Thoughts on the DNC: Day One

If CNN has its way, the Democratic delegates in Denver will be rioting in the aisles by the end of the convention. So many people have a reason to get mad about this attempted display of unity: Clinton supporters who can't stand Obama, passionate partisans who scream that the party wasted a day in personal and emotional headliners, and those who spotted Wolf Blitzer chucking rocks from his portable Situation Room onto the crowded floor and waiting for the explosion.

What is the deal with Clinton supporters? I don't like to lump them all together into a monolithic group of crazies, but my hand is forced by the way the polls are put together. This is the poll that CNN was frothing at the mouth over most of yesterday. Its conclusion is that Obama is doomed because the number of (former?) Clinton backers who plan to vote for McCain has increased over the past month (after Obama tapped Biden as his No. 2).

It is sickeningly fascinating to listen to the reasons the Clintonites give for their unwillingness to accept the true Democratic nominee. "He didn't reach out to us," some whine. "He doesn't have the experience necessary to be president," say others. "McCain is a natural fit for us because he, like Clinton, has more national-security experience and foreign-policy expertise than that n00b Obama," conclude some. "He's ready to answer the dreaded 3 a.m. phone call."

This kind of reasoning shows just how effective the Republican strategy has been in terms of framing the election. The consensus among smart Democratic strategists has been that in order to win, Obama and his followers need to make the election a referendum on George W. Bush, not on Obama himself or even on McCain. Obama's life story is too complex for so-called "ordinary Americans" to understand, so every appeal must be framed as such: Are you willing to subject yourself and your country to another four years of Bush? McCain has supported Bush policies 95 percent of the time, so it follows that four years of McCain would be a third term for Bush.

When Clinton supporters declare that they lean McCain, they reject the notion that the election should be about policy and judgment, but rather about what's familiar, what's understandable. McCain was a military pilot and a POW; therefore, he has the credentials to lead in a foreign-policy emergency. This raises the question: Why did the people who think this way support Clinton in the first place? Her life story couldn't be less similar to McCain's, and even when she talked about being in dangerous military situations in Bosnia, she lied about it. Clinton's and Obama's policy positions, however, are very similar.

No better argument can be made that Obama's judgment on foreign affairs is superior than what he has already demonstrated: When he took his big overseas trip, the Iraqi prime minister essentially endorsed his plan for American withdrawal. Now the State Department is trying to hammer out a similar deal with the Iraqi government.

I can't speak directly to the claim that Obama has failed to "reach out" to former Clinton supporters, since I was never one of them. But I can say that after I decided to get behind Obama after Edwards dropped out, all it took was a single visit to barackobama.com to get all the outreach I could handle from the campaign. And to those who were upset that he didn't take on more of her top advisers to help run his operation, get over it. It's his campaign; he has the right to use people who supported his message of change and hope from the beginning.

The appearance (or reality) of Democratic disunity is a golden opportunity for McCain and his legion of "Karl Rove acolytes," as Obama calls them, to sweep truth and reason under the rug. So he's rolled out a couple of incredibly tasteless ads that seem to imply that Clinton would prefer to see her bitter supporters take refuge in the McCain camp. She has repudiated the ads, of course ("I'm Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve this message"), and McCain deserves universal scorn for his claim that he should benefit just because Democrats had a drawn-out primary contest between two amazing and historic candidates.

CNN delights in this kind of strife, and they're eager to prolong it. That's why they have people on like Bill Bennett, who talked about how much better it would be if Clinton were on the ticket, and James Carville (the most bitter and passive-aggressive person in the world), who basically deemed the convention a failure because Dems didn't spend enough time attacking Bush on a night when Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama rocked the house with their emotional and personal speeches. And they weren't shy about inviting conservative analysts, such as Amy Holmes and Alex Castellanos (who, ironically, seemed to cause less dissent than their Democratic counterparts). Donna Brazile remains one of the few consistent voices of reason on CNN's Democratic panel.

I hope that for the rest of the convention, the media's riot-inducing rocks keep missing—and that Democrats emerge without the drama, ready to persuade the American people to deny Bush his third term.