Not every Democrat lives in the Obama bubble:
Senior Democratic officials are expressing serious concerns about the political risks posed by Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium Thursday evening. From the elaborate stagecraft to the teeming crowd of 80,000 cheering partisans, the vagaries of the weather to the unpredictable audience reaction, the optics surrounding the stadium event have heightened worries that the Obama campaign is engaging in a high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment. A common concern: that the stadium appearance plays against Obama’s convention goal of lowering his star wattage and connecting with average Americans and that it gives Republicans a chance to drive home their message that the Democratic nominee is a narcissistic celebrity candidate.
On this there is bipartisan consensus. Peggy Noonan lays out the stakes for tonight and cautions about the risks:
The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what “great move” would look like. It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally; it has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory.
But it is not just the venue which is problematic. Noonan nails the core of the Obama team’s dilemma: right now they have a “message deficit.” That is what needs to be filled tonight, not with mushy slogans but with the answers people don’t yet have to questions that should have been answered months ago: What does he believe? Why isn’t it a throw of the dice to elect someone so thinly experienced? What is he going to do?
George Will likewise observes that platitudes will no longer do, but Obama’s specifics may leave voters unimpressed:
When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. . . But the fact that Obama lost nine of the final 14 primaries might have something to do with the fact that when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises liberalism’s most shopworn nostrums.
Whatever Obama says will be lauded by the MSM pundits itching to rescue an uneven convention. But voters actually decide these things. They are the ones who will either marvel at the stagecraft or break out laughing. Obama will either play the staring role in the next Schmidt ad or defy the odds. But this is one instance where the words matter. Obama needs to answer a lot of voters’ questions. And what’s more, he has to be better than both the Clintons–no easy task, especially with regard to Bill.