MSNBC's on-air personalities were plainly in awe of Bill Clinton on Wednesday night. Moments after the former President finished his speech at the Democratic National Convention, they kept up the praise for almost 20 minutes. Chris Matthews gushed over the "strong offensive" Clinton gave for President Obama. Al Sharpton exclaimed, "Elvis and Bubba showed up tonight."
Ed Schultz was the most enthusiastic for the former Arkansas governor: "Affable, effective - as a Democrat, it doesn't get any better. I'm sitting here - I'm giddy...I just think President Clinton just did Barack Obama the biggest favor he could have ever done." Rachel Maddow and former McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt agreed that Clinton's address was "powerful," with Schmidt exclaiming that "I wish to God, as a Republican, we had someone on our side who had the ability to do that. We don't. It would be great if we did. Just an amazing performance." [audio available here; video below the jump]
2012 Democratic Convention
Piers Morgan couldn't contain himself on Wednesday night as he adulated President Clinton as an "oratorical genius" who is "right up there with Churchill, Kennedy, MLK, and Mandela." CNN wasn't called the "Clinton News Network" for nothing.
"[T]hat was pound for pound, dollar for dollar, one of the great modern political speeches I have ever heard," sounded Morgan later on his show. He even asked on Twitter if Clinton could be British prime minister.
During Wednesday night’s convention coverage, the Democratic National Convention decided to roll out a trio of workers allegedly kicked to the curb by Bain Capital, the private equity firm co-founded by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. One of them was Randy Johnson. According to Adam Kredo’s August 28 column in The Washington Free Beacon, Johnson “worked at American Pad & Paper (Ampad) after Bain purchased the company in the early nineties” and “maintains that the investment firm callously managed the mill with an eye only towards profits.”
After hyping that Bill Clinton might deliver "his patented rocket fuel" to the DNC on Wednesday night, ABC swooned over his "perfect tone" and compared him to an "old pro."
"Strikes me, George, like one of those movies where the old pro comes out of retirement, filled with vitality, and does he know how to ride the waves inside this arena," gushed Diane Sawyer. Former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos called it "the best nomination a man could hope for."
While most of the Obama-loving media gushed and fawned over former President Bill Clinton's nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer was singularly unimpressed.
Appearing on Fox News shortly after the speech's conclusion, Krauthammer called it "a giant swing and a miss" as well as "a wasted opportunity."
A day after CNN salivated over Michelle Obama's DNC address, ABC hyped the enthusiasm at the Democratic Convention as hitting unprecedented levels on Wednesday night.
"Look, I have never seen a Democratic convention like this," insisted commentator Cokie Roberts. "When the President, the former President, comes out, they – it is going to be a moment like no moment you've seen."
Earlier today I wrote about how Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was caught lying about a reporter misquoting her. That reporter, Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner, did, in fact accurately quote her and produced the audio of Wasserman Schultz to prove it.
Fast forward to this evening, as Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports that Wasserman Schultz refuses to apologize to Klein, despite having been caught in a falsehood:
If you have tickets for the Democratic National Convention and wanted to see President Barack Obama deliver his acceptance speech this Thursday at Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, you’ll be greatly disappointed. Despite the official excuse of severe weather -- forecasters put the chance of storms at 20-30 percent -- the change in venue really seems to be because Obama campaign officials fear they can't fill the 74,000-seat stadium.
Reporting that, of course, is unfathomable for the lapdog broadcast media, but some print and online reporters are skeptical.
Well, it looks like we have a bit of evidence that, contrary to an assertion by a pair of Politico reporters, it's not the media elites who can "powerfully shape" the narrative coming out of party conventions (the issue in question there was how Mitt Romney's nomination acceptance speech would be spun).
After all, as Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters noted earlier today, the three major networks have totally ignored the omission of "God" in the Democratic Party's platform, and have only lightly covered the platform's failure to name Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Despite that, and therefore obviously because of center-right media pressure (and semi-sensible Dems sensing disastrous election fallout), those issues now are both like Prego spaghetti sauce -- i.e., they're in there. Associated Press reporters Julie Pace and Steve Peoples seemed a bit unhappy with this turn of events in the version of their dispatch which appeared shortly after 6 PM ET, and tried to pin the entire blame on Republicans:
A major controversy erupted on the floor of the Democratic National Convention Wednesday surrounding God and Jerusalem inside the Party's platform.
Hours later, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave CNN an absolutely ridiculous explanation for what transpired resulting in her being mocked for her "alternate reality" by numerous commentators including Anderson Cooper and John King (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
When CNN's Piers Morgan argued that President Obama needed time to fix the economy, Paul Ryan answered him on Wednesday that Obama slowed what should have been a quick recovery.
"You have to give President Obama a bit of time just to get things back on track," the liberal CNN host pushed. Ryan countered that "usually when we have a deep recession in America, we come bounding out of it with fast economic growth and quick job creation," before adding "We're limping out of this recession right now."
MSNBC's Chris Matthews this evening finally got the chance to interview Julian Castro, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, Texas, whom Matthews insisted had given one of the "greatest" political speeches he ever heard Tuesday night.
It was, of course, a thoroughly softball interview, but it concluded on an odd note, with Matthews delving into his unhealthy obsession with "birtherism" to ask Castro why his home state is so chock full of people who don't believe President Obama is a natural-born citizen [MP3 audio here; video follows page break].