National Elections

Last week an outlier CNN poll claimed Donald Trump had a “big bounce” after his apocalyptic convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump bounces into the lead. The short-fingered vulgarian trumpeted this poll to claim that he had a yuuuge post-convention bounce.
According to Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight, Trump’s polling average bounce after the GOP convention was 3 to four percentage points. According to Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium, Trump’s polling average bounce after the GOP convention was only one point (see below).

Now that the post-convention polls for the Democratic convention are being released, the short-fingered vulgarian has something else for which he needs to compensate for his inadequacy.

The CNN poll released today claims Hillary Clinton has a 7 point post-convention bounce. Post-convention poll: Clinton retakes lead over Trump:

Hillary Clinton emerges from her party’s convention in Philadelphia with a restored lead over Donald Trump, having earned a 7-point convention bounce, according to a new CNN/ORC Poll.

In a two-way head-to-head matchup, Clinton tops Trump 52% to 43%, and in a four-way matchup including third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Clinton leads 45% to 37% with Johnson at 9% and Stein at 5%.

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I watched all of the speeches of both the RNC and DNC Conventions over the past two weeks.  Many of these speeches occured during the day on cable channels to which not everyone in America has access, nor does everyone have access to the Internet. The networks only cover the prime time speeches (I miss the old days of “gavel to gavel coverage” when the networks did actual news reporting).

There have bee some excellent speeches, largely at the DNC Convention, which many Americans did not see and that did not receive the attention due from our feckless media.

Day four of the DNC Convention is a good example. The Rev. William Barber II from the North Carolina NAACP and the Moral Mondays movement gave a rousing speech that brought the house to its feet. The Rev. William Barber dropped the mic:

Well America, what the Rev. William Barber II stopped by the Democratic National Convention Thursday night to tell you was just about the most engaging version of everything that every other speaker touched on over the course of the four day event.

What he delivered — eight years after this brand of liberation theology took a beating from uninformed corners of the conservative commentariat — was evidence of a long tradition of liberal, religious patriotism. It was a call to action that, in Barber’s view, serves this cause — an articulation of a liberal and patriotic philosophy with what Barber said was the moral force to shock and resuscitate the heart of the nation.

“We are being called like our forefathers and foremothers to be the moral defibrillators of our time,” Barber said.

The call brought most of the audience in the convention hall to its feet.

Here is a video link, Reverend William Barber – Full Speech Democratic Convention 2016 and a Transcript from Daily Kos.

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Day three of the DNC Convention began with a batshit crazy press conference from Donald Trump in the morning “focused largely on questions about his possible relationships with Russian business interests, but that ranged much more widely, resulting in enough misrepresentations and falsehoods that we decided to simply post the full transcript and annotate what Trump said.” Donald Trump’s falsehood-laden press conference, annotated; Trump’s Press Conference – FactCheck.org. See also, Donald Trump’s Appeal to Russia Shocks Foreign Policy Experts.

This led to several speech updates before the afternoon session began, and Democrats pounded Trump. In a video played at the Democratic National Convention, dozens of military leaders and experts from both sides of the aisle said Republican candidate Donald Trump was not fit to be commander-in-chief. ‘Commander-in-Chief’: Military leaders denounce Trump in Democratic convention video.

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Day two of the DNC Convention began with Bernie Sanders going from state delegation to delegation asking his delegates not to disrupt the convention as they had on day one. Sanders tells California delegates it’s ‘easy to boo’ but harder to stop Trump:

Throughout Monday’s speeches at the convention dozens of Sanders delegates around the arena booed any mention of Hillary Clinton’s name. By the end of the evening, many of those still shouting — including over Sanders’ speech — were in the California seating section.

“We must stay focused on the major concerns of the American people and in the process have the guts to say yes, we are going to transform this country,” he said.

Sanders said that means working to elect Clinton.

Some delegates began to boo and yell over him, but Sanders raised his voice to be heard.

“It is easy to boo, but it’s harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under Donald Trump,” Sanders said. “Trump is the worst candidate for president in the modern history of this country.”

Sanders’ pleading with his delegates appeared to be effective with the vast majority of his delegates during the roll call of the states in the afternoon, which was well managed by both the Clinton and Sanders camps.

There were some touching moments during the roll call. Bernie Sander’s brother Larry Sanders got emotional while casting vote for his brother and brought many to tears. Bernie Sanders, who was watching from the gallery, was cheered by all delegates.

Arizona delegate Geraldine “Jerry” Emmett, who is 102, born before women gained the right to vote, was given the opportunity to announce Arizona’s votes for Clinton. I have known Jerry for a long time, and I know how much this honor meant to her. “I cried! I never cry,” Emmett said afterward. Born before all women could vote, Prescott woman, 102, reports AZ delegates for Clinton.

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