fired

Embed from Getty Images We’re going to do several posts from Day 3 of the DNC last night, because unlike the strange lull of Day 2, Day 3 was full of barn-burner speeches and it was amazing. First, Vice President Joe Biden came out and Ol’ Handsome Joe was in rare form. He was so great, in fact, that people were sort of wondering aloud if this election would have been a lot different if Biden had run this cycle. He said last year that he just couldn’t run again so soon after his son’s passing, and I respect his decision. But it was still bittersweet, because Biden lives to serve his country. Biden’s speech was sad, funny, optimistic and he threw in some old-fashioned “malarkey” just for good measure. He fit a lot into a speech that was less than 20 minutes long. He made a passionate endorsement of Hillary Clinton and a particularly pointed takedown of Donald Trump. Biden actually delivered one of the most cogent assessments of Trump too: “His cynicism is unbounded. His lack of empathy and compassion can be summed up in a phrase I suspect he’s most proud of having made famous: ‘You’re fired.’ I’m not joking; think about that… He is trying to tell us he cares about the middle class. Give me a break. That’s a bunch of malarkey!! I know I’m called middle-class Joe, and in Washington that’s not meant as a compliment. It means you’re not sophisticated. But I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together. I know why we are united. It’s because we’ve always had a growing middle class. This guy doesn’t have a clue about the middle class — not a clue. He has no clue about what makes America great. Actually, he has no clue… No major-party nominee in the history of this nation has ever known less or has been less prepared to deal with our national security.” [From WaPo] On Morning Joe this morning, they talked about how Day 3 was “appeal to swing voters and disaffected Republicans” Day. Could be. After Biden spoke, Mike Bloomberg came out. Bloomberg used to be a Republican, then an Independent, and now I’m not even sure. He’s Independent-Dem. I usually think Bloomberg is a charisma vacuum, but I ended up enjoying the hell out of Bloomberg’s speech. It was a glance of how actual rich people view Donald Trump: they think he’s stupid, gauche and a terrible businessman. I don’t know who wrote this, but it was a surprisingly great speech. Apparently, Bloomberg ad-libbed the line “let’s elect a SANE, competent person…” That was a huge applause line. Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images Photos courtesy of Getty.