DNC, Day One

Ken AshfordElection 2012Leave a Comment

I only caught bits and pieces on the radio, mostly of Michelle's speech.  The latter was moving — she is hands down the best First Lady speaker this country has ever seen (and I put Hillary Clinton in that category).  CBS reported that she wrote it herself, and worked on it for more than a month.

UPDATE:  Michelle Obama's speech was written at a 12th grade reading level; Ann Romney's was written at a 5th grade reading level.

Consider how Romney delivers the following passage on wives and mothers, in her purported attempt to close the gender gap for her husband's campaign:

"You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. There would not be an America without you. Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises."

But when Michele Obama addressed the subject of women in her speech, she took a different tactical approach, incorporating much longer sentences into her speech, such as the following passage about the president's grandmother:

"And for years, men no more qualified than she was – men she had actually trained – were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning more and more money while Barack's family continued to scrape by."

The content of what she said was appropriate.  She discussed her husband on a personal level, reminding everyone that we liked HIM.  Like Ann Romney, she discussed "the lean years" wioth her husband, although, in Michelle's case, it was much more convincing.

FLOTUS' account of her and POTUS' early years rings a little more genuine than eating pasta while living off stock options.

— @AJentleson via web

But she also made the case for "stay the course", noting that change is hard, that it takes a long time, and that some people (e.g., Republicans) do all that they can to resist it.

More importantly, she spoke on what clearly is to be a theme of the convention: the philosophical differences between Obama and Romney and, on a larger scale, Democrats and Republicans.  

Michelle Obama shows how you use a personal story – weave it into your political philosophy & show how it reflects your political values

— @speechboy71 via Twitter for Mac

This was best exemplified by this:

He's the same man who started his career by turning down high paying jobs and instead working in struggling neighborhoods where a steel plant had shut down, fighting to rebuild those communities and get folks back to work… because for Barack, success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives.

She went on:

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make…that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters…that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules…and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean…and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect.

There's more like this.  It was remarkable how she kicked Romney's ass without ever mentioning his name.  Not once.

Michelle's take on success was is in stark contrast to what one heard from the GOP convention, where "success" seemed to be defined almost exclusively as "running your own business".   I'm also struck by the contrast with Ann Romney's speech:

It's true that Mitt has been successful at each new challenge he has taken on. It amazes me to see his history of success actually being attacked. Are those really the values that made our country great? As a mom of five boys, do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success? Do we send our children out in the world with the advice, "Try to do… okay?"

Let's see how the ugly right took Michelle's speech — from the comments at Glenn Beck's Blaze (via Jesus' General)

POLITICIANSRCROOKS
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:58pm
Can’t people see that she is clearly a Demon. Obama the Devil. We lost and Romney idiots secured his victory. Thanks for dividing us Republicans. Maybe you should have joined with Paul Supporters. You didn’t have to change the rules to win, so why even do it? You could have won fair and square with Romney and Romney could have gave Ron Paul a Cabinet spot and we could have destroyed Obama but NOOOOO… You act like cowards and divide us so the Dictator wins. Thanks Guys. Thanks

ZEKE48
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:50pm
Every time Odumbo visits a Catholic or other Christian schools, he has them cover up the Lord’s picture, and cover the name Jesus. Who the hell does he think he is and piss on the schools to do it!

GHANDI WAS A REPUBLICAN
Posted on September 5, 2012 at 12:04am
Get a clue! Obama believes that he is the 12th imam, AKA the Aniti-Christ! Who else would visit a church and demand that Christ be hidden from his sight? WHO? NO ONE- that’s who!
Seriously? Why go to a church unless to deceive? Yet his minions in the media remain oblivious….

TH30PH1LUS
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:48pm
Yes, Michelle – I agree that the mask has come off, and your husband has shown us who he really is: a man who grew up cut off from American society, mentored by radical communists, and supported by homegrown terrorists who planted bombs on our own soil. A man who attended an anti-American, racist hate-filled church for 20 years, and thinks he has the power to reverse global warming through the dismantling of the American Energy Industry. A man who openly said he would endorse the murder of his own grandchildren, supports every bizzare and disgusting form of abortion ever vomited out of hell, and rips at the very fabric of our moral fibers by espousing homosexuality.

FOXROCKS
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:46pm
He’s lived the dream all right. Been taken care of by the likes of Soros, never worked a real job, who knows if he really did go to collage, hides all his records, including any student loans he may have had (NOT) got a sweet deal on his big house in Chi Town. The obama’s have done nothing, but use Chicago politics, help out there cronies, and have chilled on the Taxpayers dime, certainly the past 3 and one half years……..
Michelle will probably write a cookbook for kids, and a bunch of suckers will buy it, thinking she knows better than you do on how to prepare a healthy meal……….

LEADTHEMTOTHELIGHT
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:48pm
I realize this is gonna be a kind of petty comment but… ummm… Michelle is kinda manly looking right?

HOBBS57
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:40pm
I though it was a terrible speech, I can’t figure where everybody is getting all this praise from. All I Can consider is they are afraid of being labeled racist. Those DNC folks were chanting like something out of Nazi Germany, with roars sounding similar to what I hear during European football matches.. I kept waiting to hear one of those long yellow plastic horns to be blown .. :BBRRRRRRR hahaha and I never heard the USA chants, not once all night …

GREGJACKIE1
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:38pm
Oh. I will say it has revealed who the real Obama is. A marxist, anti American, choom smoking, fraud who is steering America towards ruin by design unless we put a stop to it this November. It is up to us since the spineless House members are to scared to impeach this traitor.

CAPITALISMROCKS
Posted on September 4, 2012 at 11:56pm
As a Senator – we knew nothing about Obama, but yes Michelle is right, as President, especially off script and without a prompter, we found out exactly what he is, an anti-American, Colonial hating, Capitalist hating, success hating, tear down America’s greatness and bring it down to be a nothing in a crowd President….

*Sigh*

Apparently, women's issues and abortion was dealt with heavily in Day One, causing CNN's conservative contributor to tweet:

First night of the Vagina Monologues in Charlotte going as expected.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) September 5, 2012

Very funny.  [UPDATE:  Oops.  Erick stepped in it.  There's a petition to get him removed from CNN.  Go sign it.]

Anyway, here's the complete Michelle Obama speech:

 

UPDATE: Twitter reports that Michelle Obama's speech generated nearly twice as many tweets per minute as Mitt Romney's speech