First day of class today, and my brain is friend. Whoever had the bright idea to move political conventions to September was no friend to political junkie teachers, I’ll tell you that. Been pulling thoughts together and hoping to say more this weekend. I was reading a New York magazine piece comparing Clinton’s and Obama’s speeches, and got to this line: “Had [Romney and Ryan] not elevated Clinton in the first place, putting him in ads, using him as an example of the kind of “good Democrat†that Obama definitively is not, 42’s repudiations of the claims and his validation of 44 might have less purchase.” It’s not the first time I’ve seen that notion that the Republicans have elevated Bill Clinton’s profile in the effort to take Obama down a peg.
I will freely admit that’s not a universe I ever expected to live in, where Republicans attacked a Democrat for not being enough like Bill Clinton. I think the 1990s are rolling over in their grave right now.