With something approaching closure behind it, the Democratic Convention proper begins today. Hillary Clinton’s speech last night was simultaneously impressive and uninteresting. Not creating interest was its job, and it succeeded. No hint of being less than 100% loyal. No thinly or thickly veiled jibes about who the real choice should have been. No hostages to talk show talking points. As a result this morning’s front pages all speak of unity. Job Done.
And yet the sense that this convention hasn’t moved beyond third gear remains. On the one hand all of the speeches that matter - Teddy Kennedy, Michelle Obama, and Clinton herself - have been as good, or better, than could have been expected. On the other, none have managed properly to lay out either a vision for Obama’s presidency, or offer up a new critique of the Republicans. The latter point was especially evident in supporting speeches last night. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer had the evening’s only good line - “we simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards, including the ones he can’t even remember”. But that apart, pickings were thin. Former Virgina Governor Mark Warner, once fancied as a potential presidential candidate himself, delivered a long-winded and often bafflingly incoherent speech, which i’d hazard a guess was meant to be about the economy. None of the other speakers managed to move their contributions beyond platitudes. All were ignored by a crowd more intent on talking with each other than listening to the stage. More worrying for the Democrats, none managed to come up with fresh or interesting way to biff their opponents. The lines seemed stale. “We can’t afford more of the same” and “John McCain is out of touch”, may well be the right messages, but they were delivered last night by politicians on autopilot. None shed the impression that something isn’t quite clicking.
Which brings us to Joe Biden’s speech, later tonight. After two days of throat clearing his delicate task is both to to drip foreign policy gravitas, and bring a new zing to lacklustre attempts to attack McCain. Including a hint of the campaign’s slightly mysterious economic message - again picked up in the New York Times this morning - would be an added bonus. Yet Biden’s position is trickier still. Given the option, my sense is that the campaign would rather not have picked a running mate at all. This campaign is fundamentally and personally about Obama - his charisma, his embodiment of a new future, his now familiar message off change. Biden was in many ways a deeply conservative choice of running mate, and as yet it isn’t clear how he fits. So, he must try to craft a role for himself too - as a gaffe-free mix of elder statesman and attack dog, who adds something to the ticket without distracting from a campaign whose strategy, for better or worse, is Obama-centred.
Up on stage it’s all smiles. But around the edges of the convention, Democratic operatives are clearly worried about their campaign. The last month has seen a gradual coming to terms with the fact of their candidate’s limitations. Early hopes that Barack Obama would race to a double-digit poll lead against a seemingly hapless John McCain were quickly dashed. But no consensus exists as to why the campaign’s rise has been halted. And it is this discussion - why aren’t we winning, and what should we be doing about it - that dominates conversations in Denver’s corridors, hotel lobbies and lavish receptions.
This morning, for instance, i popped into a breakfast briefing, in which all the talk was about the campaign’s inability to land a compelling economic narrative. Where, participants asked, was the mix of big themes and practical policies which would convince wavering, mortgage-minded voters that President Obama would put money back in their pocket? (The New York Times asked a similar question in a long, interesting Sunday magazine front cover this weekend.) More importantly, what now is the campaign’s fundamental message to the American people; the equivalent of Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy / time for a change / don’t forget about healthcare.” The sense is Obama has so far struggled to put convincing policy meat on the bones of his themes of hope and change, and has found particular problems on economic issues.
Perhaps more problematically, this convention itself is proving a difficult place to deploy these details. Four nights of convention means four chances to get a message across. Yet last night’s well-received Michelle Obama biopic had little in the way of policy. Its job was to introduce her and her husband as ordinary, empathetic, relate-able people. This evening’s set of speeches is meant to be about the economy - but the focus will naturally be on whatever it is Hillary Clinton decides to say. Tomorrow the focus is meant to be on security, mixed in with introducing Joe Biden as running mate. The upshot? If the campaign wants to say something about the economy, it may well have to rely on the candidate himself, on the final night. Whether he will be able to do so - in amongst all the other things the speech needs to do, and with huge expectations driven by his previous speechifying - is fast becoming one of the big tests by which to judge the convention’s success.
Along with Erik Tarloff, James Crabtree will be blogging for First Drafts from the Democratic convention in Denver this week
An article in this weekend’s Guardian contains intriguing hints of what gets David Miliband’s goat. Explaining his decision to pen last week’s mini-manifesto, it claims: “Miliband himself was furious about an article in the Guardian by the shadow chancellor George Osborne earlier this month that he regarded as vacuous, adding to his sense that the Tories were not being challenged.” The article in question can only be a piece Osborne wrote a few weeks back in praise of Nudge, a much discussed book by two American academics. In the article Osborne claimed Nudge’s notion of libertarian paternalism for the right. He also argued his doing so showed evidence of the Convervative party’s openness to new ideas. This claim was seemed substantiated when Nudge author Richard Thaler noted that his ideas were receiving little play on the left. Feted by Osborne’s office and lauded by others in the Cameron project, he had received not one single invitation to break bread with government wonks. Thaler can now take heart. His ideas have, by proxy, nudged Miliband into action. If the result is the removal of Gordon Brown, his ideas may save the Labour party after all.
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