Charles Blow: Elections often turn on character moments and the slopes of lines. They are about who a candidate reveals himself to be under pressure more than who he says he is on stage…..
Taking that into account, at this moment, President Obama’s chances of being re-elected look stronger than they have in months. The Romney campaign seems to be coming off the tracks with no clear vision for how to get back on.
Romney’s panicky, premature excoriation of the Obama administration over violence in the Middle East — a response that was factually flawed and widely panned — only served to shake the fragile faith of those who might be holding their noses to support him…..
It also doesn’t help that Romney seems incapable of concealing his anxiety. He too often looks like a boy who just stepped on a nail and can’t remember his last tetanus shot.
Liberal Librarian: I think that this week has been a fulcrum not only in the election, but in the very real fight for the soul of the country.
Yes, way too many of our fellow citizens are still addled by hatred and bigotry. Obama should be ahead by 10-15 points, not 4-8. But let’s put that into perspective: Before the conventions, the polling averages had him ahead by at most 2 points. The debacle of Tampa and the triumph of Charlotte, without the media filter, basically reintroduced the country to both parties.
The GOP was seen as a heartless collection of ideologues whose only interest was in achieving power to service its rich backers. There was no positive vision of the future, but a wallowing in the contention that America was “in decline”. Charlotte highlighted a party and a President who believed in the nation, believed in the ability of its citizens to make an adult decision when presented with facts. The country saw a party united in its determination to make life better for all citizens, not just the fortunate few. It was the antithesis of the malaise bruited about by the GOP.
ThinkProgress: Biotechnology firm Monsanto Company, which currently owns most of the patents for America’s staple crops, is already cozy with American lawmakers. A new Nation report, however, indicates that “a very old friend in a very high place” may usher in the corporation’s most prosperous years yet.
The Nation’s investigative report has uncovered how Mitt Romney personally helped Monsanto shed its string of toxic chemical-related scandals and reinvent itself to dominate American agriculture. Monsanto, an early Bain & Company client, was so impressed with Romney that they started bypassing his superiors to deal with him directly.
ThinkProgress: House Republican Leader Eric Cantor announced Friday that after next week, the House will stand in recess until November 13. His plan for a nearly two month vacation will undoubtedly allow more time for campaigning, but will leave several vital bills awaiting action.
Among the important legislation the House will likely not address before the November elections:
1. Violence Against Women Act re-authorization…. 2. The American Jobs Act…. 3. Tax cuts for working families…. 4. Veterans Job Corps Act….
The Independent (UK): …. Mitt Romney has a fight on his hands if he wants to keep using Thin Lizzy music to back his campaign. The widow of Phil Lynott, the band’s legendary frontman, said there was no way the singer would have supported the Republican candidate.
Caroline Lynott-Taraskevics has told the band’s record company to issue a cease and desist order preventing Romney from using Thin Lizzy classics …. she and his mother Philomena were angered after Mr Romney used the anthem The Boys Are Back In Town at the Republican convention in Florida.
The rocker’s mother has said her son would have rejected any association with the Republicans, particularly the Christian right-wing of the party and what she called anti-gay and pro-rich policies.
In a message published by Irish music magazine Hot Press, Ms Lynott-Taraskevics said that were Lynott still alive, he would back Democrat US President Barack Obama.
“Absolutely in no way would Philip have supported Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan and he would have been so happy about Obama becoming US president,” she said.
Michael Cohen (The Guardian): Two conventions, two Americas. Seldom has the divide been greater – Witnessing both conferences is to see anger from the Republicans and abiding hope from the Democrats
…. the philosophical and tonal divide between them has never felt broader. Quite simply, Democrats and Republicans operate in two completely distinct realms, one that is defined by an attachment to reality and one that is increasingly detached from it.
…. Republicans reside in a fantasy world where government plays no role but that of malevolence, where the free market is the salvation to all that ails this nation and where the country is locked in a Manichaean struggle between the forces of freedom and a failed, socialist interloper named Barack Obama.
…. For four decades, Republicans have relied on an undercurrent of white resentment toward social and economic change to maintain their pre-eminence in national politics. But with an African-American president and the country moving closer to “minority-majority” status, that dominance is slipping away and it feeds the sense of anger and desperation they tried to keep hidden in Tampa, but that all too often crept to the surface….
…. the contrast between the hues in Charlotte and Tampa was remarkable. The Democratic party is a party that looks like the palette of the American experience, not just in skin colour, but in class level. The Republican party (the one in the Tampa convention hall) is one that looks like Sunday brunch at a country club.
AP: Ford is adding 1,200 workers to a suburban Detroit factory to build the Fusion, a sign of confidence that the revamped sedan will be a big seller.
Ford Americas President Mark Fields told workers at the Flat Rock plant Monday that the Fusion’s market segment is growing two times faster than the rest of the U.S. auto industry. The new Fusion goes on sale this fall.
…. Ford will hire the 1,200 new workers starting next spring. It will also invest $555 million in new equipment at the plant.
President Obama demonstrates size of bounce received by Romney after Republican convention:
Florida, Sept. 9
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R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” was used in the Fox News coverage of the Democratic National Convention last night. R.E.M. today, through its music publisher, Warner-Tamerlane Music, demanded that Fox News cease and desist from continuing its unlicensed and unauthorized use of the song. Michael Stipe said, “We have little or no respect for their puff adder brand of reportage. Our music does not belong there.”
Steve Kornacki (Salon): Barack Obama is winning …and he has been pretty much all year
The final evidence isn’t in yet, but there are strong indicators that Barack Obama received a real boost from the Democratic convention – bigger than the paltry bump Mitt Romney got out of his party’s gathering and potentially big enough to push Obama’s national lead to heights not seen since Romney emerged from the GOP primaries back in the spring.
Gallup’s daily trendline, which remained flat during and immediately after the Republican convention, has spiked in Obama’s favor over the last few days; as of Sunday afternoon, his lead was five points. He’s also pulled a few points ahead in Rasmussen’s daily poll, which has tended to be more Romney-friendly than other surveys, grabbed a four-point lead in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, and seen his job approval rating crack the 50 percent mark. A PPP poll released Sunday night also showed Obama hitting 50 percent in Ohio…..
The movement in Obama’s direction reinforces a point that many neutral campaign observers have been reluctant to make for months now: The presidential race is not, and has not been, a virtual tie – Obama is, and has been, winning.
Paul Constant (TheStranger.com): What It’s Like to Be Trapped with 50,000 Republicans at the RNC
…. the messaging sounded inoffensive, but when you really think about what is being said at this convention, you realize that all the red, white, and blue bunting and clothing and video imagery is a put-on. All the talk about patriotism, about supporting the troops, is just lip service. This is the most unpatriotic crowd I have ever been a part of. What they are against is community. Every sentence is devoid of empathy. Every finger-wag is aimed directly at an American who can’t afford health insurance, who hasn’t had a raise on their minimum-wage job in four years. Even as they rail against a statement that the president never really made, they are talking about tearing America down and leaving something meaner and greedier in its place. They’re radicals – radicals who’ve gone over the edge and are trying to make their radicalism mainstream.
…..They’re scared of the imaginary world of the 1950s in their heads dying forever, and the problem is that scared people make dumb choices …. It always comes back to fear. Fear is the single greatest enemy of survival. When you’re afraid, you can’t think ahead, you can’t plan…..
But when you choose to live your life in fear, you lose that most essential thing that makes you human. When you support George W. Bush’s Patriot Act, as the woman to my left with the cowboy hat full of Bush/Cheney buttons probably did, you’re supporting fear. When you try to take food away from starving people, or deny good students access to higher education, or steal choices away from the next generation of women, you may not be a monster, but you are making monstrous choices…..
Msg from The Obama Diary: Genuine bloggers who create their own posts, are welcome to use anything they ever see at TOD – rebloggers, who just copy others’ posts in an attempt to up their traffic, are not. Especially rebloggers who talk to women like this – explicit – while copying TOD posts on women’s rights. Thanks.
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Today:
3:30 ET: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event in Charlottesville, Virgina
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Washington Examiner: President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will tour seven swing states next week ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Obama will travel to Iowa, Colorado, Ohio and Virginia between Sept. 1 and Sept. 4 as part of his “Road to Charlotte” tour, the president’s campaign announced Tuesday. Among the cities Obama will visit include Des Moines and Sioux City in Iowa, Boulder, Colo., Toledo and Cleveland in Ohio and Norfolk, Va. Biden will travel separately to York, Pa., Green Bay, Wis., and Detroit between Sept. 2 and Sept. 4.
NYT Editorial: …. the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations.
…. Conventions are always full of cheap applause lines and over-the-top attacks, but it was startling to hear how many speakers in Tampa considered it acceptable to make points that had no basis in reality.
Gov John Kasich of Ohio, for example, boasted of the booming economy in his state, never mentioning that he and Mr. Romney opposed the auto bailout that has played an outsized role in the state’s recovery. (Apparently Mr. Obama’s destructive economic policies do not apply everywhere.)
…. Considering how Mr. Romney has conducted his campaign so far, most recently his blatantly false advertising accusing Mr. Obama of gutting the work requirement on welfare, it is probably not surprising that the convention he leads would follow a similar path.
Voters looking for a few nuggets of truth would not have found them in Tampa on Tuesday.
The Obama Diary 
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