Turkana provides a chuckle:

In an article about the Obama campaign's plans and expectations, Marc Ambinder had this amusing little nugget, from Obama election manager David Plouffe:

"All we care about is these 18 states," he said. He repeated, with emphasis, that the campaign does not care about national polling. Instead, the campaign's own identification, registration and canvassing efforts provide the data he uses to determine where to invest money and resources.

Had Clinton been nominated, and had her campaign manager made such a statement, the shrillosphere would once again be flooded with derision about her team considering 32 states to be irrelevant.

Share your impressions. I'll blog President Clinton's speech below the fold at 9.

Big Dog coming up.

Last night Rachel Maddow said that Obama is a rejection of Clintonism. And I wondered, if that is so, then isn't that an argument for Clinton supporters to NOT vote for Obama? To not get over it? After all, if that were true, then the PUMAs would have a point, wouldn't they?

The fact is this is mindless nonsense from Rachel Maddow. Barack Obama is Clintonism Redux. Obama's Post-Partisan Unity Schtick is merely Clinton's 1990s Third Way for the 21st Century. Obama's victory is actually victory for triangulation. But pundit are mindless and they say and do anything to feed their freak show narratives. And Rachel Maddow is certainly among the worst at that.

How about Obama as the new William Jennings Bryan? I kid you not. That is what the Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown asserts:

Obama is the official nominee.

Your turn.

This is an Open Thread.

If you are in to that sort of thing, it is on C-Span now. You can comment about it here.

Sooo, was it cathartic for you? Me, I hate the delegate system period. Never cared for the roll call. I want a popular vote contest.

The disgraceful Jim Clyburn, can't keep his mouth shut:

Q: During the primary, you suggested that Bill and Hillary's relationship with the black Democratic base had been irreparably damaged. Do you still believe that?

CLYBURN: I simply said that I thought that things were being said and done that could very well make the nomination of our party not worth having. I was around when the Willy Horton ads literally annihilated our candidate for president. That [sort of attack] didn't start out with Republicans; that started out in the Democratic primaries. Right now, we see the McCain campaign doing things that seem to be taken out of the Democratic primary. We see a tightening in this race. And we have nobody and nothing to blame except things that happened in the primary.

Clyburn is simply a liar. By the way, he now falsely smears Al Gore with the Willie Horton lie invented by Republicans in 2000. Do us all a favor Clyburn, STFU.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

I'm leaving for downtown and then the Pepsi Center. I'll have my i-phone and my Flip tv Mino video recorder but no laptop. I'll post my results later tonight.

In the meantime, here's an open thread -- you can talk about the convention, what you had for lunch, or anything else that's of interest to you.

If TalkLeft goes down, here's our backup site to continue the discussion. Don't forget to bookmark as you won't find it here if the site is down.

Here's a blog devoted to DNC protest activity. It has videos and photos and links to the other protest blogs.

ABC news producer Asa Enlocker was arrested at the Brown Palace today.

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown's Palace Hotel.

...Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News with Charles Gibson.

This letter was written by a friend of mine, whose letters I have published several times over the years on TalkLeft. When I first met him, he was a criminal defense lawyer with a very high profile Washington, DC law firm. (I served as local counsel for one of his clients.)

He then became a high ranking official in the Clinton Justice Department. We were on opposing sides then but remained in touch. He's been back in private practice in D.C. for several years since then. During four of those years, we both served on a prominent national legal board that met every three months in various cities. While he's never going to agree with all of my positions on crime issues, I still have tremendous respect for him. He's really one of the good guys -- and a true Democrat.

We've been corresponding throughout this election campaign as he was a strong supporter of Sen. Barack Obama from the beginning. He was unable to convince me that Obama would be a better President or nominee than Hillary. Of course, I agree with him that Obama would be a better President than John McCain.

His letter to Hillary Clinton supporters, sent to me for TalkLeft this morning, is below:

Greg Sargent reports:

On Fox News just now, Howard Wolfson unleashed a broad attack on MSNBC and its top on-air personalities, slamming the network's coverage of Bill and Hillary, hitting back at Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann for using his work for Fox to question his Democratic credentials, and blasting MSNBC as having been "taken over" by "antics." . . . "I'm not gonna take any lectures on how to be a good Democrat from two people who spent the last two years relentlessly attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton everyday," Wolfson said on the air moments ago, when asked by the Fox anchor to respond to some criticism of Wolfson on MSNBC yesterday.

Wolfson's decision to unload on MSNBC was triggered by some particularly barbed comments about Wolfson from Olbermann and Matthews yesterday. Matthews slammed Wolfson as Fox's "little toy soldier," while Olbermann joked that Wolfson is Fox's "Tokyo Rose."

Here's what's weird to me - NBC pretends to have a news organization. Did Tweety and Olbermann just stop pretending yesterday? As a Democrat, I have always opposed Dems appearing on Fox. So I wish Wolfson would not appear on Fox. But Olbermann and Matthews are pretending to be journalists, not Democratic bloggers, aren't they? What are they doing commenting on how good a Democrat Howard Wolfson is?

Speaking for me only

Josh Green making Andrew Sullivan look sane:

The crowd was fired up. But the excitement faded quickly. Clinton didn't seem angry or betrayed or entitled or any of the things that critics have attributed to her—she seemed merely unenthused, and so did the audience, his crowd and hers.

Heh. I take it Josh is mad that no one gave a crap about his big "memos" scoop. Also, he has to be worried. His only schtick is Clinton Hate and, after tonight, at least for the rest of this campaign, he'll have nothing to say. He's sort of a junior Carl Bernstein now.

Speaking for me only