What If....

.....the Democrats had a convention and nobody came?

We've become adjusted to the reality that the national party conventions are not as meaningful as they might have been in some bygone era. But, this is a new one in that this Democratic '08 convention isn't even dominating the news cycles in the week that it occurs. Is a speech by Hillary or Joe Biden defining the game any more than McCain's latest ad buy or the efforts of Stanley Kurtz to get around Obama's stonewall of his Ayers connection? It doesn't look that way to me. I first noticed this Tuesday morning, but I thought it might be a bit churlish to note it then. But now it's Thursday, the last day of the convention, and it looks the same now as it did then.

The only consolation for the other team is that the Republicans go next week in St. Paul and their effort might not be any better, and could be worse. The challenges for the Republicans are different. They'll want to knock down Obama a peg or two, which from what we've seen over the last month or so isn't going to be that hard. But, the bigger challenge is to rehabilitate the Republican brand from its poor reputation under the leadership of President Bush. This will be hard to do in its own right but also because the aura of the party conventions works against it. It will be hard for the Republicans to acknowledge the voters' legitimate anger against them amongst all the "Hooray for me!" theatrics.