Even the Canadians were watching the closing night of the Democratic Convention and Barack Obama’s speech. “Your politicians are more fun than ours,” one Toronto taxi driver told me. Many folks attending the Toronto International Film Festival stayed inside watching television rather than get started on Thursday screenings and parties. Obama’s numbers aren’t in yet, although he did break the tweets per minute record for a political event. Twitter reported 52,756 tweets the minute after Obama gave his speech. It’s not surprising that the DNC’s penultimate night easily outstripped the Republicans’, as well as the football game.
While the pundits deemed Obama’s speech “dull,” eclipsed by both his wife Michelle and Bill Clinton, apparently the Democrats wanted it that way. They vetted the speech with focus groups and didn’t want Obama to go all out with fiery rhetoric.
Documentarian/activist Michael Moore has written one of his better political essays. He could have a second career as a speechwriter.
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