An Awesome Speech

It's rare that a political speech is truly "historical". The media love to say the word "historical" but most speeches don't last 3 months, not to mention the test of time. I'm here to say today that Obama's speech last night will live on famously.

The excitement was palatable and afterwards I could hardly sleep. Obama took it right to McCain on 3 levels:

1. He provided a general defense of liberalism while utterly ravaging the conservative movement's trickle down economics (a policy that could not have failed more spectacularly but is still somehow believed by many).

2. He defended himself from all the ridiculous attacks that McCain has leveled in the last weeks. Specifically the "celebrity" and "unpatriotic" claims. His response to those arguments was weaved within the larger context of his speech and was truly stunning. But not only that, he implicitly attacked McCain for making such stupid arguments with his "the times are too serious for the same old partisan playbook" line.

3. He spent considerable time on policy specifics, comparing them to McCain and suggesting that there is middle ground for "values voters" (re: Guns, Abortion, Gay Marraige, etc).

In short, he sold his ideas, his philosophy, and his character while at the same time attacking the befuddled old man that will say and do anything to get elected, even if it means crawling into bed with the same sleazebags that ruined his chances in 2000.

Assuming Obama manages to extricate his foot from John McCain's ass, the Senator will be introducing his VP selection today. They held off the news last night because it was "Obama's night" but really they just wanted to dominate the morning news cycle. (Of course picking a newbie-nobody like Sarah Palin, 42, Gov of Alaska, is essentially like waving the white flag.)

Sadly for McCain, I don't think there's any coming back from last night's assault. On every level (energy, excitement, substance, appearance, etc), Obama just housed the old man from Arizona. He turned back the elitist tag with a strong personal narrative about growing up very middle class. He ridiculed the celebrity narrative with the same narrative (it is ironic that McCain's top criticism of Obama is that the man is too popular, no?). He housed him on the most salient issue in the election - the economy. And he did it all while looking incredibly poised, earnest, trustworthy, and frankly, presidential.

Game. Set. Match.