Waiting For Bill Clinton....

One Day I want to be like Bill Clinton.....Old, retired and at the point where I can say damn near anything I want and my job won't be affected and the press can't hurt me...Wait...some may say...don't you say what you want to say anyway?  Yeah...but I still like the relaxed look Bill Clinton has now of days....

I am watching night two of the Democratic National Convention...and eagerly awaiting Bill Clinton's speech.
By the time most of you read this, he will have delivered his speech... I'm watching Facebook and Twitter simultaneously and watching a youtube feed of the Democratic National  Convention and blogging....I am in my element.... I am utilizing the technology of the 21st Century aint I ?


Former President Bill Clinton is set to eviscerate (there is one of those college words for ya)Republicans for being responsible for policies that led to the 2008 economic meltdown - and yet wanting voters to put them back in power.  (The nerve of them!!)

“In Tampa the Republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in," Clinton will say. “I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators."


I also expect him to tout the president's vision for the country.

“The most important question is," Clinton will say, "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you want a you're-on-your-own, winner-take-all society, you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared prosperity and shared responsibility -- a we're-all-in-this-together society -- you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

I got these quotes and excerpts from various commentators on MSNBC and CNN who played snippets of an earlier Clinton speech.....

Yeah, one day...I want to be Bill Clinton...

9:10 pm est. This is as close to real time as I can get!

II- The Morning After Update-

Here is a Keith's Space first-  A real time or as close to it as I can get update on last night.....

President Obama , who so far had been a no show at the convention showed up last night....Why? To see keynote speaker, Former President, Bill Clinton give his address
to the floor.

Clinton didn't disapoint...President Obama and his administration got what they wanted....

If all campaigns are about the future, bringing in the popular former president was an attempt to use an envoy from past prosperity to explain why brighter days were just around the corner.

Bill Clinton has now spoken for a total of more than five hours at Democratic conventions. It seemed at times that he was in the middle of a five-hour speech last night.

 The crowd of delegates and party stalwarts didn't seem to mind. For the last five minutes of the speech, everyone in the auditorium stood to let his words fall on their faces.

Bill Clinton seemed to delight in the whole event, luxuriating in the speech like it was a vast terrycloth robe.

Mr. Clinton's speech had several parts: an answer to the question “Are you better off?," a shaming of the modern GOP with the example set by past Republican presidents, and a deeper attempt to tie Obama's policies to bedrock American values, a job Michelle Obama had begun the night before.

Paul Ryan said the Democrats have tried to duck the question "Are you better off?" Bill Clinton took the question on directly and at length. "Are we better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall, losing 750,000 jobs a month?

The answer is yes!" Mr. Clinton talked at length about the Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the auto-industry bailout. He linked President Obama’s policies for education and job retraining to people's anxieties about how they could get a job in an economy where the remaining jobs required more skill. If Clinton was building a bridge between the two presidencies, he spent a lot of time on the Obama side.

The message of Bill Clinton's speech wasn't just continuity; it was a foreshadowing of what was to come. He said he knew what Obama was going through because he had gone through it, too. "Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn't feel it yet." He asked for patience. "If you'll renew the president's contract you will feel it.”

As Bill Clinton explained how President Obama's student-loan policies would help people, he nodded to an argument that's been heard a lot over the last few days. "Mitt Romney's convention was all about success that was determined by what you earned," said Tony Coehlo, the former congressman and chairman of the Gore campaign. "What about the success you can have as a teacher or a journalist or a fireman?" Clinton appealed to this sentiment when he said,

"No one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer, or a small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments." This was a subtle but clever way to weave President Obama's policies right into the fabric of the middle-class sense of aspiration.
 

Bill Clinton changed the metrics for this speech from the ones he used in 2008 at the Democratic convention. In that speech, he talked about declining incomes, poverty, inequality, and foreclosures, areas that have either gotten worse or not gotten much better under President Obama.


He also launched full defenses against Republican attacks on Obama's Medicare plans and the welfare waivers his administration has approved. "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry," he said in one of the few asides that wasn't ad-libbed. (As you noted, Dave, Clinton spread ad-libbed material like grout throughout his remarks.) He also made a broader critique of the modern Republican Party, arguing that it was in the thrall of its most conservative elements.

 He lauded both Bush presidents and President Eisenhower in an attempt to shame current Republicans for their obstructionism and in a political bid to woo swing voters. He seemed to be trying to stir some life in the post-partisan pragmatic vision that Barack Obama had offered in 2008 by saying that despite all of the recent bitterness, Barack Obama was still committed to trying to work with Republicans who practiced that old strain of cooperative lawmaking.

There is a big debate in political circles about whether presidents can really persuade. Well,Clinton gave a classic persuasion speech, treating his audience like it was listening, laying out the case with an argument behind it. Will it work? Do people even listen to long-reasoned arguments anymore?(Hmmmm) Bill Clinton certainly thinks so: "Folks, whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know that I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it." And I believe that he does...If you listened last night , you believed him too!