It was a pretty conventional convention speech. Pump up your president. Smack around his foe. Try to prove you came from nothing in the vain hope that lower and middle class voters will forget that you’ve become rich and entitled. Toss in boilerplate anti-business language.
Elizabeth Warren was forceful, but strident. She wasn’t likeable.
She spoke in Charlotte rather than campaign in Charlestown because she wants to nationalize the race and portray Scott Brown as a Republican yes-man who will thwart the Obama agenda. But Brown has an independent voting record. And unlike Warren, Brown didn’t speak at his party’s convention to add volume to their national agenda. If anything, by speaking in prime time last night Warren proved that if elected she would be a “hell, yes” woman for the national Democratic platform, no matter how much the independent majority of voters in Massachusetts thinks it out of step with their views.
She spent time laying out how she came from the “ragged edge of the middle class” but her aura was more that of her present self — someone from academia and the ritzy side of Harvard Square.
Sure, she got in a good line or two against Mitt Romney: “I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters — people who bust their tails every day,” she said. “Not one of them — not one — stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
But Warren’s speech was one of the least compelling of the gathering thus far. She paled in comparison to fellow Bay Stater Gov. Deval Patrick, who wowed the crowd with real passion and flair the previous night. And she certainly left many delegates in the room looking at their watches and saying “Can we wrap this up and get Bill Clinton up there please!”
Rob Gray is a GOP media consultant and political analyst for Fox 25 in Boston who has advised four presidential campaigns.
Elizabeth Warren was forceful, but strident. She wasn’t likeable.
She spoke in Charlotte rather than campaign in Charlestown because she wants to nationalize the race and portray Scott Brown as a Republican yes-man who will thwart the Obama agenda. But Brown has an independent voting record. And unlike Warren, Brown didn’t speak at his party’s convention to add volume to their national agenda. If anything, by speaking in prime time last night Warren proved that if elected she would be a “hell, yes” woman for the national Democratic platform, no matter how much the independent majority of voters in Massachusetts thinks it out of step with their views.
She spent time laying out how she came from the “ragged edge of the middle class” but her aura was more that of her present self — someone from academia and the ritzy side of Harvard Square.
Sure, she got in a good line or two against Mitt Romney: “I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters — people who bust their tails every day,” she said. “Not one of them — not one — stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
But Warren’s speech was one of the least compelling of the gathering thus far. She paled in comparison to fellow Bay Stater Gov. Deval Patrick, who wowed the crowd with real passion and flair the previous night. And she certainly left many delegates in the room looking at their watches and saying “Can we wrap this up and get Bill Clinton up there please!”
Rob Gray is a GOP media consultant and political analyst for Fox 25 in Boston who has advised four presidential campaigns.