First, thorsteinveblen nailed it. If Obama had picked Edwards he'd be in big trouble by now.

More generally, the longer your opponent knows who he's going to run against, the longer he has to establish his strategy. In that respect the long primary has helped the Democrats. If McCain had known he'd be running about Obama, he could have spent a lot more energy painting himself as the experienced choice, while if he had known it was Hillary he could have underlined his manly manhood and his stay-the-course-on-Iraq versus Hillary's vote-to-start-the-war-and-leave-before-it's-done. As it is, he had to hedge in terms of what foot to put forward.

Same with vice-presidential picks. Actually, if I were Obama, I would have (1) approached someone who made a lot of strategic sense from a certain point of view, but who had some really ugly skeletons in his closet (2) told him really confidentially that he was not going to be the veep pick but that I would definitely have a juicy place for him in my administration; and (3) simultaneously send signals or allow them to be sent to the media and punditocracy that tended to indicate that would be my choice. You know, make sure he's being discussed in the same breath as Biden and Bayh and Sebelius. The opponent would start digging up all kinds of dirt on that person, ready to go on the offensive the minute I announced my pick. Then, (4) I would announce my REAL choice, late in the game, leaving the opposition minimal time to dig up the dirt.

Yes! YES! Raarh!

Hahahahaha!

Go get 'em tiger!

Hahahahahaha!!!

First, I'm pretty hard to bullshit. I knew George Bush was full of shit from the get-go and I saw right through him after 9/11 when everyone else seemed willing to persuade themselves that he was some kind of Churchillian hero. At the same time, I was really unimpressed with Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2000. So I'm not someone who's going to automatically go into a frenzy over what the Democrat du jour says.

And Obama's speech rocked. I didn't feel like he was bullshitting us. Yes, there were some elements of his speech that were unrealistic (10 years to independence from foreign oil--I think not.) but to me these were not-literally-true things that were, nonetheless, true on another level. The whole of the speech was true and relevant and important in all the ways that matter.

(Now, the trolls are going to take me to task for those last two lines. To them I say: Go to hell, now and forever. Saint Reagan got a free pass for his whoppers, untrue things that were fundamentally untrue e.g. the welfare mother in the Cadillac. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying in response to a personal question designed purely to humiliate him; George Bush has gotten a free pass for lying his way into a disastrous war. The Republicans and their minions have gotten away with this stuff for decades, getting away with stuff far worse than anything the Democrats have done.)

Secondly, for the first time I feel like I couldn't do a better job than the Democratic nominee. (That's saying a lot about how bad a job the previous choices did.) I no longer stress out over how this or that spurious attack on Obama will be allowed to go unchallenged because I know that he understands the kind of fight he's in. Finally I can relax.

Thirdly, let's put aside this whole "he shoulda done that he shoulda done this" nonsense. I've seen the pattern form for years: No matter what choice the candidate makes for his or her speech, s/he is lambasted for not going the other way.

Not talking about specific policies? It's all vague rhetoric and no substance. Talks about specific policies? BOR-ing.

Talks about foreign policy and America's place in the world? Well, he's out of touch and not addressing the concerns of ordinary working folk. Talks about bread-and-butter issues and the concerns of ordinary working folk? Well, he's just pandering, what about foreign policy.

Republican is a war veteran, running against a civilian? Well, what we need most of all is a soldier with combat experience. Democrat is a decorated war veteran, running against a spoiled rich kid whose family connections allowed him to desert from the Air National Guard? Well, that doesn't matter, stop dwelling in the past, what's important is who's tougher on terror now.

"Petard!" Brilliant!

We need a new lexicon of implicitly offensive terms to call things what they are, without tripping over the knee-jerk offensensitivity of those who would take issue with our words rather than the realities they are being used to describe.

("Offensensitivity" being a term coined by Berkeley Breathed in a Bloom County strip some twenty-five years ago.)

My addition to the lexicon is "bungaloid," meaning a suburban homeowner too dumb to know what s/he is getting into and therefore doomed to screw up his/her life.

Oh my fucking christ in a gravy boat.

It just gets better and better.

This is like one of those movies where the big bad phony politician gets exposed by the clever twelve-year-olds and the last ten minutes is all the bad guys getting humiliated again and again and again.

Cue the hero's lovable mutt dog, who comes onto the stage and pees on the villain's leg.