He is a thoughtful, and a decent man. He should have told Bob Shrum to shove it up his fat ass with that "reporting for duty BS".

I wished he asked Howard Dean for VP instead of that hairgel Edwards.

Not that Kerry shouldn't have gone after T Boone Nose Pickens and the Swift Boat pricks, but Edwards was totally useless as an attack dog.

but damn, Kerry's speech was brilliant last night. He was my candidate from the get-go in 2004 and I was devastated when he didn't pull it off in the end. (At least I have the privilege of having him as my Senator.)

Back in 2004 I remember raging about him and the Dems not attacking right back. Like Greenwald is always saying- we can no longer afford to take the high road. We have to throw the attacks out there and make them stick. And the best part? We don't even have to make shit up like they do- there's enough real-live fodder to toss around.

"The calculation was that we had put the truth out and people saw through that kind of attack. The miscalculation is that if you put a lot of money behind a lie, there are some people who don't [see through it]."

Or, more accurately, the message that gets proclaimed most loudly, most frequently, and most consistently becomes the "truth" in American politics. That's something the Repugs discovered a long time ago... remember things like "Oliver North is a true American patriot", "Welfare recipients ride around in Cadillacs", "By cutting taxes for the rich we'll raise revenue and eliminate budget deficits", or--best yet--"Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and was behind 9/11".

Finally, maybe, Democrats are waking up to the game.

What's with all the friggin' in the riggin'?

...President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever....Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator 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. Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what’s more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same “Rove” tactics and the same “Rove” staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008...

...Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division. He will be a president who seeks not to perfect the lies of Swift boating, but to end them once and for all.

This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don’t decide who loves this country; you don’t decide who is a patriot; you don’t decide whose service counts and whose doesn’t.

Four years ago I said, and I say it again tonight, that the flag doesn’t belong to any ideology. It doesn’t belong to any political party. It is an enduring symbol of our nation, and it belongs to all the American people. After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country...

I loved it. It was worth a second look - on CSpan. Because there is no way you would have had a chance to enjoy it with MSNBC "am not!...are to!" coverage and CNN's "oh, behind us there is a convention going on, but let's talk to Big head Begala again."

The best defense is a good offense.

It's such a simple concept, but the Democrats really need to learn it. For far too long, out of fear of being offensive, they end up being defensive, which puts them at the mercy of their Republican opposition.

It's time to play offense, Democrats. Go get'em. Fuck'em up. Win.

We've always won on the field of Logic.

So what did the GOP do? They fought dirty, appealing to the base emotions of the masses with Swift-Boat, Barack is a Muslim fundie and other bullshit lies and smears.

ONE person is smart and capable of parsing bullshit from Truth.

But the masses? As my old bumper sticker said, The Masses are Asses.

And so in 2004, trying to take the high road - we lost. Kudos to Kerry for being sage enough to admit that.

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And now?

Having won on Logic, we're taking it to these slimy conservative pricks on their own field.

We're fighting the Emotion War, especially these last couple days....

And if we have to drag McCain's affairs and horrendous flip-flopping (where oh where is that "maverick" from 2000?) into the fold, by God we will.

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Screw the perpetual polls - I smell neocon blood in the air...

I'm glad Kerry learned his lesson but it appears Obama learned nothing from that election. In 2004 the placid democratic convention was followed by the republican convention where they absolutely torched Kerry (Bush went on to a 12-14 pt bounce from which Kerry never recovered). The only conclusion that I can draw from this convention is that either the democrats are courteous to a fault or there are really few policy differences with which they differ with the current administration. What they should have done is sealed Bush's legacy as the absolute worst president in history, destroy the Republican brand and everything which it stands for from which a candidate as pathetic as McCain could never recover. I just saw they edited Kucinich's rather tame remark--what the hell is wrong with these people.

And kjayne, if Obama does manage to get elected Democrats are going to have to be vigilant to keep him in line. These newly co-opted powers by the Bush admin will not be readily ceded. The fact that dems are willing to criticize their own is one of the few reasons I keep showing up at the polls, and, at least lately, is their only redeemable quality.