Via Sullivan today, words of warning from Ezra:
The first two days of the convention were wasted, or seemed so from my vantage point. Tonight, Joe Biden will rip into McCain. And tomorrow, Obama will do whatever he does. Then on Friday, at noon, John McCain will announce his vice presidential nominee, strangling any convention bounce in the crib. Then the Republican Convention will begin, and you can be assured that they will remember Barack Obama's name. They will remember how to make fun of him, how to mock his celebrity and inexperience. And the media will not cover Ron Paul's protesters with the vigor or attention they gave to Hillary Clinton's diehards. Instead, they will cover four days of straight attacks on Barack Obama, culminating with a grave address about sacrifice and service from John McCain.
Yep, that's altogether possible. On the other hand, this presupposes a smart VP pick from McCain that doesn't piss off the religious bloc, e.g., someone other than Mitt, Ridge, Lieberman or any other Republican who isn't a Mormon or who ever voted to spare homos and baby-killers from extraordinary rendition. And frankly, given the way McCain's campaign has generally run up to now, I don't see how the odds are any less than even money that he completely and utterly boots it.
And either way, I'm not so convinced the GOP shindig next week is going to run quite as smoothly as some of us fear. Besides winning over the evangelicals, Huggy's got some fence-mending to do with the tax-cutters and the immigrant-bashers too. Not to mention those pesky Paulites. And once again, I think we can consider it a safe bet that the man will say or do something imponderably stupid between now and this same time next week. Anyone wanna take that bet?
---Vitelius
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