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Hillary Clinton is back. And this time, it’s personal.
At least that’s the subtext of a statement just released by the Clinton press office:
We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin's historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain. While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate.
If there were any lingering doubts as to the enthusiasm with which Hillary and Bill Clinton would campaign for Barack Obama—even after "That makes two of us"—let this put them to rest. Clinton is right, Sarah Palin’s nomination is historic. But what would be even more historic is if she won. And that just can’t be allowed.
Hillary has only started publicly describing her candidacy in historic terms since it ended. Fans were overjoyed to hear her speak about the legacy of women’s rights—and her role in it—in her concession speech in June. But even then, many of them weren’t comfortable with the idea of just any woman shattering the glass ceiling in which she had put "18 million cracks." It had to be Hillary.
Sarah Palin’s nomination therefore isn’t a threat to Barack Obama—Hillary voters won’t flock to her for the same reasons they showed discomfort with Kathleen Sebelius. (Not to mention Palin’s pro-life beliefs and the rest of her conservative record.) Rather, she poses a threat to Hillary’s legacy. Palin has a good story but a thin résumé. She considers herself a feminist but hasn’t become a national symbol of feminism like Clinton. After Hillary’s loss and Obama’s decision not to consider her for veep, Palin in the White House would be the final insult. And, for Clinton, unacceptable.
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By Derek Thompson
Al Gore’s speech last night in Denver was the opposite of his failed 2000 presidential campaign—funny, fresh, even a little inspiring. John Kerry’s speech the night before was quotable and downright side-splitting compared with his wooden self in 2004. And Hillary Clinton’s speech on Tuesday? The sometimes chilly candidate was praised for crushing at the convention center.
Why do we love speeches by candidates who lost? Do we lower the bar out of pity? Or do they really jump higher?
It probably has more to do with the bar. Presidential candidates have to be unflappable but human, talented but humble, transcendent but relatable. But if you lost an election, there’s no such requirement. That’s why Hillary got to talk about the "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits." Al Gore mocked his own narrow loss. Even Kerry snuck in a line about McCain "being for it before he was against" certain policies.
But self-deprecation isn’t why their speeches succeeded. It’s because they transcended the criticisms that dogged them throughout their campaigns. Hillary seemed more emotive and put her legacy in the context of women’s rights and civil rights. Kerry looked comfortable and aggressive, though he was neither in 2004. And Gore flashed the same hip wonkiness he’s rocked for years—that is, the years after 2000.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s not that losing makes you charismatic. It’s that running for president makes you stiff. Message control is paramount to modern campaigns, but it’s also a candidate’s straitjacket hemmed in by voter interests, poll-tested buzz words, and obligatory nods to patriotism and family. In 2004, Kerry played the military card with painful stiltedness, saluting the audience, "reporting for duty," and yammering about Old Glory. In 2008, Kerry played the consummate Obama advocate, mixing direct attacks on John McCain with flairs of humor that electrified the convention center.
Sen. Clinton slouched off the shackles of candidacy even faster. Often criticized for her coldness on the stump, she gave a generous concession speech in June that drew raves. In Denver, she summed up a central issue—the moral smallness of Hillary-first Democrats like PUMA—better than anyone "I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked. "Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids?" It was the perfect question, balancing common sense with sentimentality. If she had learned to master that combo eight months ago, Thursday might have represented a different Democratic first.
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By Lucy Morrow Caldwell and Derek Thompson
The Democratic National Convention was about unity, patriotism, and impossible promises. It was also about tearing John McCain into tiny confetti-sized pieces. And this year, the Democrats kept the quips rolling. Some were funny. Some were not so funny. Some we still don’t really understand. But they all infused the notoriously ponderous oratory with a welcome dash of spice. Here are a few of the most memorable zingers from four days of Democratic speechifying.
Best Overall
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts: "Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Sen. McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Sen. McCain’s own climate-change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Sen. McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it."
Best Olympics Tie-In
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio: "If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging, and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws."
Most Predictable Home-Ownership Joke
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas: "I’m sure you remember a girl from Kansas who said there’s no place like home. Well, in John McCain’s version, there’s no place like home. Or a home. Or a home. Or a home. Or a home."
Best Acknowledgment of Wonkiness
Al Gore: "John McCain, a man who has earned our respect on many levels, is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House and promising to actually continue them, the same policies, all over again. Hey, I believe in recycling, but that's ridiculous."
Best Zinger From the Actual Nominee
Sen. Barack Obama: "Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change."
Best Sports Analogy
Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio: "George W. Bush came into office on third base … and then he stole second. And John McCain cheered him every step of the way."
Most Likely To Be Used as a Lame Bumper Sticker
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: "Now way, no how, no McCain."
Most Strained Metaphor
Gov. Ted Strickland: "And while families are losing sleep tonight trying to figure out some way to make their paycheck stretch through one more day, John McCain is sleeping better than ever. He’s sleeping better than ever because he thinks 'Americans overall are better off,' thanks to President Bush … He has no problem hitting the snooze button on the economy, because he’s never been part of the middle class. And I would say to him: Sen. McCain, it’s time for your wake-up call."
Most Refutable Quip
Gov. David Paterson of New York: "If [McCain] is the answer, then the question must be ridiculous." (How about: Who is the Republican presidential nominee?)
Most Likely To Have Been Written on a Napkin Just Before Going Onstage
Bob Casey: "John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush more than 90 percent of the time. That’s not a maverick, that’s a sidekick."
Best Use of Pavlovian Allusion
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York: "When the American people demanded change in Iraq, John McCain and his friends said no. When you demanded legislation to lower the price of gas, John McCain and his friends said no. When you demanded middle-class tax relief, John McCain and his friends said no. When Barack Obama wins in November, John McCain will go back to the senate, and he and his friends will go back to saying no, no, no, to the change our country needs."
Most Likely To Have Been Inspired by Dirty Jobs
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois: "A strong economy depends on a strong middle class. But George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel."
Any great quips we missed? Do you have a favorite? Looking forward to a zingmeister at the Republican National Convention? Send your comments to Derek.Thompson@slate.com.
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After Barack Obama finished his acceptance speech Thursday night before a euphoric crowd of 75,000 in Invesco Field, Slate V's Andy Bouvé sat down with writers and editors at Slate and the Root to gauge their reactions.
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If you've got a moment, head over to WashingtonPost.com, where Slate's Emily Bazelon and I are chatting about "The Road Ahead For Obama."
Ask us anything. Anything!
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In the '80s, a basketball standout nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda" gamely stepped onto the court despite a stress fracture, determined to lead Wasilla High School to a state championship. That Barracuda was Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president (according to her Wikipedia page).
McCain's pick of Palin means a fifth presidential/vice presidential debate should be added to the calendar. A cross-ticket game of horse between Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Obama has the upper hand because he plays regularly, but Palin has played ball on a bigger stage than Obama ever has. It would rival the Michael Jordan vs. Larry Bird showdown.
Joe Biden and John McCain, meanwhile, can duke it out in the boxing ring. We hear Biden has been known to bloody a few noses in his day.
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In one of her earliest appearances in the Alaskan press, Sarah Palin described her glee at the chance to see the former Mrs. Donald Trump, who was visiting Alaska for the day to peddle purfume.
From the Anchorage Daily News:
"We want to see Ivana," said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, "because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture."
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Most amazing of many amazing things about McCain running mate Sarah Palin: Her kids are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. She out Romneyed the Romneys!
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The presidential election was getting ugly. In recent weeks, John McCain depicted Barack Obama as an airheaded celebrity. Obama painted McCain as a forgetful fuddy-duddy. McCain called Obama a hypocritical opportunist. Obama went after McCain for his half-dozen houses.
After all that, the moral high ground was looking like a wasteland. But tonight, both candidates scampered back up from their respective ravines.
McCain had everyone expecting a mortar when he announced that he would be airing an ad during Obama’s speech. But the spot was respectful, if a little stilted: “Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day.” There’s a cynical reading, certainly—McCain wants to crash Obama’s party under the guise of congrats. But to viewers at home, I’m guessing it read as classy.
Obama, meanwhile, attacked McCain with gusto—he accused him of letting Bin Laden go, hyper-aggression against Russia, and general out-of-touchness. But he drew the line at hypocrisy. “What I will not do,” he said, “is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes.” He also turned next week's RNC theme, “Putting Country First,” on its head. Obama didn’t just say that he prioritizes the nation’s interests before his own. He gave McCain the same benefit of the doubt. “I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he said. “We all put our country first.”
Sure, both candidates left openings for more pyrotechnics. McCain promised that “tomorrow, we'll be back at it.” Obama promised to set aside personal attacks but still said that McCain “doesn’t get it”—a phrase McCain fans might interpret as a veiled age reference. These lines preview the war to come. But at the very least, both candidates agree on one thing: They want to press the reset button. That is, as long as they come out looking like the magnanimous one.
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While the rest of the media obsess over the fragile diplomacy between the Clinton and Obama camps, Slate V's Andy Bouvé and I uncovered another rivalry here in Denver: Super Delegate vs. Pick Boy. While we found the hapless Super Delegate to be pleasant enough, Pick Boy—a refugee from Nickelodeon’s erstwhile show U-Pick Live—immediately went negative against the competition. These are their stories.
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John McCain’s decision to air an ad tonight during Barack Obama’s speech in which McCain speaks “directly to Obama” is eliciting a combination of indignation, dismissal, accusations of racism, and dismissals of accusations of racism. (He’s also rumored to be leaking his vice presidential announcement at the same time.)
All's fair in love and presidential campaigns, of course, but McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker’s description of the ad almost sounds like parody: “This is an historic ad. I think this is the first of its kind,” she told Mika Brzezinski.
Yes. Tonight will go down in history as the night John McCain aired an ad attacking Obama. Presidential scholars will speak of it for years to come. Because it’s not like there’s anything else of historic note going. (On second thought, I did hear something about a Dairy Queen closing in Spokane.)
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Next week, the Republican Party will rally around the theme “Putting Country First.”
Pundits have railed against the theme’s implicit suggestion—and other more explicit ones—that Barack Obama is a selfish elitist. But tonight, John Kerry was the first surrogate to address it head-on to a national audience.
“How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first,” Kerry said. “No one can question Barack Obama’s patriotism.”
Convention themes set up the message and tone for the rest of the campaign. But the Dems have yet to sync theirs up. Mark Warner sang vague praises of innovation and future vs. past. Joe Biden talked about his working-class upbringing. One of tonight’s speakers actually used the O-word to describe McCain and the Republicans. (They put the “old” in “GOP.”) We’ve heard the refrain “Barack Obama is right, and John McCain is wrong” a few times now. Maybe they’ll pull all these ideas together with Obama’s speech tomorrow night. But if they want to deliver a pre-emptive strike against the RNC theme—an attack in itself—they’ll have to address the patriotism charges head-on.
Michelle Obama, whose past comments have been construed as unpatriotic, cut right to the chase last night: “I love my country.” If he's going to pre-empt McCain's message, Barack Obama may have to do the same. In his surprise appearance tonight, he took the first step: "President Bill Clinton reminded us of what it’s like when you’ve got a president who actually puts people first." Expect more to come.
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Click on the links below to see the sources from which Joe Biden lifted his DNC speech!
“Beau, I love you. I am so proud of you. Proud of the son you are. Proud of the father you’ve become. …
“It is an honor to share this stage tonight with President Clinton. And last night, it was moving to watch Hillary, one of the great leaders of our party, a woman who has made history and will continue to make history: my colleague and my friend, Senator Hillary Clinton. …”
And that's just the beginning. Start Googling!
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Sen. Hillary Clinton stepped to the microphone during the roll-call vote at the Democratic Convention and made a motion that Sen. Barack Obama be selected by acclamation as the party's presidential nominee. Watch what happened next.
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From where the press sits inside the Pepsi Center, here at the Democratic Convention, reporters have a clear view of a teleprompter facing the speaker from across the hall. Watching it gets addictive, keeping track of when the speaker wanders off-script, misses a word, or gets thrown off by applause not accounted for in the text.
Following the teleprompter also makes the speech itself sound tinny and disjointed. The smaller screen only carries a couple of lines, making speeches seem like an endless series of Twitter posts by Democratic speechwriters—crowd pleasers strung together by hurried points on policy.
To simulate that effect, here is Hillary Clinton’s speech from last night, chopped down to just the major applause lines. Judge for yourself: Is the final effect all that different?
"Thank you all very much. I am so honored to be here tonight. I'm here tonight as a proud supporter of Barack Obama.
"And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. [Y]ou haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months or endured the last eight years to suffer through more failed leadership. No way, no how, no McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president.
"You taught me so much, and you made me laugh, and, yes, you even made me cry. To my supporters, to my champions, to my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
"I ran to stand up for all those who have been invisible to their government for eight long years. Those are the reasons I ran for president, and those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president.
"[Obama] built his campaign on a fundamental belief that change in this country must start from the ground up, not the top down. Democrats know how to do this. As I recall, we did it before with President Clinton and the Democrats. And Barack will have with him a terrific partner in Michelle Obama. And Americans are fortunate that Joe Biden will be at Barack Obama's side.
"[I]t makes perfect sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart.
"And after so many decades, 88 years ago on this very day, the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, became enshrined in our Constitution. And, remember, before we can keep going, we've got to get going by electing Barack Obama the next president of the United States. Thank you. God bless you, and Godspeed."
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Tim Wu sends this dispatch from the Democratic National Convention:
Think yoga and you imagine limber, young people breathing softly. Politics, meanwhile, conjures up the exact opposite image: unhealthy old stiff people screaming at each other.
That's why it might be a surprise to find that yoga has a presence at the Democratic National Convention. "Yoga," said one of Google's political advisers, "is everywhere." Every day in the Big Tent—a sort of holding tank for bloggers—yoga practice is on the morning schedule. But the true epicenter of convention yoga is the Oasis, a lounge that is the brainchild of yogi Seanne Corn, a 41-year-old who looks 26, and one of her students, Arianna Huffington.
The convention itself is a microcosm of the human struggle with desire: Most spend their days in an endless pursuit of the best credentials, party tickets, and celebrity encounters. But Huffington says she is looking for something more transcendent: "inter-connectedness," or so she told me, a little before taking a break to have a feet rubbed while she poked at her BlackBerry.
Can politics learn anything from yoga? "That we are all one," said Corn, and that "everything that is happening to us is a manifestation of our collective thoughts." A bit like democracy, except you just have to think instead of voting. Can yoga help the Obama/Clinton divide? "Individual healing," says Corn, "is necessary to heal the collective."
Unfortunately for Corn, her efforts to create an alternative vibe in the center of American political culture was, on Tuesday afternoon, running into a few problems. Crowds of men clad in blue blazers, shoulders bent from too much BlackBerry use, began to take over. The number of guests actually choosing to practice yoga was few, with the exception of one online magazine editor being gently pulled apart in a side room. Given a choice, most preferred the hobnob over the downward dog.
And despite its transcendent aspirations, the Oasis does seem to have something of a nonkarmic obsession with reporting on the celebrities who visit the place via the Huffington Post. It would seem that at least one of Buddhism's eight worldly concerns—the desire for fame—remains unconquered.
Yet to their credit, the volunteer yoga teachers and masseuses fought back and re-established a less striving vibe. There were headstands. A man clad in monk's robes conducted a meditation. Someone began to play a guitar. I asked Meaghan deRoos, a yoga teacher who helped me with my headstand practice, whether there was one thing she'd hope the center could accomplish. "Yes," she said. "Getting people to breathe."
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In the last minute of his keynote address tonight, Mark Warner drew on a favorite ploy of Virginia politicians since time immemorial: He invoked a hackneyed Thomas Jefferson quote. Tonight, Warner chose this one: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
It’s an odd choice for a man whose keynote address was a glorified résumé of his victories as governor of Virginia, a term that has been on the books now for almost three years. If you chanced upon this keynote address in a vacuum, you could be forgiven for missing the fact that Warner is now running for the U.S. Senate. Maybe it’s because he’s expected to wallop his opponent, Jim Gilmore. But one can’t help get the feeling that Warner is lukewarm on his personal future in politics.
During his four years in Richmond, Warner fancied himself the CEO governor, forged by a career in business that made him fabulously rich and adept at running a government efficiently. This image worked well for him as governor. But it will make the transition to senator—a famously punishing one for people who like to be the boss—even more difficult than usual.
Warner has joked—painfully—about how Barack Obama stepped seamlessly into the role that Warner carved out for himself in the party. Now he faces, in the next six years, the infinite tedium of being a freshman senator among a crowded field of rising stars in the Democratic party. For someone with such high ambitions, we can only imagine that he indulges occasionally in a little history of the past.
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During Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic Convention, she tried to reintroduce herself to America. How well did she do? It depends on whether you watched MSNBC or Fox News Channel.
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DENVER—Native Denverites here are all too eager to offer tips to us flatlanders on how to survive on 17 percent less oxygen to the brain. "[M]any conventioneers are likely to notice a shortness of breath," cautions the Denver Post. "A few may suffer, for reasons researchers still don't quite understand, throbbing headaches. A fraction might get hit with what can feel like a no-booze hangover—headaches along with nausea and lethargy." (Others warn that the some-booze hangover is even worse; supposedly, rarefied air does a real number on one’s alcohol tolerance.)
The medical term for this is called cerebral hypoxia, and NIH advises us that "symptoms can include inattentiveness, poor judgment, and uncoordinated movement." So one can’t help but wonder: Will the mile-high altitudes of Denver make Obama supporters even crazier than usual?
Literature and psychology are of some guide here. In Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, protagonist Hans Castorp experiences some of this emotional bewilderment while holed up in a sanitorium high in the Alps. As quoted in this 1994 study on emotional contagion, Castorp thinks: "But when the heart palpitates by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny. … You keep trying to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them."
Four decades later, psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer studied the conflux of physical arousal and emotions experimentally by injecting subjects with adrenaline. They found that those subjects who received the adrenaline were highly emotionally suggestible and would often interpret the physical arousal of the drug as a symptom of a heightened emotional state.
Subsequent studies have qualified and questioned Schachter and Singer’s results. More direct attempts to measure the effect of altitude on emotions have not found strong correlations; a 2005 study found that small groups of men exposed to simulated altitudes of up to 4,500 meters did not exhibit significantly different mental capacities compared with the control group. The FAA’s brochure on hypoxia (PDF), on the other hand, tells us that "some people in an oxygen deficient environment actually experience a sense of euphoria—a feeling of increased well-being." And a series of letters in the Financial Times recently pondered the possibility that flying at high altitudes makes one more likely to cry at cheesy movies. (This guy cried during The Game Plan, featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.)
Obamamania resists quantification, so it’s a bit hard to experimentally determine the effects of the thin air here. (Though my colleague Jim Ledbetter suggests a massive data-mining project to measure voting patterns as a function of altitude.) But in an election that could be decided by a hair, I don’t think John McCain should cede this advantage. It’s not too late for the RNC to relocate their convention to Albuquerque, N.M., elevation 5,300 feet. Plus, New Mexico’s a swing state.
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If Washington D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, the DNC is where it gets to meet its better looking half. A few of us (of the former type of Hollywood) were walking down Denver's 16th Street Mall when I spotted a familiar face. "That's Obama girl," I said. She looked the part, with black leather pants and a yellow top. But she wasn't dancing or lip syncing or flying or doing anything Obama girl is supposed to do. She was getting on the bus. As a murmur spread, she looked embarrassed and hid her face. Something tells me this is the one city right now where Obama girl can't go outside without someone asking for an autograph.
How funny that people who spend all day coolly passing Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Al Franken in the halls can suddenly melt at the sight of Obama Girl. Others seen mingling: Wendell Pierce, Zooey Deschanel, Harry Shearer, Spike Lee, and Toby Ziegler. They're easy to miss. Late Monday night, a Slatester rode in a cab with Rosario Dawson -- without even noticing it.
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