Barack Obama, tonight...

McCain says he'll follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.

Tell us, Senator: in which cave does Osama bin Laden live?  

Barack Obama takes center stage in Denver tonight to accept the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. That makes today a great time to reflect on what Obama's campaign of hope and change hath wrought.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is a compilation of Obama's greatest rhetorical hits from the past 19 months. I've limited this special package to 10 tracks and five minutes, but there surely are more that could have been included. Share your favorites in the comments.

The 10 tracks from this collection are:

1. Farewell To Arms -- Obama's plan to dismantle U.S. defenses
2. Loveable Rogues -- An open invitation for talks with global thugs
3. Bomb Iran -- Maybe, depending on what day you ask
4. Baby Be Gone -- No one wants to be "punished" with babies
5. Workin' 9 to 5 -- Tough questions are "above my pay grade"
6. The Gospel Of Barack -- The gay marriage Sermon on the Mount
7. Take The Race Bait -- Typical dollar bills ... and white people
8. Bitter -- The guns 'n Bibles crowd
9. Jeremiah Was An Albatross -- Tossed under the bus with Grandma
10. A Gaffe A Minute -- Fallen heroes in the 57 states of America.
 

Soren Dayton pointed out that the Clinton's have sounded a few odd notes and failed to sound a few other seemingly important ones in recent days.  A few more observations.

• After almost a solid week of wall-to-wall coverage - after announcing his VP selection and in the very middle of the Democratic Convention - not only is Obama not getting a bounce....John McCain is.  That can't be comforting for Democrats right now.  This is their highlight reel.  If this doesn't give them a bounce, what will it take?
• A number of top Clinton people are leaving town before the Obama acceptance speech, and while Hillary Clinton will attend the speech...Bill Clinton will not attend. 
• Hillary Clinton spoke to a women's group on Tuesday and "urged attendees to back the Democratic Party", but "did not mention Barack Obama’s name once " during the event.
• Suitably Flip notes an omission.

 From Clinton's speech, as prepared:  Those are the reasons I ran for President. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too.

 And as delivered: Those are the reasons I ran for president, and those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president. 

• So, Hillary Clinton accepted a speech that had her calling delegates to vote for Obama (and released the text to the press)...but pointedly left that exhortation out at the last minute (when it's absence would be very noticeable)?
• And now Hillary has released her delegates, but refuses to tell them to vote for Obama, saying "I am not telling you what to do." 

What to make of all this?  I have two theories.

1. Selfish - The Clinton's may simply be trying to hedge their bets.  Remember, before Hillary Clinton withdrew, she and her her team were making the argument - both privately to the Democratic establishment and delegates, and then publicly to the press - that only Hillary could win the general election.  "Obama really can't win the general election", they claimed. 

The Clinton's still believe their vision for the Democratic Party is superior to the Progressive's viciously anti-DLC approach.  By not tying themselves too closely to Obama's success or failure, the Clinton's could emerge relatively unscathed and in a strong position to say "we told you so" to the Left.  This would give them leverage to re-establish themselves as the leaders of the Democratic Party. 

2. Head Fake - Hillary's pointed refusal to encourage her delegates to vote for Obama is unusually conspicuous.  It's the sort of thing you do intentionally to focus media attention on the story.  Is Hillary trying to create a high-profile moment during the Convention in which she rejects the Republican PUMA storyline and encourages her supporters to vote for Obama?   I'm a bit skeptical - it's a very risky high-wire act - but it seems like the sort of theatre the Obama campaign might orchestrate.  (Bonus: Hillary gets to look like the hero)

 UPDATE:  As I post this, the news breaks that Obama has been officially nominated by acclamation...

Former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton asked the convention delegates to make it unanimous, the culmination of a painstaking agreement worked out between the two camps to present a unified front.

Barack Obama took the Democratic Party by storm at its national convention four years ago, but one high-profile blogger was unimpressed. Here is what Matt Stoller, now of Open Left, wrote at The Blogging Of The President on Monday of the 2004 convention:

Barack Obama came in a gave a little speech to the bloggers at the Blogger breakfast. To be honest, I don't get the big deal. I've seen him speak a few times. He seems very charismatic, but I have yet to cross that bridge with him where I feel like he's saying anything really interesting or useful. He's a lot like [John] Edwards -- charismatic and demographically useful for the Democrats. But is there there there?

For that insightful bit of truth-telling, which National Journal's Technology Daily broke from the convention while I was its managing editor, Stoller was unceremoniously dumped by the Democratic National Convention Committee from his volunteer slot as the convention's "blog community coordinator."

Maybe that's why Obama passed over Hillary Clinton as his running mate without even vetting her as a potential vice president. Like Stoller and millions of Americans not smitten like the media, Clinton was unimpressed with Obama until he bested her in the Democratic race.

"I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House," she said during the primary. "I know Senator [John] McCain has a lifetime of experienc [to bring] to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."
 

During this election cycle, we've talked a lot about the collective advantage the Left, and by virtue of that, the Democrats have online -- both media-wise and in terms of basic design aesthetic (check out Patrick Ruffini's gallery of campaign website screenshots). But, yesterday, when I was checking the dates of the Democratic convention, I was half-shocked by the DNC's website for the event:

A ton of white space, uneven columns, a somewhat generic looking banner, and no central, unifying feature on the page. It's not memorably bad, of course, it just looks unfinished. Meanwhile the Republicans have produced this:

On July 4th, Camp Obama dribbled out the news that the candidate's acceptance speech may well happen in the 76,000 seat Invesco Field, right across from the Pepsi Center in Denver.

Here's a satellite image of the venue:

View Larger Map

There is no retractable roof.

That means there is a chance that it might rain on Obama's acceptance speech.

IIRC, the Republicans considered doing something similar in San Diego in 1996, trying to escape the cramped confines of the San Diego Convention Center with its 27-foot high ceilings by moving the last night of the convention to Jack Murphy Stadium. They ultimately decided against it because of the possibility that it might rain.

Could Obama's desire for a final night worthy of the NFL, like his Presidential seal, go down as yet another example of his super-sized arrogance?