In these last few minutes before Obama speaks and accepts the nomination, I find myself thinking three new thoughts (for me). One is that Hillary should swear. I wish she had said something like "I hear that some of my supporters are going to vote for McCain. What the hell are you thinking? Let me say that again. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?" I know.I know. Fairhaired maidens throughout the South would faint dead away at the thought of a "lady" swearing. If she had said that, it would have been the headline in hundreds of American papers the next day. Swearing, vulgarity, oaths: they all have a real and ancient place in our discourse. Because there comes a time when saying "Gosh the last eight years have been bad, what with the torture, lawbreaking, lies, corruption, and toadying to big business." NO. No. Hillary swearing would have been incredibly funny, and effective.
So Hillary should have sworn. Somebody should. The closest to it was the excellent Brian Schweitzer of Montana who said something like "The people in the cheap seats should get off their buts and stand up." I loved that because it sounded like he was from the same America that I live in. Enough already with the platitudes and cliches about the American Dream. Somebody needs to talk salty, and soon.
The second thing I'm thinking is about how cool people look when they bop along to the music. Since I'm watching it on cspan I get to look at all the people in the crowd bopping along to the music while they wait for the next speaker. Most of them seem to be middle aged, average people just like me and they do not know the camera is on them so they just stand there in place and bop along. Sure a few are old squares like me are dorky enough to snap their fingers to the music. And there will always be those who think that it's cool to clap along to rock music. But isn't it great that rock and roll really is here to stay.
I watched this one woman in a white dress who looked a little like my Sunday school teacher; she was talking really seriously, you could tell, to a woman next to her in a black hat. Then the speakers blared out the first notes of "Signed, Sealed, and Delivered" and in an instant her mouth formed into a cute little circle, her arms flew up in the air, and she started bopping (and singing along--she knew the words). These are all people in their forties, sixties, maybe even their eighties. They look like my neighbors here in suburbia (I live in a very diverse county -Pierce,WA). Ahh. Stevie Wonder just came on. I'll be back.
How cool is that? Anyway, I guess I like the pictures of people bopping so much because you never see them do that. I guess most people are like me--they bop at home when their music is on. It just makes me feel good about people. It's such a human thing, music.
I do have one serious thought to try out. It came to me after I had read a great piece by Glen Greenwald about how the Dems have not come down hard on the Bush years. Then I was listening to the vocal redition of"We Need a Change" and it struck me. The Obama campaign is really not going to go negative, not tonight, not ever. They have to keep saying that McCain is a friend and a man of honor because it at least used to be true. So here's my thought.
We are actually going to find out in a controlled experiment kind of way whether a candidate can win with a positive campaign. With a candidate this attractive and smart, with the economy in the doldrums, with the Republican brand at the lowest point in my lifetime, now is the time (having controlled for those variables quite a bit) to see if this kind of campaign can win. Then we will know.
When he does win, as I am sure he will, we can never again listen to people tell us that you have to go negative to win. Think of how important that will be in the future. We'll actually have an answer to one of those big questions. It makes me remember how I felt sitting in front of my TV during the Watergate hearings when I realized that there were recordings, that we were actually going to learn the TRUTH. OMG. So what these guys mean by "change" is not just change from the Rethuglicans but change from the old way of doing things. They actually are going to try that. Whew!