Obama did indeed get a poll bump out of the DNC. Seeing as how the DNC was much more positive and well-executed than the RNC (not to mention having a far superior message), this isn't too surprising. However, the mediocre jobs report that was released the very next day (yesterday) will likely blunt any big rise in the polls for Obama.
On the other hand, this race is not moving much, which is good news, since Obama has a 75% chance of winning, according to 538's Nate Silver. Hopefully there won't be any surprises - like Europe's economy failing, or a lifecrushing amount of money being spent by Republican superPACs on ads.
Hopefully.
Actually, apparently Romney and Rove (his real running mate) have pulled their money out of Michigan and Pennsylvania, which is a HUGE concession. I also read somewhere that things in Ohio are not as pretty for them as they might have you believe. His ad buys look like a losing strategy to the folks over at the Guardian.
Meanwhile this morning I've been reading Paul Constant's entry describing his unique, harrowing experience covering both conventions in his poetic prose. Check it out here.
If there’s one moment I’m going to pull from both of these conventions and carry with me until I die, I know exactly what it is. There’s no doubt. It was a pure moment of grace and awe. When Gabby Giffords came onstage on the last night of the DNC to lead the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance in her halting, childlike voice, and blew kisses at the crowd, and was guided off the stage, I lost it. I was bawling, and so was everyone else in the print journalists section, far to the rear of the stadium. And so, I suspect, was everyone in the Arena. It was the kind of moment that TV reporters love to ruin with their careless choice of words, like courage and tragedy and strength. Those words are too blunt, too inexact, to express what that moment meant.Finally, as a pedestrian in a city of drivers who literally are unaware they must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk (seriously, they have no fucking idea), I find this article encouraging, as it details Chicago's efforts to fix that.
Almost two years ago, this woman took a bullet to the brain in an Arizona parking lot. News organizations around the country reported her to be dead before they corrected their mistake. She was there for just another dumb press event that congresswomen have to show up for every day if they expect to keep their jobs, and a mentally unhinged man who slipped through the cracks tried to force his will upon her, to make her dead so that he could have something he could call his own. He took something precious from her that will never be replaced, but he failed.
Giffords was broken on that day, and she’s broken now. I’m broken, too, and so are you. Every day breaks us in a different way. But broken is not the same thing as dead, and if you’re not dead, you’re alive, and if you’re alive, you can do something. That’s not courage; it’s just what you do. You wake up. Something’s sore. Your head hurts. You don’t want to do what you have to do today. You don’t want to talk to humans. There’s so much weight that it feels like you can’t do it anymore. It’s pointless. It’s unmanageable. It’s awful. You can’t do it. You know, deep down in your stomach, that you simply can’t do it anymore. It’s impossible.
You get up anyway.
FINALLY finally, I discovered moments ago that Tullycraft has a pile of free mp3s available for download. Putting them all together makes for a tweepoppin, coffee-sippin, internet-surfin mornin!
