No heavy lifting from Bill

I missed Bill Clinton's speech last night, because I was playing a glorious game of basketball with my sons. So I turned to Ace of Spades, a man whose analytical abilities I respect greatly, to get some idea of what happened in Philadelphia last night.

Last night wasn't particularly useful for Hillary. Bill Clinton, I would argue, basically swung the election for Obama in 2012. After all the good work Romney did in his convention, Bill Clinton came out and rebutted every claim made.

For a week I was pulling my hair out insisting the GOP must now rebut Clinton's rebuttal. They didn't. (Naturally.)

But Bill Clinton went on stage last night to do the impossible -- to humanize the inhuman. Instead of talking about policy and economics, about which he has some credibility, he instead chose to speak of love, commitment, and marriage, about which he has none.

I think their idea is that Biden and Obama will carry the policy-reinforcing load, and that Bill Clinton was therefore more useful in humanizing the woman he has been all but separated from for 15 years.

But Bill Clinton presided over a roaring economy. Biden and Obama have presided over a dismal one. What authority do they have to speak about good economic policy?

In addition, both men are exceeding arrogant. Obama has one mode, and that mode is contemptuous condescension. He is a deeply mediocre man who has confused himself for a world-beating intellect, and cannot lower himself to speak to people whose IQ and insight actually exceed his own.

The idea that Biden the idiot and Obama the vicious narcissist are capable of giving the folksy policy rebuttal that Clinton could have is just one more bad idea Hillary has had.

Maybe it was ego that caused her to refrain from asking her husband to do the heavy lifting for her. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, you may have heard.

Either way, we are now two days through this, and both days have been marked by discord and bitter feuding within the Democrat Party, with no appreciable help done for Hillary's side.

I can't see Obama's chin-arrogantly-lifted-eyes-gazing-heroically-into-the-middle-distance stage-whispering claims of how great we've all got it doing much to change that trajectory. We've heard it all from this failure before.

The only guy I see which any chance to do some damage is Tim Kaine, simply because he's new and doesn't (yet) have the stink of failure all over him.