A Different Audience

Brilliant move by the Obama campaign to open up the doors of the acceptance speech, moving the venue to INVESCO Field, where over 75,000 Americans can hear - and cheer - Barack Obama. As I watched and listened to former Virginia Governor Mark Warner's convention speech - a damn good speech - fall on sometimes distracted ears, and as I myself was distracted from hearing his words by all the chattering and movement in the convention hall in the first half of his speech, I remembered just how important it can be in today's media age for a political speech to be well-received by its audience at the time of its delivery, in order for the speech to be considered a success. The text alone doesn't determine its success. It not even the content plus the delivery. If the particular audience receiving the speech is not going to go wild over what's being said, it can dramatically effect the wider public's perception of the speech - and the candidate.

In Obama's case, since Barack's message has held greater appeal all along to "regular people" than to embittered partisan Democrats, it only stands to reason that the Obama campaign would rather give Barack a huge stadium filled with real people of all walks of life, instead of a smaller convention hall filled with partisan Democratic convention attendees.

The Republicans, of course, will try to spin Obama's stadium setting choice as yet another example of his "celebrity," and will try to pull a mind trick on voters, in their attempt to cast his popular appeal as a negative instead of a positive. We Democrats need to anticipate these kinds of tactics --- we can't let them define the terms and frame the contest.

I, for one, am eager to watch Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in front of a wide and diverse audience of Democrats, independents, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, moderates, and people who have never before used political labels, but who know a true leader when they see one, and who are hungry for this kind of prophetic and world-changing leadership. Right. Now.

Smart move, guys. I predict that Obama will knock this speech out of the park and will put to rest any High Anxiety in the Mile High City about whether or not he will become our next President.