{"id":2346,"date":"2016-07-26T19:33:18","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T03:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2346"},"modified":"2016-07-26T19:33:18","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T03:33:18","slug":"the-big-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2346","title":{"rendered":"The Big Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLove him or hate him, right now Bill Clinton could spot you a year, start campaigning in August & still pull 300 electoral votes.”<\/em><\/p>\n

-John Rogers<\/em><\/p>\n

Waiting for the Wild Bill speech is the best part of any Democratic convention, even in 1988 when we didn\u2019t know it. Back then, he ran on so long delivering the nominating speech for Michael Dukakis that when he said \u201cAnd in conclusion\u201d the audience began cheering and clapping. By 2012, over a decade after leaving office, his performance at the convention was absolutely spellbinding, the equivalent of David Ortiz\u2019s amazing year at DH in his last season for Boston. This year?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Josh Marshall nailed it, I think: he\u2019s old. This isn\u2019t like last time when it was \u201choly shit, he\u2019s still got it\u201d – this is the lion in winter, your raffish older uncle spinning the family stories you\u2019ve heard a million times. Only this time, it wasn\u2019t his story – he was up there defending his wife, advocating for his wife, saying all the stuff that never makes the news anymore (if it ever did) through two decades of calcification of What Hillary Means ™. Some of it may have come off a little clunky, or a little weird, but it does drive home the point that the 1990s were a different time. Triangulation was the best you could do. You ground away at the coal face and came back the next day and the day after that. It\u2019s not easy and it\u2019s not always fun, but it\u2019s how you go from the Democrats being dependent on finding an acceptable Southern white male in the 90s to replacing a black man with (hopefully) a woman in 2016.<\/p>\n

And the longer he talked – the more he got into telling the story and the more things he shared, and God help whoever was running the prompter because Bill Clinton\u2019s personal life motto is FUCK YO TELEPROMPTER LAWYA – he lit up. He got younger before our eyes. He was the happy warrior once again, and he lit up the house and they loved him for it.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be the same in 2020, win or lose – Hillary will be the incumbent (God willing) and Barack Obama will be the beloved superstar coming back to light the fire. But if this was the last great Bill Clinton convention stemwinder, it was an appropriate reflection of the man himself. Not always quite right, not always entirely appropriate, not remotely on time – but when the jump shots start falling, it\u2019s like watching magic happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLove him or hate him, right now Bill Clinton could spot you a year, start campaigning in August & still pull 300 electoral votes.” -John Rogers Waiting for the Wild Bill speech is the best part of any Democratic convention, even in 1988 when we didn\u2019t know it. Back then, he ran on so long … <\/p>\n

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