Commentary: Tuesday was a night for Democratic partisans
Bill Clinton still knows how to give a speech.
Did it sound totally honest? No, because that's not what the old dog does, and that's not what we expect from him. He's a charmer and a storyteller, and we don't expect people like that to always play it straight with us. We want people like that, people like Bill, to tell us a something that we'll enjoy hearing.
But even when we factor in that Bill is Bill and has a gift for fiction, enough of it rang true to make Hillary seem recognizably human. That's an accomplishment for a number of reasons, in large part because Hillary seems like she's at her most insincere when she's trying to relate to people.
Tuesday was a good night for Democrats. Some of this has to do that the night just seemed comparatively normal and restrained. Every minute of the Republican convention seemed haphazard. At times it felt surreal, what with the prevalent air of disunity, the plagiarism, and the fact that their nominee is, well, Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the Democrats spent Monday contending with Bernie's dead-enders trying to make a scene. By Tuesday, though, the disrupters were safely outside the green zone. The party at least looked like they had their act together. It was all quite slick, and competently managed. It looked like a typical convention, in other words, which is apparently no small feat in 2016.
It wasn't all perfect, however. Sublime as she may be, I'm not sure how many Americans really know who Elizabeth Banks is, or why she seemed to be Debbie Wasserman Schultz's replacement as convention chair.
Moreover, I think Democrats have a tendency to overestimate how much Americans love being lectured by celebrities about politics. The parade of famous people gave the proceedings an award-show vibe. If you love watching the Oscars, you probably enjoyed night two of the DNC.
Then again, if you love watching the Oscars, there's a good chance you're left-leaning to begin with, which is why the comparison might work out just fine for the Democrats. This was a night for partisans, presumably because they designed it to be one.
Victims talked about their victimhood and how the government had helped them. Various "phobias" were attacked. Howard Dean spoke, as did Lena Dunham, and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood. These are people who bring out when you want to stoke the base. Meryl Streep is a genius, but she wasn't there to appeal to the downwardly-mobile middle country folk who will likely decide the election.
But there's nothing wrong with stoking the base, and your average swing voter, if they tuned in at all Tuesday night, probably just tuned in to hear Bill. It was fun to reminisce with him about the 90s, that blessed little holiday from history, and hear him talk about seducing a woman in a mildly mischeivious yet not at all lecherous way - he did marry her, after all.
It was cute. He made the Clintons, of all people, sound cute.
It went off the rails for a moment at the end, though: after all that time Bill spent making Hillary seem relatable, there she was looming over the convention in a shattering screen like Big Brother in Apple's famous "1984" ad. It was supposed to be fun; it came off creepy.
That's a small thing, sure, but it's also a reminder that, no matter how good the rest of the show is, eventually Hillary is going to have to show up, and there will be plenty of tough acts to follow.
