By the way, when I make comments about these speeches, for the most part I am not in any way talking about the actual content of the speeches, if it is stuff I agree with, or for that matter if it is even stuff that makes sense. I am judging them as speeches… as devices to get the true believers excited, and perhaps to convince people on the fence to choose a side… the actual substance is of course a completely different animal… one I have no comment on at this time. :-)

Never heard this guy before. He is good. He is really revving up the crowd. I think he’ll be showing up some more over the next few years. So far of all the speeches I’ve watched, he is right up there with Kennedy and Michelle Obama from yesterday. None of the others so far have been memorable at all.

On those Kennedy was very moving. Just the fact that he was up there, but even not allowing for his health, he was rousing and energizing and put a lot into it. Michelle’s speech was good, although not something you will remember for long, but it did what it was supposed to.

I was not impressed by Casey earlier tonight.

Schweitzer was really good though. Maybe *he* should have been VP.

Anyway… Now here comes Hillary.

(By the way, I know I haven’t posted much… anything really… on the convention so far… but I am watching and listening to tons and tons of it, although I haven’t quite managed actually watching gavel to gavel on C-Span or anything. I’ve just been doing other things too, and haven’t been inspired to post much yet. Maybe there will be more before the two conventions are done.)

Complete fail to the Obama team on the “be first to know via text message thing”. Total crap. The text messages haven’t gone out yet, and anybody paying attention already knows. Fail, fail, fail. He should have sent out the page on Friday.

Yup, tis Biden. All the news outlets are all over it now. (And I am home again.)

He was my preferred Presidential candidate back pre-Iowa, although I never had any illusions that he had a chance.

And I’ve always liked Biden a lot.

And he can certainly do the attack dog thing.

I expressed doubts back in June about Obama picking Biden though, because it did not mesh with the anti-Washington, change change change thing. Because after all, Biden is definitely a Washinton insider. He is not change.

But he is good. And he is very competent.

This will be fine.

Now everybody is saying not Bayh (despite the bumper stickers) and not Kaine.

So Biden?

The highly detailed analysis at fivethirtyeight.com is always worth paying attention to. They posted a note yesterday saying that their simulations were now showing McCain winning more often than Obama by a slight margin. At this moment in time, pre-Veeps and pre-Conventions, we are pretty much in a flat even race.

Today’s Polls, 8/20
(Nate Silver, fivethirtyeight.com, 20 Aug 2008)

Our popular vote projection shows a literal tie, with each of Barack Obama and John McCain projected to earn 48.5 percent of the vote, and third-party candidates receiving a collective 3 percent.

Things get confusing, however, when looking at the electoral college. We project Obama to earn slightly more electoral votes on average. However, we also project John McCain to win the election slightly more often. What accounts for the discrepancy? Obama’s wins tend to be larger, and McCain’s tend to be smaller. If Obama wins this election by between 7 or 10 points, there are very few high-EV states that he won’t be able to put into play; even something like Texas is probably winnable. If McCain were to win by that margin, on the other hand, he would still almost certainly lose New York, he would almost certainly lose Illinois, and he would almost certainly lose California. Those states represent 107 electoral votes that are essentially off-limits to McCain, even on his very best days.

Things only tend to get more volatile as the election approaches and more people start to pay attention. This is going to be an interesting September and October.