Here’s the hourly schedule, in case you’re among the tiny minority of readers who’d rather watch three hours of identity politics, class warfare, and union stoogery than the Giants/Cowboys season opener. BuzzFeed’s quite right that Democrats ran a two-track program last night, larding up the early evening hours with base-pleasing crap about “choice” and organized labor and reserving the 10 p.m. hour for pretend centrism. Same deal tonight, more or less. Between 6 p.m. ET and 10, you’ll see AFL-CIO don Richard Trumka; abortion warriors Cecile Richards, Sandra Fluke, and Diana DeGette; amnesty super-shill Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who once declared that his only loyalty is to “the immigrant community”; and Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, just to mainstream things a bit. Then at 10 comes Fauxcahontas, who’s not really a centrist but needs to pose as one to impress Massachusetts swing voters who broke for Scott Brown three years ago. And then comes The Big Dog, who’s going to try to keep a straight face while reassuring America that Obama’s agenda will be just as good for economic growth as his own was. Paul Ryan had some fun with that idea today. Expect more soon from the RNC ad team.
Speaking of Obama/Clinton conflicts, here’s something that just dropped at BuzzFeed courtesy of a Republican source. Barack Obama, 1994:
“First as I said I think values are dynamic. Part of the reason I don’t trust Dan Quayle talking about values and I often don’t trust Bill Clinton talking about values is they tend to have a static notion of values. Dan Quayle talks about values in terms of Ozzie and Harriet values.
…[A]nd my wife who is an attorney, she likes to watch old TV re-runs and so she watches the Dick Van Dyke Show and Ozzie and Harriet and things like that.
I’m always struck by values that are embodied in these television shows which I think are the values that people have in mind when they talk about return to American values. The wife is at home, she’s not working, Dad’s got his 9 to 5, there are no African-Americans in these family values. There’s no discussion of poverty in these values. There’s not much talk about a nuclear arms race that was taking place on the television programs. So the notion is that we can somehow return to that time and recapture those values without acknowledging all the things that were left out. Well, that’s not the case.”
In fairness to O, there are lots of reasons not to trust Bill Clinton when he talks about “values.” But if Democrats are okay with making him their point man at the “war on women” convention, I’m okay with it too.
While we wait for kickoff in New Jersey, enjoy a short trot down memory lane with Politico’s list of Clinton’s eight most “controversial” knocks on Obama. Inexplicably omitted: “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags,” a line that would have earned “breaking news” coverage on MSNBC as the mother of all dog-whistles had it come from a Republican. One other segment to watch for tonight involves three former employees at companies owned by Bain, who are set to speak just before the networks cut in at 10 p.m. for Warren and Clinton. Not sure why the Dems would waste them this evening instead of using them as a lead-in to Obama; could be there was no room left tomorrow night once Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman agreed to speak. The world’s biggest celebrity deserves nothing less than A-listers for his intro, my friends.
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