Conventional Crap: Wednesday Surprises And The End Of Our PatienceLook, these conventions are hard. Some of us have it harder than others, what with getting up at the crack of dawn and walking miles a day and trying to pay attention to speeches when all we really want to do is curl up in bed and die. But I can't die, yet, if only because everyone will Twitter and text me so much that the vibrations will shock my heart back to life and I just can't deal with waking up to 1,000 new emails or whatever. Anyway, so Joe Biden spoke and Barack Obama surprised and if the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins and I wanted to die a lot less we would probably care a lot more.
JASON: Okay. MEGAN: I think this might literally be the crappiest hour I have experienced in quite a long time. JASON: I was going to say, this is the crappiest hour in Denver I've not spent waiting for a cab. I really need the HuffPo Oasis to open their Nap Room today. MEGAN: Yes! I cannot tell whether the cabbies are all just kind of ruder assholes than in any other city in the United States or whether it's just me. But, for real, the dispatcher last night was like, fuck you, we might come, I won't tell you when so just stand on the corner and if a cab stops for you, it's because you called. And I'm all about the naptime. JASON: I've had really great cabdrivers, but the dispatchers have been trying. MEGAN: One guy literally cheated me, tried to drop me at the wrong place, argued it was my fault and refused to take a credit card. JASON: Well, that's the worst. MEGAN: Anyways, so, last night. Bill Clinton. Joe Biden. I haven't heard anyone call it Joe-mentum yet but someone has to, right? JASON: I am within sight of the wall now. The only question is, when do I hit it. Do I have another long, hard, walk to the convention in me? Harriet Tubman might even tell me, "Fuck keep going. Curl up in a ball and surrender." MEGAN: The wall reached out and smacked me upside the head, frankly. JASON: I think Billmentum still outpaces Joementum, even when the Joe is a firebrand populist with the tendency to go off script, and not a malcontented heel with a withered finger of rebuke to wag. MEGAN: Actually, on some level, I thought it was completely awesome that Bill's speech wasn't as good as Hillary's. As for Biden, he needs to find whomever wrote Hillary's speech and hire that person and never ever let him/her go. Because last night's was just a leetle repetitive for me. But it was awesome how the backstage staff wouldn't let him go offstage and he was the only person there that didn't know that Obama was in town. JASON: And I have got to admit, I got unexpectedly misty at the afternoon's goings-on - that procedural maneuver during the Roll Call vote. MEGAN: I missed the afternoon's machinations, I was in a "cone of silence" trying to get stuff written. Plus, procedural machinations don't tend to get me teary-eyed unless we're talking unanaesthetized medical procedures. JASON: Well, it was pretty great theater. MEGAN: It's been a long time since I was in high school drama club, but I vaguely remember that timing was key. Anyway, so, Obama showing up last night, kind of cool, right? JASON: It's up for debate, actually. That's actually something my colleague Seth Colter Walls dug into last night.
"With President Bill Clinton a reported no-show for Barack Obama's acceptance speech tomorrow, this was the nominee's one shot to congratulate him in person on his address. Smart move. (As was his reference to the 1992 slogan "putting people first," a nice nod to the legacy Clinton is reported to be concerned about.) The counter-argument, of course, is that Obama has been a touch too over-exposed of late, and that his surprise appearance might have upstaged Sen. Joe Biden's prime-time debut as vice presidential nominee."
MEGAN: I mean, it might be the fact that Hillary was so good, or I am so fucking tired, but I didn't think that Biden killed it last night, but Obama showing up to be like, you kicked ass, man, put it over the top in terms of excitement level, I think. JASON: Now, I tend to think that it was a good idea to appear. From an optical standpoint it made sense. Tonight he's going to be at Invesco Field. It's not going to look like what we've come to know as the Democratic National Convention. It's smart that Obama places himself in the setting where he, you know, WON the nomination and got all that key Clinton family testifying. MEGAN: See, that's a good point. I would make points like that if I didn't just want to die from exhaustion. JASON: Plus, he looked a great deal looser then he has in a while. He was having fun. He got to do his famous enter-stop-look at the crowd-feign a WTF-wave-hop on the heel-stride in-own the space move he does so well. MEGAN: Damn, the things I miss when I'm typing. JASON: I hope these points are actually my own. Ana Marie and I debriefed at length at the Brown Palace bar, and between the beer and the bourbon its hard to know where she starts and where I end. Except I'm the less aesthetically appealing parts. Plus, I think Hillary picked up the tab, so, I hope people are still all about retiring her debt. MEGAN: I'm sure if they knew their money was going for such a great cause, they'd be all about it. JASON: Naturally, more money for Ana and I is less for Mark Penn. And that would have been a change we could believe in. I WANT TO DIE RIGHT NOW TOO. I cannot possibly walk to that shitshow tonight. Really I can't. MEGAN: I'm not sure I can walk out of my own bed. Real talk.