Take Back America Conference

I have been reading a lot about the Take Back America Conference that ended today in Washington DC.

Yesterday, John Edwards and Barack Obama spoke and both did very well according to reports.

From Edwards's speech...

When it comes to ending the war in Iraq or issues such as universal health care, “No more pontificating, no more vacillating, no more triangulating, no more broken promises, no more pats on the head, no more ‘we’ll get around to it next time,’ no more taking half a loaf, no more ‘tomorrow,’” Edwards said.

People who are diagnosed with breast cancer or other serious health conditions, like his wife Elizabeth, don’t have time to wait for universal health care. “We need to do these things now,” he said.

While Obama said...

What a standing-room-only-crowd heard in the International Ballroom of the Washington Hilton was the kind of sweeping, inspiring embrace of progressive principles that has been his trademark. It included a firm denunciation of the conservative philosophy that had dominated Washington politics before Democrats took control of the Congress in 2006, which he described as “a philosophy of trickle-down and you're on your own that says that government has no role in the challenges that we face.”

The adherents to that governing philosophy “think they own this government, but we are here to say that our government is not for sale and we are taking it back, right here, right now.”

Matthew Yglesias compares the two speeches and has video of each.

The point of Edwards' speech was "I have these seven policy ideas that you'll think are really great and therefore you should infer that I'm a good guy." Obama's speech, by contrast, is aimed at convincing you that "I'm a really good guy who has a good approach to politics and legislating and therefore you should infer that I'll implement good policies." Thus, Obama spends less time on the details of his program and more time on his theory of political change

Bob Geiger has an in depth look at Obama's and Edwards' speeches.

Bill Richardson took the gloves off and called out the frontrunners...

...this was the first time he criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards by name for not supporting his position on Iraq: "I would leave zero troops behind, not a single one."

Jerome Armstrong of MyDD gives his opinon on the speeches and had this to say about Hillary getting booed...

...not surprisingly she was boo'd again this year, because she was blaming the Iraqi gov't for the failures in Iraq (instead of Bush).

Bill Scher added (and has video of Hillary's speech)...

What the boos were actually about is likely to be misreported.

Byron York at the National Review writes that the boos began after Clinton said, “The American military has done its job.” A fellow attendee told me he heard Fox News’ Carl Cameron report that she was booed because she said she supports the troops (though I have not been able to confirm Cameron’s remarks.)

That's flat wrong. The Politics on the Hudson blog gets it right: “They jeered the Democratic presidential hopeful when she blamed the Iraqi government for the continued violence that has bogged down U.S. troops.”

A straw poll was conducted at the end of the conference. Here are the results...

Obama 29
Edwards 26
Clinton 17
Richardson 9
Gore (write-in) 8
Kucinich 5
Biden 1
Dodd 1
Gravel 1