post-convention

I was going to break radio silence tonight (my last post was mid-August) with a short reflection on the candidate acceptance speeches we've seen in the last week. I was out of town for most of the Democratic convention (but bless the good ol' boys at Burning Man Information Radio, who saw fit to broadcast Obama's speech last Thursday live). So I wanted to focus on McCain's and Palin's* speeches of these two evenings past.

For instance: I was going to say Palin's* speech last night was very effective. Barren, strikingly, of policy ideas, but effective. You hardly noticed she had nothing substantive to say - she spoke engagingly and gave Obama a number of gleefully meanspirited wallops. Wahoo! And as of this morning, all that stuff about her trying to fire the cop who'd divorced her sister, her support of Alaskan pork-barrel federal cash infusions and of disgraced Senator Ted Stevens' lobbying firm, her Alaskan separatism (???) - as well as the more tabloid stuff about her daughter's statutorily-raped-and-proud-of-it pregnancy: these things, post-speech, seem largely off the table. Until or unless, that is, the National Enquirer produces solid proof of Palin's* extra-marital affair with her husband's business partner. Or maybe until this report comes out.

I'd also meant to talk about McCain's speech tonight. An intriguing speech: intriguingly-enough filled with self-contradiction and logical loop-de-whorls to have come from a wayward Lewis Carroll book. He spends a third of his 49 minutes talking about the godawful mess this country is in - another third of it talking about how the fix for that mess is the precise boilerplate Republican philosophy and policies that led us there - then divides his remaining third into listing the countries he'd like to start new wars with (Iran, Russia), telling us how he hates war, and reiterating for us the little-known fact that he was at one time a POW himself. Then we get a weird closer about how we should fight for America by being active in our communities - weird coming the day after "community organizing" was repeatedly trashed for the sole reason that it was an early-career entry on Obama's resume.

But thank goodness I don't feel the need anymore to go on and on about that junk. Because these things now seem more important to me:

• McCain's speech appears to have been received pretty poorly.
• McCain's due a bounce from his convention, but Obama's national lead is currently measured at 5-points plus on average, and I believe he'll retain a statistically significant edge going into next week. More importantly, when you look at the state-by-state map, the distribution of these votes is critcially leaning in Barack's favor (260 electoral votes banked vs. McCain's 179 - with 99 more electoral votes in a very close toss-up - on a threshold of 270 needed to win).
• And, last but far from least, this makes me happy.
  

Now, there's perhaps plenty of room for change in the polling figures... but increasingly less-plenty. We have 60 days till the election, and at least in the past few voting cycles there's been very little change in the numbers after post-convention bounces settle in. Presidential debates notwithstanding.

There's no doubt this election is going to be close, at least in terms of the national popular vote. Much closer than it has any right to be, of course, given how the Republicans have governed. Still, I remain tentatively optimistic... but it's going to be very interesting to watch the next batch of polls roll in after this weekend.


*Did she have to besmirch the name of a Python? For Christ's sake.