Sullivan, Marshall on DNC, Night 2

Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall on Bill Clinton's speech to the DNC.

Sullivan: He’s so good. He’s slowly building the case for a woman who has worked her whole life in public service, interspersed with his dating tips. He speaks with brilliantly varying pace, weaving anecdote and argument together. He’s telling us a story. He’s reintroducing this woman to America.

I really like the choice between the “real” and the “fake”, the doer rather than the shower, the listener rather than the tweeter, the experienced pol rather than the untested strongman. It’s time to expose Trump as fake, as all bluster. and Bill Clinton did it. It dragged a little in the middle there, and I desperately want someone to take on Trump politically with the skills Bill has. But as a reintroduction to this figure we know so well it was superb.

Marshall: I'm used to watching all these speeches as an observer rather than an audience. But in this case, over the stretch of Bill's speech, I became the audience. I got pulled in by his discussion of the cartoon Hillary versus the actual person - not a perfect person, who is? - a woman with immensely broad shoulders and an tremendously rich life history that leaves in the dust so many others of the soapbox characters that get kicked up and presented to us in political life. I've written a lot about the drama and the flaws. This was important for me to see and hear again.

Bill managed to pull the story together, with the riffs and ad-libs, getting revved up toward the end by the crowd and seeing some hint of the old younger guy. Perhaps it's projection on my part. But I can't see Bill's passionate advocacy of Hillary, his devotion without his own recognition of his failures and betrayals, unique to their relationship, written there right on the front of the canvas. It makes it feel awkward, too personal, to me sometimes but is in its own way profound.