T-minus Nine weeks

Wow, what a crazy fucking week! The Democratic National Convention looks like a pretty major success, with more knockout, devastatingly good speeches than I can ever remember at a convention before. Michelle, Hillary, Bill, John Kerry, Teddy, Joe and Barack all delivered big moments and great commentary. The Obama speech was really stellar- a very specific and serious explanation of where he wants to take the country, plus a pretty surgical dissection of McCain's various critiques and campaign tactics. Beautiful work. And the stadium gambit feels like it paid off- instead of coming off as grandiose, it really looked like a massive gathering of regular people. Extraordinary diversity- young, old, every color, in pretty much every shot of the crowd.

The GOP Convention meanwhile is off to a rocky start. McCain picked Sarah Palin for VP, a decision that looked great for precisely One day. Since then, stories have rolled out daily about how utterly unserious and unvetted this pick really was. McCain seems to have undercut his experience argument, in addition to coming off as rash and cavalier in contrast to Obama's sober and studied VP choice.

And of course, Hurricane Gustav is issue number one. Many of our contributors grew up pretty close to Katrina and Gustav's path, so this is not something we'll take lightly. On the political front, it pretty much shut down a day of the RNC, and that's all we'll say.


The numbers are in flux, of course, and we'll really understand the state of the race in a week or two. But right now, it looks like the Dems made the most of their Convention, and we're yet to see if the Republicans can organize an equally clean, effective message.