Georgia, Senator Obama had this to say about the crisis:  “We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies.  They can’t charge into other countries.  Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”  End of quote.  I guess we are left to figure out the rest for ourselves.  It’s unlikely he was alluding to Afghanistan, the nation we liberated after 9/11, and continue to help despite Russian complaints about our related deployments in Central Asia.  And he probably didn’t have Kosovo in mind either – although Russia didn’t care much for that military action, either.  We and our NATO allies had to end the Serbian slaughter of civilians in Kosovo without UN approval, because the Russians blocked the effort in the Security Council.

If I catch Senator Obama’s drift, then, our failure to “lead by example” was the liberation of Iraq.  And if he really thinks that, by liberating Iraq from a dangerous tyrant, America somehow set a bad example that invited Russia to invade a small, peaceful, and democratic nation, then he should state it outright – because that is a debate I welcome.

In the end, confusion about such questions only invites more trouble, violence, and aggression.  To promote stability and peace, America must stand firmly on the side of freedom and justice.  The next president must bring to office a clear-eyed view of our nation’s role in the world, as the defender of the oppressed and a force for peace.

UPDATE, 4:50PM EST: The Obama campaign responds, calling the McCain speech a page from the “Karl Rove playbook.” A spokesman points out an excerpt from Obama’s Berlin speech, arguing the Illinois senator showed plenty of confidence in his country. “I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived--at great cost and great sacrifice--to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world,” Obama said. “Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us--what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores--is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.”

DENVER, Colo.--"She was so poised." "Beautiful." "Loved her dress."

Those were only three of the dozens of reactions to Michelle Obama's convention address I overheard last night in the crush of delegates, politicians, journalists and rank-and-file Democrats pouring out of the Pepsi Center--but to print the rest would sound somewhat repetitive. The response here in Denver, at least among the Dems, has been uniformly positive. Which is why it was odd to hear the chattering classes carping, until the wee hours of the morning, that the night had been wasted. "If this party has a message it's done a hell of a job hiding it tonight," said James Carville. "I promise you that." The headline on the midnight edition of Larry King Live, meanwhile, was just as critical: "Did Democrats Waste 1st Day? Dems Too Soft? Did Bush Get Pass?"

Now, it's not that I don't understand the complaint. Worried about tightening polls and Barack Obama's troubles connecting to blue-collar voters, anxious Democrats (understandably) want their star speakers to hammer George W. Bush and John McCain and make sharp economic contrasts while the spotlight is still shining. They will. According to one Democratic official in close contact with Chicago, Hillary Clinton will give a "heckuva" speech tonight on kitchen-table concerns; tomorrow, Bill Clinton will "lay out the case against McCain" (and not restrict himself solely to foreign policy, as previously reported); and finally, on Thursday, Obama will be "specific--but not professorial--about where he's going to take the country. He'll hit it hard." That said, last night wasn't about economic contrasts, or foreign policy, or Obama's plans for America. It was about inspiration--specifically, inspiring the still-divided Democratic Party to see itself in the atypical family it's chosen to send to the White House. The numbers are telling. While John McCain receives the support of at least 85 percent of self-described Republicans, Obama typically receives the support of only about 80 percent of self-described Dems--nine points worse than John Kerry in 2004. Which is why, as the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder notes, "this convention is NOT aimed at persuading people who call themselves independents and moderates. It's about persuading people who lean left and call themselves Democrats but who, for many reasons, aren't sure about Obama."

Viewed through that prism--on its own terms--it's pretty much impossible not to see Michelle's speech as a success. Among Democrats, the majority of Obama holdouts fit a particular demographic profile: white former Clinton supporters without college degrees (only 38 percent of whom currently support the Illinois senator). Rereading Michelle's remarks, it's amazing how methodical she was about reaching out to--and reassuring--this constituency. Gone were the grafs on her husband's unusually peripatetic background: no Kenya, no Indonesia, no anthropologist mom, no Harvard Law Review. Instead, Michelle spoke about her "blue-collar city-worker" father, who "just woke up a little earlier, and worked a little harder" after being "diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in his early thirties." She spoke about her mother, "who stayed at home with my brother and me." Her husband's family, meanwhile, "was so much like mine" (and, presumably, yours)--"even though he'd grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii." His grandparents were "working class," Michelle said; his mother "struggled to pay the bills just like we did." How could the Obamas be "elitists," she implied, when they "both were able to go on to college" only because of their "faith and hard work"? How could they be "unpatriotic" when they "know firsthand... that the American Dream endures." How could they disrespect Hillary Clinton, the woman who "put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling so that our daughters–and sons–can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher?" And how could Obama be a stranger, an enigma, an other when "he's the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail's pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror." As former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson notes, Michelle "told a compelling working class story." She checked every box on the list.  

That said, the greatest accomplishment of Michelle's speech wasn't the boxes it checked. It was the fact that it never sounded like never sounded like a checklist. To viewers watching in Denver or in living rooms across the country, the sharp, angry radical of conservative caricature was nowhere to be seen, replaced onstage by a "confident, fluent and appealingly personal" human being, as Gerson puts it. And that, more than any message about her "working class" past, was the real power of the moment. The right-wing will continue to complain about Michelle's supposed "ungratefulness." That's to be expected. But if even a few Hillary holdouts spent the seconds after Michelle left the stage praising her composure or commenting on her dress--instead of, say, questioning whether she's proud of America--then it was a job well done.

One night down, three to go.

(AP Photo / Matt Rourke) 

DENVER--Overheard blaring from the two-way radio of a Denver cop working security at this morning's Roundtable for Working Families with Joe Biden and Michelle Obama:

[Beep, static] Everyone over on Colfax, just FYI. We've spotted two individuals walking up the street. They're wearing backpacks, and they've got some anti-war stickers. They're just walking right now, but be alerted. [Static]

Stickers? Backpacks? Next thing you know these troublemakers will be wearing Che Guevara t-shirts and listening to Bob Marley.

Thank goodness for tear gas.
 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Howard Fineman with a report on Obama's struggles to connect with blue-collar voters.

To use a familiar phrase, Barack Obama needs Tom Buffenbarger to get fired up and ready to go. The fact that he isn't should worry voters eager to see the Democrats to win in November.

I ran into Buffenbarger in a hotel lobby, as I was moving around town earlier today, trying to get a sense of things. He is precisely what you would think a Tom Buffenbarger would be: a thickly built, balding, blunt-speaking guy with a firm handshake and a sports coat you'd never see in the pages of GQ magazine. His roots and job are Buffenbargeresque: the blue-collar precincts of Cincinnati; the presidency of the Machinists Union.

Buffenbarger was a Hillary Clinton guy. Now he is an Obama guy. But he is worried--worried that the Obama-Biden campaign still doesn't get it about the voters he represents and the part of the country he comes from. "I'm not sure they have anyone on the inside of that campaign who really knows my voters," he told me.

Besides inside advice, the Obama campaign, in the view of many here, hasn't been as diligent as they should be in wooing and winning Clinton delegates. Some Obama supporters in states Obama won--Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, to cite one example--have worked hard on their own to reel in their local Clintonites. But neither Obama nor his top lieutenants have reached much beyond the Clinton donor base to reach out directly to individual delegates.

These two trends--blue-collar worries, and reluctant Clinton supporters who feel they are being ignored--cross in a particular geographical area: the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's a cliché of the campaign but nevertheless true: this election battle with John McCain will be won or lost in those places, where less educated, Roman Catholic blue-collar workers still form the backbone of the traditional Democratic Party.

Said another union official, who did not want to be quoted: "The fact that we are fighting tooth and nail in Pennsylvania--when we shouldn't have to be, given George Bush's record--tells you everything you need to know about this election."

What does Obama need to do and say?

"He needs to challenge America again," Buffenbarger told me. "He needs to say that we are going to rebuild the middle class and renew our technological base." Obama can't merely promise to repeat the policies of Bill Clinton, he said. The former president was too willing to sign trade deals, he said, and too willing to sometimes let Wall Street get its way.

READ THE REST HERE. 
 

In this year's party platform, Democrats reaffirmed their support of Roe v. Wade while taking on a new commitment: reducing the number of abortions in the United States. NEWSWEEK's Sarah Kliff spoke with pro-choice evangelical leader Jim Wallis, who led the revision efforts. Excerpts:

What do you think of the current abortion debate we're having?
The abortion debate has been a bankrupt discussion for a long time on both sides. There's no attention given to low-income women, even though three-quarters of women who get abortions say the reason was they couldn't afford the child.

How does the Democrats' change to their platform reshape that discussion?
Democrats have supported a woman's right to choose, but now this says it's also a woman's decision to have her child and that that's supported. That's really important.

What does it mean in terms of policy?
The Democrats now should support policies that aim for better health care for low-income women, make adoption easier and programs that prevent pregnancy, including contraception education. 

Looking to next week, do you think the Republicans will also commit to abortion reduction?
I'd also like to see a commitment to abortion reduction from the Republicans, but that's probably too much to hope for.
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories, coming to you live from the Cherry Creek Hotel in sunny Denver, Colo.

21ST CENTURY MAN
(David Brooks, New York Times)
I flew into the airport here on Sunday and the pilot could barely land because of the fog of bad advice. Democrats are nervous because Barack Obama’s polling lead has evaporated. And when Democrats are nervous, all the Santa Monica Machiavellis emerge from their fund-raisers offering words of wisdom. And the subtext of the advice being offered this year is that Barack Obama should really be someone else... Now he has to define himself amid the phantasmagorical vapors of his own party: the ghosts of the Kerry campaign, the overshadowing magic of the Kennedys and the ego-opera that perpetually surrounds the Clintons. Of course, the Obama campaign has been here before. Just about a year ago, Obama was stagnant in the polls. His supporters were nervous and full of advice. And in the crowning moment of his whole race, Obama shut them out. He turned his back on the universe of geniuses and stayed true to his core identity.

SHAKY ECONOMY CHALLENGES AMBITIOUS OBAMA AGENDA
(Bob Davis and T.W. Farnham, Wall Street Journal)
Democrats convened in Denver on Monday with the economy's woes muscling to the top of political concerns, as reflected in further drops in stocks and housing prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 241.81 points, or 2.1%, to 11386.25, amid continuing worry over the economic and credit problems. Inventories of unsold homes rose to a record, while prices continued to slip, threatening to delay the housing market's recovery... Against this backdrop, Sen. Obama is proposing to use the government to remake economic policies in a way that hasn't been seen in Washington in decades. The last two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were hamstrung by rising deficits, feuds with Democrats in Congress and antigovernment sentiment in Washington. Sen. Obama's advisers argue that he would be largely free from those constraints, easing the way for him to put in place big government programs, tax increases on the wealthy and trade restraints... In total, his top priorities would cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and some of them might require a stiff increase in regulation.

KENNEDY TUGS AT HEART, AS OBAMA'S WIFE PRAISES VALUES
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, struggling with brain cancer, arrived on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in a triumphant appearance that evoked 50 years of party history as Democrats gathered to nominate Senator Barack Obama for president. Mr. Kennedy’s appearance wiped away, at least for the evening, some of the tension that continued to plague the party in the wake of the primary fight between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. It also represented an effort by the Obama campaign to claim the Kennedy mantle, and it set the stage for the second part of what was designed to be an emotionally powerful two-act evening: an appearance later by Michelle Obama, who began a weeklong effort to present her husband — and his entire family — as embodiments of the American dream. 

A PORTRAIT OF THE CANDIDATE, BUT DOTS LEFT TO CONNECT
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
Monday's opening events highlighted the degree to which Obama's advisers know they have work to do this week, from binding together a Democratic family still divided after a hard-fought nomination battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to providing reassurance that the man they will nominate shares the values of Middle America and has the toughness and judgment to lead the country. For the true partisans and the Obama loyalists, whose passionate support propelled him to the nomination against sizable odds, those qualities have never been in doubt. Obama's message of changing Washington and turning the page on the politics of the past decade has galvanized a generation of younger voters and re-instilled a sense of idealism in at least part of the older generation. But as the convention opened, there were others -- including strong allies of Obama -- openly expressing the view that the candidate and his party need a successful week in Denver to give them the energy they need to blunt fresh momentum by McCain and his campaign. McCain's aggressiveness over the past month has unsettled many Democrats, and they are looking for the convention to help reverse things.

STADIUM SETTING A SPECTACULAR GAMBLE
(Stephanie Simon, Wall Street Journal)
In a blur of 20-hour workdays, a crew nearly 300 strong is stringing cable, laying walkways and building the dais that will transform an open-air football stadium into the launching pad for the final stage of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Staging experts plan a striking backdrop for Sen. Obama to accept his Democratic Party's nomination Thursday night at the 50-yard-line of Invesco Field at Mile High, the home of the Denver Broncos football team. Details are closely held. "We're not ready to announce the balloons-and-fireworks category of stuff," said Damon Jones, a spokesman for the Democratic National Convention. Sen. Obama has put in many red-eye hours refining his speech; he was at it until 2 a.m. Monday, according to his campaign... The potential upside: A made-for-TV moment in front of a revved-up crowd of 80,000. The potential downside: The larger-than-life scale could aid Republicans in their quest to portray Sen. Obama as a celebrity candidate more suited to drawing adoring throngs than governing.

OBAMA SIGNALED EARLY THAT HE WAS NOT LIKELY TO CHOOSE EX-RIVAL
(Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post)
In a private meeting with Sen. Barack Obama after she conceded the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a request: that he consider her for his vice presidential running mate, but not put her through the charade of being vetted if he was not serious. Obama told Clinton then it was unlikely he would choose her, people familiar with the conversation said. Obama did not want to lead her on and, after campaigning against her for more than a year, already had a sense that their pairing would not be the right fit. 

By Holly Bailey 

Not only is John McCain expected to name his vice presidential running mate later this week, but the presumptive GOP nominee is marking another big milestone: On Friday, McCain turns 72, which means he’d be the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House should he win in November. (Ronald Reagan was 73 when he was re-elected for his second term.) There’s been plenty of speculation about how the campaign would mark McCain’s big day—or not. “We’ll have a giant birthday cake with a thousand candles!” a McCain aide joked to reporters recently. “It will be a bonfire!

In truth, neither the campaign nor the Republican National Committee is saying much about it. Four years ago, Laura Bush raised money for her husband’s re-election campaign by sending an e-mail to GOP supporters asking them to “sign” his e-birthday card by sending in a small donation. The RNC has marked Bush’s day every year since by doing the same thing, hitting up small donors to support the party. This year, no emails have gone out mentioning McCain’s birthday—at least not yet.

One thing is clear: McCain is armed with a few new jokes to push back against the idea that he’s old stuffy white guy. On Monday, McCain made his 13^th appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” where the host repeatedly poked fun at the senator’s age and upcoming birthday. “It was this week in 1814 (that) British troops set fire to the White House,” Leno said. “And the White House was saved. It was saved thanks to the actions of one brave young soldier: John McCain.” When McCain arrived on set, he tweaked Leno, telling him, “You forgot to mention that I warned people the British were coming.” Leno told McCain they’d hoped to have a birthday cake for him, but that the fire marshal had shut them down because there were too many candles. “I’ve got one,” McCain replied. “My Social Security number is 8.”

On a separate note, it wasn’t just age that Leno seized on. The late night host had a field day with McCain’s inability last week to tell reporters from the Politico how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. First, Leno joked that to make McCain “feel at home” that had given him seven dressing rooms for the night. Later, McCain jokingly offered Leno the No. 2 spot on his ticket, telling him “the house is nice.” “Yeah, but you’ve got enough of those,” Leno replied. “Do you need a white one too? Come on!” After a commercial break, Leno brought up the houses again, much to McCain’s discomfort. “For $1 million, how many houses do you have?” Leno asked. McCain laughed, but quickly turned serious, noting that he’d gone without a house or a table when he was a POW in Vietnam. He defended his wife and her family, calling their success “the American dream.” “Look, I’m proud of my life, and my record,” McCain said. “I’m proud of my record of service to this country, and it has nothing to do with houses. What it has to do with (is) putting Americans in houses and keeping them in their homes, and that’s what I know how to do.”

DENVER--"It is wonderful to be here."

Those were the six words that Ted Kennedy chose to start his speech here tonight at the Democratic convention—a speech that arrived a little more than 28 years after Kennedy abandoned his insurgent presidential bid at the same summertime event, nearly a continent away in New York. They hardly could've been more moving. Diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last spring after suffering through a pair of seizures, the 76-year-old Massachusetts senator underwent aggressive, three-and-a-half-hour brain surgery at Duke University in June—but was still only given a matter of months to live. Up until this evening, it was unclear whether Kennedy would take to the podium to address the convention; earlier plans had called for him to simply watch a video tribute from his seat in the crowd. But at the last moment the liberal lion said he would speak, and as he strode across the stage, the Democratic Party erupted into more than a minute of sustained applause. The words "wonderful to be here" referred, of course, to Denver. But they also referred to something greater.

Whether or not you agree with his politics--and God knows, much of the country doesn't--it was impossible to be unmoved by the rest of Kennedy's remarks. When Teddy said that "nothing, nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight," you couldn't help but think of the cancer he'd overcome to get here. When he said that "so many of you have been with me with the happiest of days and the hardest of days," you couldn't help but think of the two brothers he's lost. And when he said, "I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the U.S. Senate," you had to hope he was right. The beauty of Kennedy's speech was that, just from watching it, you'd never know he was sick. But knowing he is, even a cynic had to feel a little hope. As exhausted as that word has become.

After decades of tragedy, we've finally seen a Kennedy grow old. Before Teddy left the stage, he delivered a line that hearkened back to 1980. "The work begins anew," he said. "The hope rises again. And the dream lives on." So does he.

Sometimes, political conventions make for strange bedfellows. 

Case in point: at 2:38 a.m. on Sunday, police in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, made what they believed to be a routine traffic stop. In the car: methamphetamine—and two rifles (one of which was apparently a "sniper rifle.") Not so routine. According to CBS4 News, the first arrest led the authorities, who believed they had stumbled upon an "assassination plot," to a second man staying at a nearby hotel. When they knocked on the man's door, he reportedly "jumped out of his sixth-floor window, land[ed] on an awning and [ran] from the scene." When the cops found him nearby with a broken ankle, they arrested him, too. According CBS4, "one of the officers who was briefed says he was told at least one of the suspects made statements to that effect" that the pair was planning to assassinate Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

The hotel where the pair of would-be assassins' was staying: the Cherry Creek Hotel at 600 South Colorado Boulevard in Glendale.

The hotel where NEWSWEEK's entire convention team is staying: the Cherry Creek Hotel at 600 South Colorado Boulevard in Glendale.

Apparently, crack NEWSWEEK investigative reporter Mark Hosenball actually spied a couple of FBI agents lurking around the premises late last night. He's looking into the matter now, and we'll report back as soon as he hears more.

In the meantime, sweet dreams, fellow Newsweekers.

UPDATE, 11:03 p.m.: Here's more from Hosenball:

Monday evening, the U. S. Attorney's office in Denver issued the following statement confirming an unspecified number of arrests. "This is a methamphetamine and firearms case that arose from a traffic stop made by an Aurora Police officer," the statement read. "Firearms and methamphetamine were seized, and a number of individuals are in state custody. The matter continues to be under investigation. We'll provide more information as it becomes available." A law enforcement source said that prosecutors plan to file federal drug and gun charges against the suspects on Tuesday.

Wednesday evening, the FBI confirmed the identity of one of the suspects: Tharin Robert Gartrell. A source familiar with the investigation said that Gartrell and the other two suspects were believed to be white supremacists. The real question now is whether the men were in position to carry out any kind of threats against the candidate—or whether they were trying to impress girlfriends, the source said. The Obama campaign declined comment, referring reporters to the U.S. attorney's statement.

Read the rest here. 

DENVER--How does it feel to be a near-veep?

"Surreal."

That's Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine speaking the afternoon to a private panel of NEWSWEEK reporters and editors here at the Warwick Hotel in downtown Denver. Although Kaine refused to get into the details of his discussions with the Obama campaign—it's rumored that he was Obama's top pick until the conflict between Russia and Georgia threatened to highlight Obama's foreign-policy inexperience—he did spend plenty of time talking about how he would've approached the VP gig, had it been offered.

Kaine's first rule of veepdom: don't get personal. "It's easy because the difference in policy are so stark that you don't have to get into personal stuff," he said. "I've been in politics for 15 years now. I'm not naive, and I do think you need to show the sharp disagreements and sharp contrasts in the direction you want to take the nation. But how are you going to go personal against a John McCain? He's a person with faults just like the rest of us..." At this, one editor interrupted to voice the understandable objection: But shouldn't Obama fight fire with fire? He can't let the Paris Hilton stuff go unanswered. Kaine nodded. "I can only speak from my experience in Virginia, but what I would always try to do is respond with force, and to let people know there's a cost to being negative," he said. "But then the last 30 seconds of my ad would always be about a positive." So do you think the "seven houses" onslaught against McCain—a burst of unprompted negative messaging, after all—is an uncalled for personal attack? "Not at all," Kaine said, somewhat contradictorily. "It's very relevant, especially when McCain is trying to paint Obama as an elitist. I mean, Senator Obama was on food stamps while he was growing up. McCain not being able to remember how many houses he has is a great reminder to Americans that if we're trying to find out who understand people trying to make tough decisions every day, that Obama has lived it. He understands it." Still, it seems unlikely Kaine would've burst out of the gate with the same ferocity as Joe Biden--who, according to Kaine, "combines head and heart in ways that will be very useful to Senator Obama." Like Obama, Kaine is a somewhat reluctant attack dog. He may have been too much of the same--too much head.

Kaine's second lesson for the VP: come to Virginia. "It's not a blue state, but it's no longer a red state," Kaine said. "Today, it's pretty much an evenly-matched state." When Kaine's father-in-law was elected Virginia governor in 1969, the commonwealth, according to Kaine, was "40 percent rural, 25 percent urban and 35 percent suburban." Today it's 20 percent rural, 15 percent urban and 65 percent suburban. Kaine won in 2005 by capturing fast-growing, formerly Republican counties like Louden and Prince William—places where his predecessor, Mark Warner, lost in 2000. The reason for the reversal? "The demographics just changed so much," Kaine says. As a result, Kaine realized that "we've got to make our case to these suburban voters"--and, according to him, if Obama and Biden can "hold the margins down or even win" in "most of these eight or nine counties," then they can swing the Old Dominion. What's more, there may even be some votes to be had in the rural southwestern part of the state, according to Kaine--especially with a plainspoken Joe like Biden on the ticket.  "These rural voters are cynical," says Kaine. "They think that politicians just come around at election time but don't know much about them, and they won't come back. But a little effort can go long way. Reach out and these people open up to you. Biden can help Obama puncture that cynicism."

Jonathan Alter writes on the lessons learned from the Democrats' 1968 convention:

Forty years ago, the Democrats met in Chicago, their most disastrous convention ever. Denver obviously won't be a repeat, but Democrats face some similar dangers if they don't pull the party together. I know this from personal, if youthful, experience.

In 1968, I was a 10-year-old Chicagoan, fascinated by politics, determined to hang out at the convention. My mother was working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey and my father for Sen. Eugene McCarthy, both of whom had their convention headquarters at the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue, not far down the street from where Barack Obama's headquarters is today. It was late August, only a couple of months after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and even before Chicago police started clubbing reporters and demonstrators outside the hotel, the mood was tense.

READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE

It was a sight you don’t see very often on the GOP campaign trail: John McCain, surrounded by a bevy of squealing teenage girls, many of them so red-faced and struggling to breathe they seemed in danger of passing out right there on the spot. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” one gasped, nervously fanning herself with her hands. A few feet away, another girl looked as though she had just completed the 100-meter dash at the Olympics, her body heaving with deep breath after deep breath. Secret Service agents on the scene, usually so stoic and emotionless in their work to protect the man who might be the next president, eyed the girls, their faces alternating between pure puzzlement and mild concern.

Of course, none of this had anything to do with McCain. Appearing before a small group of honor students at Phoenix’s Central High School (his wife Cindy’s alma mater) on Monday morning, McCain announced that he had gotten the bling bling endorsement of one Daddy Yankee, a big deal Latin American recording star perhaps best known for his 2006 reggaeton hit “Gasolina.” Daddy Yankee, who met McCain that year at a reception honoring Time Magazine’s most influential people (they both made the list), joined McCain at Central High, quickly upstaging his host.  “Sup Mama,” the Daddy said, as he hugged and kissed one of his young fans. Yankee, who met with McCain at his Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters last month (sending Hispanic reporters on scene covering the event into similar hysterics), told the students that he decided to support McCain, in part, because he had championed the recent immigration reform bill. “(McCain’s) a fighter for the Hispanic community,” the rapper said. “I just want to say thank you Daddy Yankee,” McCain said, pleasing this reporter who wondered if the senator would, in fact, call the star “Daddy.” (For the record, McCain did also refer to Mr. Yankee to as “Ramon”—his real first name.”)

Unfortunately, Daddy Yankee was not joined by his usual posse of young buxom women, who have appeared in most of his music videos. A campaign aide insisted McCain was under no allusions that Yankee’s biggest crossover hit “Gasolina” has anything to do with the energy independence policies he’s been touting on the campaign trail lately but rather a different kind of energy. (The anthem, when translated into English, includes the Yankee repeatedly saying of the unnamed subject of the song: “She likes gasoline!” To which a woman responds, “Give me more gasoline!”) The Daddy later joined McCain on his campaign plane en route to California, where the senator is presiding over finance events before heading to "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Asked directly by the New York Times’ intrepid Michael Cooper what “Gasolina” really means, the star smiled and said, “Energy independence.”

The strange scene was enough to distract reporters from the fact they believed they would be covering a “press conference” this morning, as the McCain schedule had advertised. McCain, who has been at his Sedona cabin for several days working on his convention speech and readying the announcement of his VP pick, has not taken questions from his traveling press corps since Aug. 13 when he visited Michigan. An aide this morning defended the use of “press conference” to describe the Daddy Yankee event, noting that if McCain were to take questions the campaign would refer to it as a “media availability.” Duly noted.

DENVER--Talk about a time warp.

Judging by the early chatter out here in Denver, you'd think this year's Democratic nominating convention was happening in 1992. Why? Because everyone's obsessing over the Clintons. Reports that Hillary "wasn't vetted" for the veep slot have spread like wildfire, spurring a small but vocal posse of disgruntled Clintonistas to wail that Obama is not doing right by her, and never has--nevermind that she asked to skip the formal process, or that Team Obama had more than enough info after 17 months of oppo research to evaluate her alongside her fellow finalists. This gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has in turn encouraged the McCain campaign to release a pair of troublemaking ads questioning why Obama didn't pick Clinton, including its latest, "Debra," which features a Clinton delegate saying "a lot of Democrats will vote McCain" because he's the only "one with the experience and judgment to be president." Smelling drama--or at least the illusion thereof--the press has pounced, producing a flurry of breathless reports on the tensions that either a) "boil between the Obama [and] Clinton camps" or b) "linger as some Clinton supporters are left frustrated." Others have opined that with Hillary speaking Tuesday, Bill speaking Wednesday and Hillary's name being placed into nomination Thursday, Team Obama has effectively let her steal the show and undermine that whole purpose of the convention (that is, to launch Obama's candidacy in earnest). Either way, the convention, according to the chatterati, is shaping up to be a Clinton-Obama cagematch.

Please. Anyone who thinks that a roll-call vote and some sad silver-medalists constitutes a controversial convention probably didn't pay much attention in U.S. Politics 101. "By historical standards the Clinton nomination is totally mild," says Costas Panagopoulos, professor of political science at Fordham University and author of "Presidential Nominating Conventions in the Media Age". "Looking back historically, conventions have tended to be hotbeds of controversy, and this year simply won't compare." The most extreme example of conflict, of course, was the rioting at 1968's Democratic convention in Chicago-think window smashing and police beatings. But a convention doesn't need armed combat to qualify as controversial. In 1860, the Democrats were so divided over slavery that they held two conventions, eventually convening in Baltimore despite the absence of the entire Southern wing of the party, which was boycotting the nomination of Stephen Douglas. In 1896, 36-year-old Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan wasn't even considered a presidential contender upon his arrival--until his fiery speech calling for the free coinage of silver so electrified delegates that they spontaneously awarded him the nomination. In 1924, it took the Dems 103 convention ballots to settle on hapless nominee John Davis, and 28 years later they drafted Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson after three divided votes--even though he'd said repeatedly that he didn't want the job. Even the supposedly "controversial" decision to place Clinton's name in nomination is hardly unprecedented--runners-up Ted Kennedy (1980), Gary Hart (1984) and Jerry Brown (1992) all received the same treatment, and they won far fewer votes and boasted far fewer delegates than the former first lady. Given that Clinton herself has frequently emphasized unity--even going so far as to deploy a 40-person floor team meant to keep her supporters in line--the chances that she'll deliver an off-message speech (like Pat Buchanan in 1988) or give Obama the cold shoulder (like Kennedy did to Carter in 1980) are exceedingly slim. "At the end of the day, the convention will go smoothly," says Panagopoulos. "The Dems realize there's a high price to pay if it doesn't, and no one--not Clinton, not Obama, not vast majority of the delegates--is willing to take that kind of risk."

Still, don't expect that to stop the press from reporting on this year's festivities as if war had broken out in Denver. Even though nominating conventions have become almost completely newsless affairs in recent years--notice how the whole "choosing a nominee" part of the process has already, you know, happened--the MSM is devoting more money, more bodies and more space (primarily online) to covering them than ever before.  In theory, that's dandy; in practice, it totally skews the signal-to-noise ratio. While the demand (if not the audience) for convention coverage has presumably increased, the supply has drastically declined. To fill the growing void with the stuff of news-that is, conflict--the media is content to make ever-bigger mountains out of ever-smaller molehills. And this year's molehill is the Clinton controversy. "No offense to your profession, but there will be 15,000 journalists in Denver seeking to make any minor differences seem like a major controversy," says Panagopoulos. "They'll be reading between every line to detect notes of disunity." Ultimately, scrutiny will help Obama as much as it helps the networks--as Panagopoulos notes, the "nice thing about the appearance of controversy is that it attracts attention and pulls in viewers who would've otherwise not watched the convention." (And remember: the Clintons will be singing Obama's praises on stage, and her supporters would've been a lot angrier had they been denied a roll call vote. That's more unity, not less.) As for the rest of America, though, hyperbole isn't particularly useful. So while you're watching Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews jabber endlessly about this year's soap opera, just remember what real conflict looks like--and adjust the volume accordingly.

A mid-August lottery for seats to Barack Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech left many Coloradoans without a seat. But in the spirit of the nominee’s campaign, ticketless supporters haven’t given up hope. Instead, they’ve turned to the Denver Craigslist to buy, barter and beg for tickets.

“NEED Obama/Democratic Credential/Ticket-PLEASE!!!” is among the dozens of desperate pleas that have hit the site’s “wanted” page in the past week. Posters range from from a high school student lamenting a lack of connections to a Canadian flying in for the event on the chance of scoring some access. They’re all willing to pay big--the going price seems to be somewhere around $500--and some are willing to barter. One poster last Sunday offered up his two “Daily Show” tickets for a chance to see Michelle Obama speak.

So far at least one Obama fan has gotten lucky: Dan Pailas, a life-long Democrat from Boulder, put up a listing in mid-August and, last week, scored a ticket for a mere $75. “The guy seemed a bit remorseful when he handed the ticket over,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “I think he realized he had friends who might have wanted to go. But it was definitely my lucky day.”

Spotted in the coach cabin of United Flight 403 to Denver, Colo., shortly before 8:00 a.m.: Grammy-winning soul singer John Legend (and bandmates). One of Obama's personal favorites--he's stumped for the nominee in Iowa and Pennsylvania--Legend will be premiering a new song, "If You're Out There," during tonight's opening ceremonies. The press materials describe it as "an anthemic call-to-action and evocation of human potential." No word yet on whether the lyrics include the words "hope" or "change."
 

(Ted S. Warren / AP Photo) 

Should be an exciting week.

Thanks for reading,
Andrew

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

HAWAII MADE OBAMA'S RISE POSSIBLE
(David Marnassis, Washington Post)
He had to leave the island to find himself as a black man, eventually rooting in Chicago, the antipode of remote Honolulu, deep in the fold of the mainland, and there setting out on the path that led toward politics. Yet life circles back in strange ways, and in essence it is the promise of the place he left behind -- the notion if not the reality of Hawaii, what some call the spirit of aloha, the transracial if not post-racial message -- that has made his rise possible. Hawaii and Chicago are the two main threads weaving through the cloth of Barack Obama's life. Each involves more than geography. Hawaii is about the forces that shaped him, and Chicago is about how he reshaped himself. Chicago is about the critical choices he made as an adult: how he learned to survive in the rough-and-tumble of law and politics, how he figured out the secrets of power in a world defined by it, and how he resolved his inner conflicts and refined the subtle, coolly ambitious persona now on view in the presidential election. Hawaii comes first. It is what lies beneath, what makes Chicago possible and understandable.

TRACING THE DISPARATE THREADS IN OBAMA'S POLITICAL PHILSOPHY
(Michael Cooper, New York Times)
Mr. Obama, an intellectually curious man, is nothing if not pragmatic in the application of philosophy to politics, temperamentally inclined toward no strand of thinking. In his books, sentences are pulled taut between opposing viewpoints; a literary critic remarked on the “internal counterpoise” in his writing. But that leaves a fundamental question for admirers and critics: Is his a consistent philosophy that borrows pragmatically from the center while rooted on the left? Or does he have an expedient slide-step that allows him to appeal to the center without alienating his liberal base? It is a balancing act not unfamiliar to the Democrats, and likely to play out at the convention in a muted way... Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, appears more intrigued by how to acquire power to push through changes than by adherence to ideology. Lost causes hold little allure.

ALL EYES ON OBAMA
(Dick Polman, Philadelphia Inquirer)
Barack Obama badly needs to accomplish four tasks: Define himself. Obama fans may have a tough time believing this, but millions of Americans still view the guy as a stranger. And they're not necessarily wild about entrusting the White House to a stranger--especially one who has been defined by Republicans as a silver-tongued celebrity with insufficient government seasoning... Address the experience issue. He's stuck with a thin résumé--he didn't get to Washington until 2005--which means he'll have to dispel the doubts some other way... He needs to signal to viewers that as president he would be buttressed by a seasoned team of policy players, with national security as priority one... Light a fire under the Clintons... For Obama's sake, Bill needs to park his snit and make a persuasive case at the convention for why he believes (or at least is willing to say he believes) that Obama is ready to be president... Define John McCain. By all the traditional political metrics, this election is supposed to be a referendum on the incumbent party that has mismanaged America at home and (especially) abroad--yet, late this summer, the incumbent party has somehow succeeded in framing this race as a referendum on Obama. At his convention, Obama needs to reverse the plot arc. Put simply, he needs to borrow a page from the longtime Republican playbook and tear the bark off McCain.

POLITICAL EXILE STRENGTHENED DEMOCRATS
(Jeanne Cummings, Politico)
When Democrats awoke Nov. 6, 2002, they found that for the first time in decades, the party didn’t control a single branch of government. The future looked bleak. When Barack Obama accepts his nomination on Thursday, he will sit atop a Democratic Party transformed and strengthened by its time served in political exile. The future — at least until Election Day — looks limitless. In typical Democratic fashion, there was no real central plan for this party makeover and the process wasn’t always pretty. But the results are undeniable. It’s a party no longer pinched by political geography. Instead it’s winning elections from the cornfields of southern Indiana to the forests of western North Carolina.  It’s a richer party, literally and intellectually, after mastering Internet fundraising and establishing progressive think tanks and media watchdog groups to compete with a still formidable conservative brain trust.  It’s a more diverse party, home to classic liberals and populist conservatives. Its new generation of leaders signals openness with a simple glance: a moderate, white male as Senate majority leader; a liberal, white female as speaker of the House; and the first African-American presidential nominee in history. 

ANXIOUS PARTY HOPES TO SHOW STRONG OBAMA
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Democrats gathering here for their nominating convention are significantly more nervous about Senator Barack Obama’s prospects this fall than they were a month ago, and are urging him to use the next four days to address weaknesses in his candidacy and lingering party divisions from the primary fight. Mr. Obama’s aides said they had learned from what they described as the mistake of the 2004 Democratic convention — when aides to Senator John Kerry’s campaign sought to forbid convention speakers from going after President Bush — and would use their time to draw contrasts with Senator John McCain, particularly on the economy and his opposition to abortion rights. “The stakes of this election will be made very clear,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist. “We are going to define the choice.” At the same time, acknowledging persistent unease with Mr. Obama among a significant segment of voters, his aides said they would use speeches and presentations during the next four days, including having Al Gore introduce Mr. Obama for his acceptance speech Thursday night, to offer a fuller biography and a more detailed plan of what he would do as president. They said they were looking to 1992 as a model, when Bill Clinton successfully used his convention to address persistent questions about his personal life and what he would do as president.

TENSIONS LINGER AS SOME CLINTON SUPPORTERS ARE LEFT FRUSTRATED
(Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal)
Barack Obama's choice of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate heightened tensions between the Democratic candidate and supporters of former rival Hillary Clinton, giving Republican John McCain an opening to woo these voters. While most Clinton delegates had anticipated Sen. Obama wouldn't choose the former first lady as a running mate, his first joint appearance Saturday with Sen. Biden in Springfield, Ill., left many of them frustrated. "There's a lot of pain that needs to be addressed," said Laura Boyd, a Clinton delegate in Oklahoma. Ms. Boyd said she held out hope Sen. Clinton might have been chosen. During the long Democratic primary fight, Sen. Obama had said Sen. Clinton would be "on anyone's short list" for vice president. But reports last week that Sen. Obama's vice-presidential-search team hadn't vetted the New York senator rankled many Clinton backers. When asked why Sen. Obama didn't choose Sen. Clinton, senior Obama strategist David Axelrod told ABC News Sen. Clinton is "going to be an important, an important voice in this campaign" but that Sen. Obama felt Sen. Biden would be the "best fit for him at this time."

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

By Caitlin McDevitt

Late last week in Denver, the Democratic National Convention Committee was planning a video tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy, who has served in the Senate for more than four decades. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, friends and supporters of the 76-year-old Democratic senator, who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May, have launched a $100 million fundraising campaign to build an institute in his name. Envisioned five years ago by the senator himself, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute will be dedicated to educating the public on the role of the Senate in U.S. government. Efforts toward the project's completion picked up following Kennedy's diagnosis, and groundbreaking is planned for as early as this spring.

The 40,000-square-foot institute will be located in Boston, between the University of Massachusetts and the JFK Library, on property owned by the university. Jack Wilson, president of UMass in Boston, says that his student body, which he calls the most diverse in all of New England, reflects "the constituency that the Senator has focused on throughout his career," making UMass a more appropriate location for the institute than Kennedy's alma mater, Harvard. And of course, there's the site's proximity to the JFK Library. "It will be, in a poetic sense, like two brothers standing together," Wilson adds.

The institute will include a full-sized replica of the Senate chamber and an interactive museum, where visitors will be able to watch videos of notable senate speeches and peruse through Kennedy's own papers, which will be available in electronic form. While Kennedy's senate career will be the central case study, the mission of the institute will be broader, looking at the rules and procedures of the Senate as a whole.

Jack Connors, who heads fundraising efforts for the institute, is looking to raise $100 million in private funds by the end of the year, to cover the capital costs and an endowment. "This is a big guy with a world-class reputation, who has done an awful lot, for an awful lot of people, for a long time," explains Connors, who has sought help from everyone from corporate leaders to Hollywood stars. "The early sense I have," he says, "is that it is very, very doable."

While such tributes to senators are not unheard of—there's the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center in Tennessee and an institute dedicated to Bob Dole in Kansas—this particular center will be one of the most elaborate yet, according to Senate historian Donald Ritchie. The institute won't cost quite as much as the most recent presidential libraries (Clinton's had a price tag of $165 million and President Bush's future library is projected to ring up $250 million to $500 million), it will be on par in terms of magnitude. Ritchie describes Kennedy's career as "hard to match" because of the senator's influence and because of the amount of time he's been serving--only West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd and the late Strom Thurmond have served longer. He credits Kennedy for his ability to forge unusual alliances with a bipartisan approach that he refined over the years: "He is a very effective legislator who was able to influence a complex institution full of very strong personalities," Ritchie says. "He's a person a lot of people thought would someday become president."
 

News and notes from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, courtesy of NEWSWEEK's crack political team.

JONATHAN ALTER REPORTS: Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking member of the House leadership who proved instrumental in bringing African Americans to Obama's side, was on the floor Sunday, checking out arrangements. He threatened with a big smile to boycott the proceedings because the new green and healthy-choice standards meant there will be no fried chicken served at this convention.

He is extremely enthusiastic about Biden, noting that "he's served in Washington but never been of Washington." He said "Obama picks as a running mate someone who has never lived in Washington," a reference to Biden taking the train home to Wilmington every night. [Ed: more Amtrak!] Clyburn also notes that Biden, whose wife is a schoolteacher, actually has a negative net worth of $300,000. Not sure if that's true--but it's very on message.

"There are two narratives that are going to really eat away at McCain," he says. "First, that he doesn't know how to use a computer, and second not knowing which kitchen table is which in all the houses he owns." Clyburn, who says he uses a computer, thinks those narratives "are going to connect my party's ticket to the American people like nothing else before."

Elsewhere on the floor, party officials were busy moving the Delaware delegation closer to the podium. Not sure which state got the shaft in that trade, but New York and New Jersey, both strongly pro-Clinton states, are not even on the floor. Instead, they're in the lower seats (like a lot of delegations this year; Pepsi has a small floor in part because of the large, supermodern podium). To be a delegate but not be on the floor is the definition of Siberia at a political convention.

UPDATE, 4:31 p.m.: Actually, part of the New York delegation is on the floor. Scratch Siberia. More like the Urals instead.
 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Richard Wolffe reporting from Springfield, Ill. on the new Obama-Biden ticket: 

When Barack Obama announced his presidential campaign in Springfield, Ill., on a frigid winter's day 19 months ago, he admitted that he was short on Washington experience. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said. "But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

On Saturday he returned to the same spot in front of the old statehouse—this time in a cauldron of a summer afternoon—to announce a vice-presidential pick who has spent half a life immersed in the ways of Washington.

To Obama's aides, Joe Biden's selection as the veep candidate represents less of a turnaround than a complement to the candidate—both in the presidential election and beyond. "One of things we know is that you've got to have people who can bring about change," said one senior Obama aide. "Unfortunately change is going to have to go through Capitol Hill, and you've got to have somebody who is knowledgeable about Capitol Hill. The difference between John McCain and Joe Biden is that one is on the side of change, and one isn't."

Obama's inner circle started the VP process convinced that they would be looking for someone who would reinforce the candidate's brand, underscoring the theme of change and post-partisan politics. Instead, they ended up with someone who seemingly fills the gaps in the candidate's skill set.

The shortlist, according to senior aides, narrowed down rapidly, several weeks ago to a half-dozen names. Contrary to several reports, Obama did not make his final decision while on vacation in Hawaii, but was still considering his options earlier this week. And contrary to much of the post-game analysis, the conflict between Russia and Georgia played no role in Obama's decision, his staff said.

It wasn't until Thursday, as he traveled through Virginia on a bus tour, that Obama called Evan Bayh, the Indiana senator, and Tim Kaine, the Virginia governor, to tell them he had gone in another direction. Several other unnamed candidates learned the news at the same time, when Biden too learned of his new role. When Obama called Biden, his veep pick was at the dentist with his wife who was having root canal work. Obama's aides say they were impressed that loquacious Biden kept the news secret for more than 24 hours.

In public, Obama's aides argue there are two main factors that make Biden attractive: his foreign policy experience, and his image as a humble family man from Wilmington, Del. While Biden has decades of experience on Capitol Hill, he commutes to Wilmington each day, and has maintained what sounds like an unscripted voice.

But in private, they point to a much more immediate and strategic reason for his elevation to veep nominee: his killer instincts as a campaigner and his cultural reach.

Obama's aides admire Biden's skills as a debater and chief surrogate who can fillet the Republican ticket in speeches and media interviews. For all his problems as a verbose questioner in the Senate, he proved he could turn a one-liner and land a zinger better than almost anyone campaigning for president this year. Biden's abilities to play the role of attack dog was a winning argument for his selection, allowing Obama himself to remain above the fray.

"He'll have a fist in the face of John McCain every day and I think he has this level of gravitas as well," said one senior adviser to Obama. "We're lucky to have both. It showcases Obama's judgment that he chose somebody like this—a good pick not just for August or October, but a good pick in the event that something happens when he's president of the United States."

Team Obama also points to Biden's demographic and geographic reach. As a Roman Catholic who was born in Scranton, Pa., Biden can campaign effectively in the Rust Belt states that proved so immune to Obama's charms during the primary contests against Hillary Clinton. "He's ready to get out," said another senior aide, who added that Biden will travel extensively across the country. "He really wants to do this."

The Obama campaign believes the recent tightening of the polls is the result of one main factor: Republicans coming back into the fold for McCain. Their goal with Biden is to bring home the Democratic holdouts—especially the ones who voted for Clinton in the primaries. Those voters want more than reassurance about Obama's foreign policy credentials, in the campaign's assessment. They want someone who looks and sounds more like them and can connect with them on their own terms about the economy. On that basis, the campaign points to Biden's record of working to put 100,000 new cops on the streets, to his ability to talk freely and easily in union halls, and to his limitless supply of stories about his humble Irish-American roots...

Locked in a tight election, Obama needs a fighter who can campaign in the bars and VFW halls that still seem foreign to him. Someone who can end his speech saying this: "I'm here for the cops and the firefighters, the teachers and the line workers, the folks who live—the folks whose lives are the measure of whether the American dream endures." In that sense, Biden is the change the Obama campaign has been searching for.

READ THE REST HERE. 
 

Want to know how the Obama campaign is countering Biden's 'Creature of Washington' image? One word (or, you know, talking point): Amtrak.

Linda Douglass, Obama campaign traveling spokesperson, to MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, on a "Morning Joe" special edition: “He has decades of experience in Washington and, yet, uniquely, he is not of Washington -- he goes home to his family in Delaware every single night."
 
Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign Senior Strategist for Communications and Message, to ABC’s Kate Snow, on "Good Morning America Weekend": “We have somebody who hasn't forgotten where he comes from and goes home to Delaware every night on the train."

Barack Obama, Democratic presidential nominee, in Springfield, Ill.: "For decades, he has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn’t changed him... He never moved to Washington. Instead, night after night, week after week, year after year, he returned home to Wilmington on a lonely Amtrak train when his Senate business was done."

No word yet on whether Chicago plans to outfit Biden in one of these:

UPDATE, 3:59 p.m.: Also worth noting, in terms of messaging, is the number of times Obama mentioned Biden's hometown of Scranton (which is located in must-win Pennsylvania): three. The number of times he mentioned the safer state of Delaware? Once. "Pennsylvania's Third Senator"--Team Obama's words, not mine--indeed.

And as for Biden calling Obama "Barack America"?  As Bidenisms go, it was surprisingly on message.
 

Here's Biden making the case for himself--in response to a reader's question--during a lunch with NEWSWEEK editors (Stumper included) on Nov. 7: 

I am a pretty good street politician. You know what I mean? I'm a fingertip politician. And I'm telling you, I guarantee you, that the public out there--to use an expression one of you probably came up with--is looking out the window instead of looking in the mirror. They know that what's going on "out there" has significant impact on them. They don't know what it means, but they're looking for somebody who they think has, for lack of a better phrase, the breadth and depth of experience, someone who they can trust to lead them through what they know is going to be a pretty confusing decade. I'm drawing now--as even the Times acknowledged--I'm drawing big crowds now, the last three, four weeks. And they're all about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, terror, the world, immigration. This idea that health care is the top thing? Come with me to any of these events. It's the fourth or fifth question asked.

Folks, they get it. They want to figure out how we're going to get this thing back in the box. How we're going to tie up all these loose ends.  The way out is me.

It's not that I am this tough guy. It gets down to voters determining your substance and your resolve. Are you going to protect us? This election is about "Who's going to make us the safest?" It's not about global warming, it's not about health care. You can't cross that threshold, you're not going to make it as a Democrat.

I imagine Biden will be singing a slightly different tune this afternoon in Springfield--no more "It's not about global warming, it's not about health care." But the importance of the question "Who's going to make us the safest?" is the underlying reason why Obama--a candidate who still needs to "cross that threshold...to make it as a Democrat"--chose Biden as his running mate. As someone who has crossed that threshold, Biden now has to convince voters that Obama, not McCain, is going to "make us the safest."

Like the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, I disagree with Ron Fournier that Obama's pick "shows a lack of confidence."  As Ambinder notes, "maybe the pick demonstrates Obama's confidence and a tempering of his overconfidence. Confidence, because Biden could upstage him, will be independent, and will be better at certain things than Obama... If Obama were overconfident, if he believed that his personality and story alone were enough, then he'd have chosen someone less threatening." 

Listen for the new script in Springfield. It'll be interesting to watch Biden--not the most egoless of pols--transition from "the way out is me" to "the way out is Obama."
 

For those of you who can't get enough Biden today, here's my dispatch from New Year's Eve 2007 in Newton, Iowa, where the Delaware senator was holding one of his final campaign events before finishing a distant fifth in the state's Jan. 3 caucuses and ending his presidential bid. Some things will change now that Biden  has joined Team Obama--and some things won't.

NEWTON, Iowa (Dec. 31, 2007)--Today I drove from a Barack Obama event in Jefferson to a Joe Biden event in Newton. The distance, in geographical terms, was about 100 miles. It felt like light years. As always, the Obama event was clockwork--a hulking black press bus; a filing room with plentiful powerstrips and wireless internet; volunteers asking for contact info at every corner; massive, well-designed banners; a stage filled with seated supporters.

The Biden event seemed "smaller"--even though it drew roughly the same number of people. The posters were droopy. The room--Newton's Community Center--wasn't particularly pimped out. But Biden's family--a son, a daughter, a brother and others--stood, arms crossed, on the periphery, whispering and smiling, and the candidate paced up and down the rows. No stage. No podium. No TV crews. When I entered a few minutes late (as usual), a staffer approached, asked my name, shook my hand and helped me locate an outlet for my laptop. He was surprised--pleasantly--to hear the name Newsweek. "We're not the Obama campaign," he said, unprompted. "No bus. No wireless. Sorry." He flashed a sheepish smile. "No problem," I said. I actually meant it.

People opposed to Obama often say that he's short on substance. That's probably a little unfair--like all the other Democrats, his policy proposals are pretty specific. But his public persona is premised on stuff that's "above" substance--hope, audacity, change, et cetera. Biden is the exact opposite. Sure, he can get airy, especially when quoting his "favorite contemporary poet," Seamus Heany, on making "hope and history rhyme." But he comes alive, shifting from solemnity to bombast, when answering a question on, say, Pakistan. "I'm the only person running in either party, Democrat or Republican, who three months ago put out a plan for Pakistan," he begins, and twelve minutes later--after discussing the country's religious demographics and reminiscing about that time Benazir Bhutto worked out of his Washington office, among (many) other things--he still hasn't stopped. Biden can be boring, immodest (today he seemed to take credit for convincing Bill Clinton to intervene in Kosovo) and condescending. Watch out when he starts a sentence with "Ladies and gentlemen," which he does about once a minute; he'll follow it up with something like "By the way, we're talking about the Sudan. That’s where Darfur is. [Bashir] is in the capital of the Sudan, which is a distance from Darfur. Darfur is an area about the size of France. And there is carnage going on."

Obama doesn't bore, condescend or brag. Neither do Clinton or Edwards. They're well-oiled machines at this point--delivery mechanisms for the "winning" messages their handlers have devised. And that's okay. It's the way you win. But because Biden has no shot--he currently polls at five percent, trails everyone in fundraising and has said he'll drop out if he finishes fourth or worse in Iowa--he doesn't have to deliver a winning message. He isn't handled. He can't afford handlers. Seeing him in person, the overwhelming impression you get is of a guy talking about what matters to him, for better or worse.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

By Holly Bailey 

Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign was quick to respond when word broke that Barack Obama had picked Joe Biden to be his No. 2 on the Democratic ticket. First, the campaign emailed reporters with a statement around 2 a.m. ET early Saturday morning: “There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden,” McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said. Then, shortly before 6 a.m., the campaign announced it would air a new ad called “Biden” featuring video of the Delaware senator questioning Obama’s experience and talking nice about McCain. “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain because I think the country would be better off,” Biden says in the McCain video. The campaign didn’t exactly burn the midnight oil. An aide says they had various ads ready to go should Obama have picked Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine or any of the other rumored prospects.

But the Biden ad hints at something that will be worth watching: McCain and Biden, despite their harsh disagreement over the strategy in Iraq, are actually friends and have known each other for decades, long before McCain was in elected office. The two met while McCain was serving as the Navy’s Senate liaison in the mid-1970s. Indeed, one of the funnier anecdotes about McCain involves Biden and his wife, who often traveled with McCain on congressional fact-finding trips abroad. “McCain was much in demand for overseas escort duty,” wrote McCain biographer Robert Timberg in “A Nightingale’s Song.” “He was fun to be around, his wit appealing, his natural exuberance infectious. In an Athens taverna, he danced on a table with Senator Joseph Biden’s wife, Jill, a red bandanna clenched in his teeth.” Wow. Now that's footage I'd like to see in a campaign ad. This morning, McCain, who is spending the weekend at his cabin near Sedona, Ariz., called his old friend to congratulate him on being named to the ticket. McCain has gotten tougher and tougher in recent weeks when talking about Obama. Will he be as willing to attack Biden?

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague Howard Fineman on the politics of Obama's veep pick.

The minute-by-minute story of how Obama handled the selection is interesting, and revealing of the way the Democratic nominee works. He insisted on the utmost secrecy; he paid the losers the courtesy of essentially telling them "no" to their faces--not an easy thing to do. And he swallowed his considerable pride and all but confessed his lack of knowledge of foreign affairs by selecting as his running mate the Senate's senior Democratic leader on that topic.

In short, Obama behaved like a grownup. Even his much-criticized failure to "vet" Sen. Hillary Clinton means less than meets the eye. I talked two months ago to one of her closest legal advisors, who told me that she didn't really WANT to be considered for the number two job--in no small measure because the process would have required Obama's lawyers to comb through her husband's foundation and its murky sources of income.

In that sense, Obama did her a favor by not really demanding to consider her. She would have had to say "no."

What does Biden bring to the ticket? A lot. First of all, he has a love of politics and public service. He never tried to get rich from his role, even though he has been in the Senate for decades. He is a fancy dresser--given to stick pin collars and French cuffs--and yet he is an unassuming son of a car salesman who takes the train home to Wilmington almost every night. His personal story is compelling: a riches-to-rags family background; a first wife killed in a car crash; a devoted life with his second wife; a passel of grandchildren whom he adores as much as they adore him. And he's never had a hint of financial or sexual scandal. Biden is a Catholic--a demographic must for a Democratic ticket eager to get swing voters in heavily Catholic states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. He knows foreign policy and defense issues of course, but in a textbook way. He is a street politician who has walked the streets of the planet. He genuinely wants to serve. He kept telling President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 that he wanted to help him, privately, anytime. Bush, ill-advisedly, never availed himself of the priceless chance. Certainly among Democrats, Biden has few enemies. Even most Republicans like him. He is an irrepressible character, full of energy, smiles and, at times, baloney.

The risks? He can't keep his mouth shut. Sometimes he talks before thinking. He is not always a systematic thinker. He loves to hear himself talk. He can get carried away with his enthusiasms.  He is a lawyer, but some of his colleagues think, frankly, that he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, at least in the academic sense. There have been some matters of academic ethics and plagiarism. In 1987, his first presidential campaign exploded overnight after he was found to have lifted portions of a speech from a British politician. He loves the spotlight. Whether he can operate in the shadows is an open question. He is going to be on a very short rhetorical leash in the campaign. But will an Obama White House be able to keep Biden in check?

For now, here in Denver, most Democrats seemed pleased as the early word leaked out. Biden in some ways is the anti-Dick Cheney. And that's change the party can believe in.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

Coming soon to a swing state near you: Obama-Biden '08.

In an email and text message sent to supporters around 3:00 a.m., the Democratic presidential nominee announced that he has selected the senator from Delaware as his running mate. They'll appear together today in Springfield, Ill. at 2:00 p.m. local time.

Watch this space for more.

The message:

Friend --

I have some important news that I want to make official.

I've chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.

Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois -- the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago.

I'm excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can't do this alone.  We need your help to keep building this movement for change.

Please let Joe know that you're glad he's part of our team.  Share your personal welcome note and we'll make sure he gets it:

http://my.barackobama.com/welcomejoe

Thanks for your support,

Barack

P.S. -- Make sure to turn on your TV at 2:00 p.m. Central Time to join us or watch online at http://www.BarackObama.com.
 

Two things worth mulling over as you leave the office...

I. What the Hell Is Taking So Long? As the New Republic's Noam Scheiber notes, "you can let the suspense build and build if you've got a Hillary or a Gore socked away somewhere. Possibly a Biden or a Webb (or some unorthodox pick like a general or a Republican). But you'd better not come with Jack Reed or Evan Bayh after toying with people for over a week." Like Scheiber, I suspect that the Obama campaign wouldn't build up this much anticipation--the "revolutionary" text message announcement, the waiting until the last minute, the coy remarks to the press--if they were about to unveil V.P. Chet Edwards. Too clumsy for such a savvy team.

II. What's This Flight? The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder searches FlightAware (a tracking service) and comes up with this:

According to Ambinder, it's "a flight from Midway to New Castle, DE... to pick someone up? Who knows?  No other flights from anywhere in and around Chicago to anywhere in and around Delaware... or vice versa. Just this charter."

That's the last you'll hear from us until the big announcement. We swear.
 

At 4:39 p.m. this afternoon, Politico's Avi Zenilman posted a cryptic item on one of the site's well-trafficked, influential blogs. It read, in its entirety, "The Emporia (KS) Gazette reports: Obama visits Emporia. Obama Campaign gives Emporia Gazette staff 20 minutes notice of visit." Talk about a headturner. With the entire political world obsessing over Barack Obama's impending veepstakes announcement--and with Emporia only an hour from Topeka, where a certain Kansas governor/VP finalist is working out of her office today--I'm sure dozens of other reporters came to the same conclusion I did: IT'S SEBELIUS!

Sadly, it's not--at least not yet. At 4:41, I frantically called the Gazette's Managing Editor Gwendolynne Larson to find out why the Obama campaign was visiting Emporia today. Turns out that I'd gotten both the "where" and the "when" of the story wrong. According to Larson, the Obama campaign called "yesterday out of the blue," informing the paper that Obama was coming through town. "All of it happened yesterday afternoon," she said, "and the upshot of it is that Obama's campaign didn't realize we were Emporia, Kansas--he was near Emporia, Virginia." Here's the inside story:

"We were prepared to scramble if they had given us the call back. 'Cause it kind of made sense. He has family here, and if he's on his way up to Topeka to see Sebelius, it's on his way. But we started doing our own looking and somebody figured out, you know, he's in Virginia this morning. And we said, 'But he could still fly here!' And then somebody said, 'There is an Emporia, VIRGINIA.' Right about that time, Obama's campaign called back and said, 'We're sorry, we thought you...' And I said, '... were in Virgina, right?' And they said, 'Yeah.'"

Larson laughed, but I have to say: I was disappointed. If this all went down yesterday, I asked, why post an item in the present tense? "Obama visits Emporia. Obama Campaign gives Emporia Gazette staff 20 minutes notice of visit." It sounds like he's coming there, to Kansas, in 20 minutes. "We are an afternoon paper," Larson told me, "so we posted it as the afternoon edition was coming out letting people know they should pick up a newspaper and read this cute little story. Our publisher is complaining about our website taking subscribers away from the print edition."

That's very savvy strategy, I said--if you're trying to drive every veepstakes-crazed reporter in the country completely nuts.

"Thank you!" said Larsen. "But I think I'm going to post the whole thing online now. I'm not going to be here all afternoon to answer your calls."

The waiting continues.
 

When it comes to the veepstakes, the waiting, apparently, is the hardest part.

At least it is for the political press corps, which seems to have gone completely nutso in the last 48 hours. I'm not talking about the constant speculation they--we--have indulged in regarding the unknown (and unknowable) identify of Barack Obama's running mate. That's par for the course. I'm referring instead to the pleading phone calls to an unresponsive Chicago; the unctuous emails to inside "sources" who themselves don't know anything; and, most of all, the absurd reportorial throngs surrounding the houses of the favored few still thought to be in the running--all in the hopes that somehow, someway something will happen that will award one particular reporter (as opposed to all the other guys and girls loitering in Joe Biden's driveway or telling Bill Burton "you don’t understand the kind of pressure I am under") the big scoop.

Seriously. If the MSM took all the time, money and talent it's currently spending on spilling beans scheduled to spill within a matter of hours anyway--all for inside-the-Beltway bragging rights, no less--and devoted them instead to breaking stories on, say, stuff that mattered, the public's hatred for the press might burn with the fire of only 999,999 suns. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for obsessing over the veepstakes. But what have we really learned from all the calls, messages and stakeouts?

On Wednesday, for example, the good folks at ABC News's Political Radar blog reported that Biden reached out the window of his pickup at precisely 9:15 a.m. to hand a box of coffee and a dozen bagels from the local Brew Ha Ha Espresso Cafe to the gaggle of reporters waiting outside his Wilmington, Del. home. "All the reporters and camera people had their video cameras trained on him, so there was a moment where no one understood he was giving the bagels to us," wrote Z. Byron Wolf. "One reporter was so flustered that he asked if Biden had talked to 'Senator O'Biden.'" Given that Biden drove off without a word, apparently not. Later, Wolf resurfaced to inform us that Biden had "left his house for the second time today" with a "load of wood in the back of his pickup," adding that "upon his return from disposing of the logs, Biden pulled up in his pickup, saying he had nothing to report"--other than the fact that he "had a successful dump."

Meanwhile, Wolf's colleague Matt Jaffe filed an item from the Washington D.C. yard of Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, breaking news that "a large black gym bag got stuck on the door of a car driven by a friend of Bayh's as it pulled out of his garage." He continued:

When the car reached the top of the tree-lined residential road, Bayh, sitting on the passenger side, opened his door and the bag fall out into the street. And then, as if nothing had happened, the car drove away, leaving the tag-along bag stranded right in the path of oncoming traffic. Members of the media staked out at the residence stood around confused about the bizarre scene, before one especially conscientious reporter walked up the hill to pick up the bag. Yours truly took the bag, weighed down with "Spartans" lacrosse gear, back to Bayh's house, dropping it off on the front porch.

Crisis averted. As for Tim Kaine, he spent the day "traveling in a black Chevy Trailblazer while a large bus full of staff trails behind him"--and telling reporters (one, twice, three times!) "I really don't know" whom Obama is going to pick. Of course, if sartorial clues--or the fine-tuned antennae of MSNBC's Mike Memoli and Carrie Dann--are to be trusted, Biden is all but a lock. According to Memoli and Dann, writing Thursday afternoon, the "Biden of stakeouts past--the one who handed out bagels and willingly stopped for quick chats--is gone," replaced by a gentleman who wore "more formal attire" as he "rode shotgun... in the car of a staffer" and "act[ed], dare we say, more vice presidential." They were kidding. I think.

Thankfully, our long national nightmare is almost over. (I say that as both a citizen and as a reporter who sympathizes with my poor counterparts at ABC and MSNBC, who are only following their editors' instructions--with good humor and good cheer.) Speaking to USA Today's Kathy Kiely Thursday afternoon, Obama finally, blessedly said that yes, he has chosen a veep--even though he wouldn't divulge who the lucky guy or gal is. "I won't comment on anything else until I introduce our running mate to the world," he added. "That's all you're going to get out of me." We expect Obama to call the winner today and send out a text message to supporters announcing his pick sometime before Saturday morning, when the pair is scheduled to appear together in Springfield, Ill.

In the meantime, if you need some bagels, you know where to go.

As regular Stumper readers are well aware, I've already put my "Obama's Veep" chips on Joe Biden. Not particularly shocking, I know, given that he's widely regarded as the frontrunner. Even my reasons are pretty unimaginative: his "deep foreign-policy expertise, his ability to assume the presidency in an emergency, his blue-collar Catholic background and his status as Pennsylvania's third senator." Thank goodness, then, for my NEWSWEEK colleague Jonathan Alter. In his latest dispatch, Jon connects a bunch of seemingly disparate data points and puts his finger on something that I'd been groping after for awhile: that "the three biggest advantages [Biden] brings will be his ostensible shortcomings." It's a wonderfully counterintuitive--and typically brilliant--argument against all those folks who say Biden's too much of a blowhard to serve as No. 2. Now we just have to see whether Obama agrees. I'll pass the mic to Jon...

His mouth: Biden would fulfill the job of attack dog that is the first requirement for a vice presidential candidate, and that is especially important now for Obama. If Jabbering Joe is responding to John McCain's shots with memorable one-liners of his own, Obama can stay where he wants to be—above the fray. And if Biden says something off-the-wall that sticks in everyone's mind, all the better, as long as it's about McCain and not Obama or people who work in convenience stores or otherwise loosen Biden's tongue. The worry with Biden is that he just can't help himself. Obama may hope that he just can't stop himself from saying, say, that McCain is a hothead who shouldn't have his finger on the button. Obama can then denounce his No. 2's intemperate remarks even as they sink in. This is what veep candidate were put on earth to do. Same on the Republican side.

His age: Biden is 65 and has been around Washington since 1972. That's supposed to be off-message for Obama, whose theme is change. But people forget that the selection of Dick Cheney in 2000 helped George W. Bush prevail. Voters reasoned that Bush might be green but at least he'd have Cheney around him for sound advice. This logic would be especially helpful to Obama on foreign policy. Biden's experience there won't diminish Obama; it will free him to focus more on the economy. The main task now for Obama is reassurance that he could handle the job, especially commander in chief. Biden provides it.

His state: Biden is from tiny Delaware, but he was born in Pennsylvania and his Catholic background and compelling life story (his wife and baby daughter were killed in a traffic accident, and he took the train home every night for decades to be with his family) will help in several swing states. His son Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, is a captain in the Delaware National Guard and is shipping out to Iraq in September, which doesn't hurt in states with large military populations. And Biden is very popular among Jewish voters, who might be important in Ohio and Pennsylvania, not to mention Florida.

Obama and Biden were not close in the Senate, and Biden, amazingly, has still not formally endorsed him. But even this could be turned into an advantage, as Biden encourages wary supporters of Hillary Clinton to make the journey with him from suspicion of Obama to full embrace.

READ THE REST HERE. 
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THEY'RE PAYING ATTENTION NOW
(Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
Why is it a real race now, with John McCain rising in the polls and Barack Obama falling? There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention. It's hard for our political class to remember that Mr. Obama has been famous in America only since the winter of '08. America met him barely six months ago! The political class first interviewed him, or read the interview, in 2003 or '04, when he was a rising star. They know him. Everyone else is still absorbing. This is what they see: An attractive, intelligent man, interesting, but—he's hard to categorize. Is he Gen. Obama? No, no military background. Brilliant Businessman Obama? No, he never worked in business. Famous Name Obama? No, it's a new name, an unusual one. Longtime Southern Governor Obama? No. He's a community organizer (what's that?), then a lawyer (boo), then a state legislator (so what, so's my cousin), then U.S. senator (less than four years!). There is no pre-existing category for him. Add to that the wear and tear of Jeremiah Wright, secret Muslim rumors, media darling and, this week, abortion. It took a toll, which led to a readjustment. His uniqueness, once his great power, is now his great problem. And over there is Mr. McCain, and—well, we know him. He's POW/senator/prickly, irritating John McCain.

THE HARD ROAD AHEAD
(The Economist)
Even though the Republican brand is as contaminated as a Soviet-era reactor, and 80% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, Mr Obama is barely ahead of his septuagenarian Republican rival: in “generic” polling, people prefer Democrats to Republicans by around 12 points, but Mr Obama is ahead of John McCain by an average of only around 45% to 43%. One poll this week had Mr McCain five points ahead. In the battleground states which will determine the result, Mr McCain has steadily been gaining ground; if the polls are borne out, the result, as in 2000 and 2004, will be nerve-janglingly close... Mr Obama could certainly tone down the triumphalism: opting to make his acceptance speech not in the convention hall but in a 75,000-seater sports stadium seems like another mistake, akin to his hubristic rock-star’s tour of Europe. He needs to be a lot clearer and firmer about how he will deal with America’s foes and rivals: his first instinct when Russia invaded Georgia was to waffle. Acknowledging that the Iraq surge, which he tried to block, has worked would also be a sign of tough-mindedness. Most of all, he needs to spend those 68 days showing that he understands, and can connect with, ordinary Americans.

OBAMA VS. AUGUST
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
Over in the Philadelphia suburbs, Rep. Joe Sestak agrees that Obama needs to engage in more down-to-earth campaigning -- "a diner in the morning, a hoagie in the afternoon, a bar at night." But Sestak's advice is directed toward a slightly different end. "It's not so much about whether they know him," he says of his constituents and Obama. "They want to know that he knows them." In other words, empathy, the gift that Bill Clinton kept on giving, is now an Obama imperative. And some of the Democrats' policy mavens see a link between empathy as a personal attribute and the way a candidate discusses policy -- again, something Clinton understood. What Obama still lacks, they say, is a compelling narrative about how Americans who now feel economically insecure will be find their way toward greater confidence. And he needs a few signature policies to drive home so voters can remember them, as Clinton did with health care and job training.

MADE MEN
(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)
As Cindy McCain faithfully shadows her husband in his quest for the presidency, it's hard to imagine that she was once the senior member of their partnership. Looking back, McCain's steady march from admiral's son to war hero to White House contender seems almost preordained--certainly unrelated to the brittle blond cipher at his side. Cindy brings to mind the political wives of yore--a perpetually demure and deferential presence. All the more so in an age of Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama. But the reality behind this political creation myth is far more complex. McCain was a relative nobody when he married Cindy Hensley--a middle-aged divorcé working a mid-level job in a far-off bureaucracy. It was the Hensleys who would breathe life into his prospects and provide a springboard for his ascent. Their ambitions burned every bit as brightly as his did. Except that, unlike McCain, they'd long since hidden their motives from public view.

THE CODE OF THE WEST
(Ryan Lizza, New Yorker)
In his low-key, no-frills way, Ritter may be in the vanguard of what the national Democratic Party is becoming, both in its demographics and its policies. After about four years of lively discussion, strategists and Party leaders have decided that growth for Democrats is more likely to occur in the conservative but idiosyncratic West than in the solidly Republican South. Barack Obama’s campaign, for example, is competing seriously in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico—places where Democratic Presidential candidates have had only limited success during the past three decades. A significant reallocation of resources to the Western states is likely to have remarkable political consequences. As an election nears, voters in swing states like Colorado get much more attention from candidates, and a party’s consulting class spends a disproportionate amount of time developing strategies tailored to the demands of these spoiled voters. Over time, the political process may change the very outlook of a party, forcing it to become more attuned to the peculiar issues and coalitions of new voters. (That’s the effect that Iowa and New Hampshire have had on both parties.) As the Democrats take the first steps toward remaking themselves as a Western party, Ritter’s Colorado offers a glimpse of what may be the Democratic future.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A Guest Post by Brian No  

John McCain's recent comments to a Colorado newspaper that a 1922 seven-state agreement governing the use of the Colorado River "obviously needs to be renegotiated over time" may sound completely innocuous, perhaps even sensible, to most people.

But to Colorado voters, McCain might as well have said he likes to eat cute puppies for breakfast. It's hard to explain to a non-Coloradan the outsized significance of the Colorado River--and its coveted snowmelt water--within the state. "Over my dead body," Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) said in a statement. To which Republican senate candidate Bob Schaffer added, "Over my cold, dead, political carcass." Get the point?

In this arid region of the country, rural farmers depend on the river's water, and after enduring the worst drought since the 18^th century in recent years, any notion that Scottsdale golfers and Bellagio gamblers need more water than they're currently allotted is basically Rule #1 under What Not to Say in Colorado. Just as Yucca Mountain is a nuclear issue in Nevada-pun intended-Coloradans often quote Mark Twain, who's rumored to have said, "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over." Many local pundits in Colorado are already asking whether "McCain just lo[st] Colorado."

For decades, Colorado has been a reliable red state in presidential elections, but this year the Centennial State is shaping up to be a true battleground--possibly playing a decisive role in the Electoral College math. The DNC's decision to host its convention here was no accident. Recent polls have the race neck-and-neck, with the latest averages from Real Clear Politics showing McCain and Obama tied at about 45 percent. If Obama is able to add Iowa and New Mexico to John Kerry's 2004 map, then pick off Colorado's nine electoral votes, he'll win the election.

At first glance, Colorado is a state where McCain should be easily ahead. Since 1964, it's gone blue just once--when Ross Perot garnered 24 percent of the votes and boosted Bill Clinton to victory in 1992. Furthermore, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, with Colorado Springs--home to James Dobson's Focus on the Family--emerging as a major evangelical base. And remember Tom Tancredo? He's represents a Denver suburb. The fact that McCain is a familiar face from a neighboring state should also earn him some support.

That said, Colorado has experienced a Democratic renaissance in recent years. In 2004, there was only one Democrat who held a statewide office. Today, Democrats control the legislature, the governor's mansion, four of seven House districts and one of two Senate seats, with Democratic Rep. Mark Udall favored to win the other this November. Just like the rest of the country, the economy, energy prices and the Iraq War have emerged as top concerns, helping to fuel Colorado's "purple-ization." But there are other, more permanent trends at play as well. The burgeoning Latino population and an influx of young high-tech professionals from places like California and Texas have made Colorado a more hospitable climate for Democrats in recent decades. And historically, Mountain West voters have been known for their libertarian streak, often eschewing party loyalty. Simply put, people in the Mountain West want to be left alone. It's no surprise that independents make up the second biggest voting group in Colorado.

Whether Obama can win Colorado is up in the air. Despite the changing demographics and the unpopularity of the current administration, it's still a right-of-center state in a conservative region of the country. But Colorado voters have been kind to the pragmatic, unpretentious, authentic politician-regardless of party affiliation.

McCain was seemingly speaking as an Arizonan when he made his recent water gaffe, but his suggestion that Coloradans give up more of its scarcest resource could very well cost him votes this November. Obama, despite his advantages in cash and national mood, is fighting against history in trying to win Colorado. If he wants to take the state, he'll need all the help he can get. In other words, Obama would be foolish not to exploit what was a shocking heresy on McCain's part--at least to the ears of Coloradans.

Previous Colorado coverage:
Can Obama Win Out West?
A Plan to Swing Colorado
 

Clearly, Obama's people know a good thing when they see it.

Asked yesterday in an interview with the Politico how many houses he owns with his wife Cindy, a beer heiress, John McCain was, well, not quite sure. "I think - I'll have my staff get to you," he said. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you." The the quote hit the web around 8:00 this morning--and presumably some low-level staffer on the 11th floor of 233 N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago squealed, smiled and sprinted straight for David Axelrod's office.

The onslaught began immediately. First, spokesman Bill Burton emailed reporters to say that "this story about John McCain losing track of how many houses he owns is a telling moment that helps to explain why he still thinks 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' and why he offers just more of the same economic policies that we've gotten from President Bush for the last eight years." Just, you know, FYI.

Next, veep hopeful Tim Kaine pounced, claiming on CNN that McCain "couldn't count high enough apparently to even know how many houses he owns." By 11:00 a.m., Team Obama had already cut and released an ad on national cable (above) "contrast[ing] Americans' struggle to pay their mortgages with McCain's optimistic talk on the economy and his personal wealth." "It's seven," says the announcer, answering Politico's question as an image of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. appears on screen. "Seven houses. And here's one house America can't afford to let John McCain move into." By 1:30, Chicago had deployed "high-profile surrogates in 16 states across the country"--including "governors, members of Congress and state legislators"--to "hold conference calls and press conferences" meant to "highlight McCain's uncertainty," even going so far as to launch a phone survey in Florida designed to "find Floridians who, like McCain, have lost track of the number of homes they own." Meanwhile, Obama himself weighed in from Virginia. "If you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy is fundamentally strong," he said. "But if you're like me and you've got one house - or you were like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so that they don't lose their home - you might have a different perspective." 

To say that Team Obama is "salivating" over McCain's misstep would be an understatement--slobbering is more like it. It's easy to see why. As Ben Smith notes, Obama's rapid-fire "seven homes" campaign represents "a sharp new line of attack--that McCain is out-of-touch with the economy in part because he's so rich." On a textual--as opposed to subtextual level--this is absolutely correct. With our current economic downturn so directly related to the housing crisis, any gaffe that has the potential to convince vast majority of Americans--who generally know how many houses they own--that McCain is too wealthy to understand what's going on is a gift from the political gods. Not only is it ideal fodder for Leno and Letterman, but, as Marc Ambinder notes, "it fits perfectly into Obama's 'out-of-touch Washingtonian' versus 'new ideas for today's world' frame." And what's more, it nicely complements McCain's out-of-context crack that only people who make over $5 million are rich, which we predicted last week would hang around his neck like "some sort of gilded albatross" for the remainder of the race--and which Obama was sure to mention today in Virginia. When the Illinois senator told skittish Dems Monday that he was "ready to hit back," he wasn't kidding. It's pretty much all he's been doing since returning from Hawaii.

That said, I'd argue that the most important aspect of "seven houses" episode--the reason it matters more than the $5 million mess--is subtextual. The key is that phrase "out-of-touch." While Obama and Co. are openly attributing McCain's "out-of-touchness" to his wealth, it's not hard to imagine the Republican nominee's inability to keep track of his real estate holdings will subconsciously strike some voters as having to do with another, more penetrating personal attribute: his age. After all, the implicit contrast here is not between the candidate's bank accounts; Obama himself raked in more than $4 million last year. It's between their grasp of seemingly obvious realities. When nearly four in ten voters say they're concerned that you're too old to be president, being seen as "out of touch" has the potential to do even more damage than it did to John Kerry in 2004. At 60, the windsurfing wonder with an heiress wife and and handful of homes was merely "rich." I suspect that voters don't (and won't) see McCain--a former POW who lived through years of excruciating torture--primarily as a man of privilege. But they already think he's old. And in case you're wondering whether Team Obama is aware of the "senility" connotation, look no further than today's insta-ad. It says "asked how many houses he has, McCain lost track. He couldn't remember." That's a bit more loaded than "McCain wasn't sure."

The truth is, I can kind of understand McCain's confusion. A scion of Arizona's wealthy Hensley family, his wife Cindy is reportedly worth $100 million. It was she who purchased all of the properties in question--including two multimillion dollar condos in the exclusive beach enclave of Coronado, Calif.--and beyond the ranch in Sedona, Ariz., the family condo in Phoenix and an apartment in the D.C. suburbs, McCain probably hasn't spent much (if any) time at any of them. (Cindy began visiting Coronado while recovering from her 2004 stroke, for example; McCain, who's apparently "not a beach person," was living in Washington.) Still, that explanation will do little to quiet his critics or erase the (accurate) impression of his family's wealth.

Over at the Atlantic, Ambinder wondered whether McCain's slip was "worse than a scanner moment." *He was referring, of course, to the famous reports from Feb. 5, 1992 that President George H.W. Bush, then running for reelection, had seemingly marveled over an ordinary supermarket checkout scanner at the National Grocers Convention in Orlando, Fla. "Amazed by some of the technology," he'd said. The scene caught on with reporters, who used it to symbolize Bush's lack of familiarity with the details of ordinary American life--his "out-of-touchness," so to speak. Nevermind that the device that had impressed the prez wasn't a regular scanner but rather a prototype that could "weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes." ("Bush acts curious and polite, but hardly amazed," wrote NEWSWEEK after reviewing a video of the incident.) By then, it was too late. Slipping toward recession, the country skipped the swell who didn't know his way around a supermarket in favor of a blue-collar upstart who could "feel their pain."*

And here we are, still searching for "scanner moments." 

UPDATE, Aug. 22: More evidence that Team Obama is pushing the age angle. In an email to reporters this morning rounding-up coverage of McCain's slip, Obama spokesman Bill Burton is sure to note "how out of touch all of John McCain’s years in Washington have made him." Emphasis mine.

UPDATE: Another houses ad--this one explicitly titled "Out of Touch"--from the Obama camp. Notice the opening visual (McCain puttering around in a golf cart with 84-year-old former President George H.W. Bush himself) and the catchphrase ("Country Club Economics"). And it all happens in slow-motion. Can you say "retirement community"?

*Adapted from an earlier Stumper post.  
 

(Elise Amendola / AP Photo)

WWHD?

While some Democrats panic (prematurely, experts say) over a series of polls showing the average gap between Barack Obama and John McCain shrinking from eight points on June 23 to 1.4 points today, another slice of the party--namely, the disgruntled-Clintonista contingent--is reacting with four cruel words: "I told you so." And thanks to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, they have some ammunition. Released yesterday afternoon, the survey gives Obama 45 percent to 42 percent lead over McCain--down from his six-point advantage last month--while putting Clinton ahead of the Republican nominee 49-43. "The Democrats really needed Hillary to win, and not as VP," writes Stumper reader MCGILL. "McCain has it." Fellow commenter "jpokergman" goes one step further, predicting that Denver will "morph into a Hillary-buyer-remorse-lovefest," with "'we could have had Hillary'... rocketing through the Democratic convention" and the press "turn[ing] on Obama like a starving pit-bull."

Sadly--because anything would be better than the newsless infomercials conventions have become--this isn't going to happen. But all the agita does raise an interesting question: If Hillary Clinton had captured the Democratic nomination back in June--perhaps with revotes in Florida and Michigan--would she performing better against McCain than Obama is now? Of course, this sort of counterfactual is impossible to, you know, prove. But given that Clinton was easily the closest runner-up in modern nominating history--and given that doubts about whether or not she would've been a stronger nominee are still dividing Democrats--it's worth taking a brief breather from this week's frenzied veepstakes bonanza to scan the available evidence and ponder the "what ifs."

From a messaging standpoint, there's certainly an argument to be made that Clinton would be outperforming Obama. As the New York Times reported this morning, "voters [are] focused overwhelmingly on economic issues"--40 percent name "the economy" as their most pressing concern--"but [are] convinced that the candidates are not paying enough attention to their priorities." The Washington Times, meanwhile, notes that McCain is now leading "when voters [are] asked which candidate could better manage the economy," "turning a four-point deficit in July['s Reuters/Zobgy poll] into a 49 percent to 40 percent lead." This is clear proof that despite "delivering a more populist message that further highlights his [economic] differences with Senator John McCain" since returning last week from Hawaii, Obama has yet to make an emotional connection with swing voters on what should be the Democratic Party's winning issue.

Judging by the final months of the Democratic nominating contest--when Clinton won the majority of votes and primaries by hammering home precisely the "populist message" Obama is now adopting--the former first lady would not be having that problem right now. It's not that Obama isn't proposing specific economic policies. He is. But the Obama "phenomenon" provides the press with so many distractions--his race, his "celebrity," the latest "Obama-themed merchandise"--that his daily message is often drowned out. With the relatively "familiar" Clinton, on the other hand, reporters probably would've been forced to cover her latest "solution" on, say, "equal pay for women"--because she'd give them little else to chatter about. (Remember who coined the phrase "it's the economy, stupid.") Like her husband Bill--who in 1992 skipped the posh Martha's Vineyard for "rustic" Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he was photographed riding a horse--Clinton would've vacationed in a poll-tested "all-American" spot like Scranton, Penn. instead of Obama's "highfalutin" Hawaii. Coupled with her relative strength in the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida--as of early May, she was leading McCain there by 6-8 percent, while Obama, who's still behind in both places, trailed by nearly as much--it's easy to see why some supporters think she'd be in a better position to win come November.

That said, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that a Clinton-McCain match-up would've been just as close as the current contest. For starters, Clinton's "lead" over McCain in the latest NBC/WSJ poll is her largest ever. From January through April, she never edged out McCain--who actually beat her 47-43 in January and 46-44 in March--by more than two points. Obama, meanwhile, posted consistent leads over the Republican nominee and therefore appeared to be the stronger national candidate. So what accounts for Clinton's gains? Simply put, disgruntled Clintonistas. As MSNBC's First Read team reported this morning, "the biggest reason why this race remains close in this Dem-leaning political environment is because of Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Clinton’s supporters." According to the NBC/WSJ poll, 52 percent of them say they'll vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee, while 21 percent are backing McCain and an additional 27 percent are either undecided or want to vote for someone else. These dissenters wouldn't exist, of course, if Clinton had won the nomination. But it's worth remembering that she'd have a whole nother group of dissatisfied Dems to contend with--namely black and young voters, who supported Obama by overwhelming margins in the primaries and would've been at least as angry as Clinton's former backers are now if HRC and Co. had "stolen" the nomination by "bending the rules" at the 11th hour. If the tables were turned and Clinton were now running against McCain, these voters--who represent a full 30 percent of the NBC/WSJ sample group--would undoubtedly depress Clinton's numbers as much as (or more than) disgruntled Clintonites are now depressing Obama's.

And that's not all. While Clinton was outpolling Obama in Ohio and Florida last May, she was also losing to McCain across a broad swath of crucial swing states where Obama was (and is) either winning or tied: Wisconsin (by four percent); Virginia (by nine percent); Colorado (by approximately eight percent); New Hampshire (by one percent); Michigan (by three percent); and Iowa (by three percent). Given that Obama outraised Clinton by $60 million during the primaries and is still only barely keeping pace with McCain and the RNC's combined intake--not to mention the fact that he consistently out-organized her and is now investing "more massively than any campaign in the history of American politics on the ground game"--it's impossible to conclude, all things considered, that Clinton would be outperforming Obama in an Electoral College match-up with McCain. Especially when you factor in her near-50-percent disapproval ratings and account for all the animus she inspires on the right--which the GOP would deftly use to fuel its GOTV and fundraising efforts and rally its otherwise dispirited base. And there's no reason to believe that Clinton's conflicted, rudderless, ineffectual campaign--the real reason she lost--would suddenly, magically whip itself into working order in time for the fall.

Still, it's understandable that some Dems are speculating about what might have been. In fact, the buzz has grown so loud in recent days (hours?) that it seems to have spilled over into--you guessed it--the veepstakes feeding frenzy. According to master CW-monger Mark Halperin, "EVERYONE in the political class is [now] talking about the possibility of Obama shocking the world and picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate." For what it's worth, the "dream team" idea makes more sense today than it ever has. Obama solidifies his support among former Clintonistas, excites the Democratic base and boosts his chances in Ohio and Florida. Clinton doesn't do what the naysayers feared she would do--that is, unite the Republican Party (it's already pretty united, at least against Obama) or fill McCain's coffers (he's on the verge of forsaking private funds)--but she does provoke, in Nate Silver's words, "overzealous attempts to whip the Republican base into a frenzy" that will inevitably be "counteracted with outrage from significant numbers of older and working-class women." It could work. Unfortunately, as Halperin notes, there's only one thing that "speculation of a Clinton veep choice is based on" at this point:

"Nothing."
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

IT'S HIS PARTY
(Dana Goldstein and Ezra Klein, American Prospect)
The Obama campaign has announced plans for training camps that will turn out thousands of new organizers dedicated to electing Democrats, and has signaled that it will spend millions in blood-red states where Democrats haven't seriously invested in building party infrastructure for decades. The campaign has constructed a fundraising machine based around small-donors that promises to end the age-old competition for dollars between different wings of the Democratic establishment, enabling the creation of a unified electoral strategy. It has argued that "real change" requires the sort of legislative successes that only a strong congressional party can produce. In short, the candidate running on his exhaustion with traditional party politics has directed his campaign to build a new kind of Democratic Party--one that may put to shame anything that came before it.