Something has changed. Tonight is amazing. I can feel a turn of the tide.

This wouldn't have happened without Michelle's speech on Monday and, most of all, without Hillary's speech yesterday.

But tonight the intensity and quality of speeches have been amazing.  Bill Clinton is still a genius, of rhetoric and of the mastery of policy. Kerry was so strong. And (at the time this diary was written) we still have Biden on deck.

We know what matters, we know what politics is about. It's about our lives, our hopes, our possibilities. It's about the world we live in and the world we want to create.

I wanted earlier to write a diary on the amazing Obama campaign, on their ability to work at a state and local level. And if you want to read some of what I was going to draw from, you can read this: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump /archive/2008/08/27/the-view-from-plouff e-s-office.aspx

But that can wait until another day to have that discussion.

Tonight let us revel in a belonging to a party that has improved the lives of Americans and that will do more. Let us revel in belonging to a party that can lodge tough policy attacks but will not stoop to the personal and the petty -- but can vigorously criticize when others do so.  Let us revel in belonging to a party that has always sought to involve and empower the people.

Tonight I am so very proud to be a Democrat.

Thank you, Hillary!

You did a great job today in telling everyone, that when it comes to McCain putting you in his ads, you do not approve the message - You are great!  

I'm looking forward to you saying more things like this,

   "Let there be no mistake about it, We are united. We are united for change.

   "We are gathered here in Denver for a very clear and simple purpose, and that is to come out of this convention energized, excited and ready to elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States."

And thank you for releasing your delegates. By saying that one's vote is a "personal decision," you've made it clear that those delegates are no longer pledged to vote for you. This especially affects delegates from the ten states that require delegates to stay with their original candidate until they are released by that candidate or until the second ballot.

I salute you, Hillary Clinton!

So, what was the impact on Democratic unity from the Biden pick?

John McCain is certainly betting on it and he's trying to nurse disunity along with an ad saying that Clinton was dissed.  But what do the first polls show?

Gallup found that, among Democrats

21% say they are more likely to vote for Obama as a result of Biden's presence on the ticket, and only 2% say less likely.

You heard that - that's a 19 point pick up (21 minus 2) for Obama among Democrats with the Biden pick. Only 2% are less likely to vote for him.

Props to Democratic unity!  

Obama is having a big event in Springfield, Illinois this Saturday.  Perhaps his vp pick comes from that same state - and is new a Senator from NY.

After thinking that it's very unlikely, I've started to think that Hillary Clinton will be the vp candidate.

BTW, another possible pick from Illinois - Wesley Clark.

Just as it looked like things were calming down somewhat from the nomination campaign, a whole lot of documents will be coming out from within the Clinton campaign.  We'll learn quite a lot about their decision-making and strategies.

Just when you thought everyone had moved on... former advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a tizzy over an upcoming piece in the Atlantic Monthly that chronicles the inner workings of the now-defunct campaign. Of particular concern are nearly 200 internal memos that the author, Josh Green, obtained -- 130 or so of which he plans to scan in and post online. When the piece is published sometime next week, readers will be able to scroll through the memos, from senior strategists such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Geoff Garin, and see what exactly was going on inside the infamously fractured Clinton organization.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-tra il/2008/08/07/atlantic_scores_internal_c lint.html

Last fall I was sure - like many - that Clinton would win the nomination. She had the name recognition, strength in the polls, lots and lots of money, and a 100 superdelegate lead.  We all know her campaign made some dumb mistakes (even as the Obama campaign did an excellent job in longer range planning).  

A lot of times this kind of stuff doesn't come out until after the general election, maybe even years later.  I tend to think it would be better if that were true now.

As a lurker on some anti-Obama sites run by purported Democrats, I've noticed that they are still claiming that Dean and others have not committed to having a roll call vote.  This is the source of great outrage, as the same people who thought a primary ballot without Obama on it was just fine, now say that this would be undemocratic.

However, there's a big problem with this claim -- Howard Dean says that of course there will be a roll call vote.  And in the roll call, any delegate can vote for any candidate -- just like always.

Here's what Dean said a few weeks ago:

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?dia ryId=7006
"When asked about the ads criticizing him and Speaker Pelosi for Clinton supposedly not being on the ballot at the convention, he scoffed. Clinton will be on the ballot at the convention, and will be speaking there. Dean indicated that the rules were so clear on this matter, that the groups running these ads and spreading these rumors must be associated with the other internet rumors going around, such as Obama being a Muslim. He also speculated that McCain supporters might be behind these rumors."

So why are folks repeating this?  Have they not heard the news? Are they confusing a roll call with having one's name placed in nomination (something Dean has no say over)? Or what?

Any insight you have would be most appreciated.

Last week we had a series of diaries about what people thought of this web site.

This week we have a series of diaries decrying or defending individuals who diary and post here.

Here's my two cents -- this election is not about you.  And it sure isn't about this website and what you or anyone else have said.

If you thought that politics is about your feelings with respect to what's been said about the primary or your diary or posting, well, think about the feelings of:

- The parents who were up all night with their young child who may have an ear infection.  The child has been crying and pulling at her ear and has been difficult to comfort. A fever has been creeping up. But the family doesn't have health insurance and doesn't want to take the child to an emergency room, wait for hours, and then have a huge bill to pay.

- The spouse of a soldier who is on her or his third tour in Iraq. You thought this would be over years ago and maybe you really supported the war at the start. But once you realized that the American people had been lied into the war, you knew you wanted your love home. It's tearing you apart and you've long been scared that she will come home deeply injured or killed.

- The woman who found out she is pregnant and it is a pregnancy that was not planned nor wanted. Perhaps the woman is more a girl than a woman and didn't use birth control effectively because the sex education she got only talked about abstinence or she was just a typical teenager who thought it would never happen to her. Or maybe she's a woman whose family has huge economic challenges and another mouth to feed just won't help them deal with them. Or maybe the woman has a medical condition that makes the pregnancy especially dangerous.

- The parents of a child who just graduated from high school and plans on going to college, but the money looks really impossible right now.  They saved some money but the stock market has plunged. And in any case, the loan market has become more difficult. They remembered the very low interest loans they had available, but these are just not there for middle-class people anymore.

I could go on and on, but keep this in mind - this election is not about who said what to whom on this little website.

Politics is about making choices about things that matter. One of two people will be our next president. We know that these two people have very different views about what to say to those people who are worried. One thinks they are whiners, wants to keep the war going, cares nothing about access to higher education, and would like to restrict choice.  The other wants to promote national security by caring about economic security and by changing our foreign policy.

If you want to do something that matters, then get off line sometime. Go and volunteer. And if writing truly is your thing, put your smarts to work by writing letters to your local paper that are aimed at helping elect someone who will change the course of this country -- unless you think things are really going well under Republican rule and that the sorts of folks I've written about don't deserve a change.

As we see on this site and on other sites, there are some Clinton supporters who are not going to support the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama. Some even say they'll vote for McCain.

But how common is that?  Polls cast some light on that, but so do fundraising figures.  And in June, the pattern was stark.

Thousands of Hillary Clinton's donors gave at least $1.2 million to Democrat Barack Obama in June, accelerating a migration from her presidential campaign that began months ago.

The numbers suggest no widespread defections from the Democratic Party after its hard-fought primary season between Clinton and Obama ended the first week of June. McCain has hoped that many of Clinton's supporters would join him in an anti-Obama backlash.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic /news/articles/2008/07/28/20080728prezmo ney0726.html

In other words, of the $1,211,000 donated by Clinton supporters in June to either Obama or McCain, over 99% went to Obama and less than 1% went to McCain.

That's what Democratic donors are doing, folks - They're donating to Senator Obama.  Keep these realities in mind when you read diaries and posts from those Democrats who aren't supporting Obama.