Did Obama's Infomercial Accomplish It's Sales Goals? It Just Might Have

Admittedly, us Democrats and long-term campaign watchers may not have been overly impressed with Obama's thirty-minute mini-convention (even if it was spectacularly produced). We've followed so much of this and analyzed the techniques employed for so long, it just didn't seem like news.

But if anecdotes like these are any indication, we weren't the intended audience. And the optimistic tenor, focus on middle-class issues, and carefully calculated images and assurances of middle-American family values may have reached exactly who it needed to: Republicans disenchanted with Bush who haven't yet made up their minds about Obama. Read the following post, written by a poster in Ohio to the Washington Monthly blog, and be heartened:

I went to bed last night with the knowledge that Chardon, Ohio is a very Republican town, and I've heard just about every disparaging remark possible about Obama from my neighbors over the past year. But when I woke up this morning, the number of McCain/Palin signs on my street was down---from three, to just one---and I am writing these words with the knowledge that the two households who "lost" their McCain signs are the homes of Republicans who watched that half-hour episode last night.

Not Blue-Dog Democrats; not Libertarians; not conservative Independents, mind you---but rock-solid, long-term Republicans.

Their consensus: Barack Obama is not only the better choice for the office of President, but he's also the better choice for meeting---what used to be, at least---the core principles of the GOP before the party was kidnapped by the whacked-out fringe elements.

I honestly never thought that I'd see and hear a long-term Republican say that Barack Obama makes for a better Republican than John McCain---and my day has started by experiencing it twice.

Damn---and it's not even 9 in the morning here yet....

More on response to the Obama commercial here.