The Biggest Loser

While the Eagles got screwed by having two division rivals get the luxury of playing in the Thursday night season opener, the game’s biggest loser has to be John McCain. The night of Thursday September 4 is the last night of the Republican National Convention and the big moment for McCain’s acceptance speech. (My prediction, the punditocracy will nearly unanimously suggest McCain needs to “hit a home run” in the speech. And the post-speech analyses from same pundits will confirm that, indeed he did just that.)

 

But I digress The season opener is going to be stepping all over McCain’s nationally televised address. So much so that the league will move the game’s start time up an hour and half so that it ends before McCain’s 10pm EDT appearance. (Here’s hoping the Skins-Giants goes into overtime). Even with the earlier start and notwithstanding the possibility of OT, I can already hear the sound of TVs being clicked off after the game or remote buttons being punched to something other than a heavy political speech (what will TBS counterprogram on Thursday night in the 10 pm slot? Roadhouse? Point Break?).

 

The situation is delicious just desserts for partisans like myself that are glad that the Republicans are being hoist on their own scheduling petard (since, you know, Democrats are genetically incapable of besting the R’s themselves). Republican conventions have been starting later and later.

 

In 2004, the RNC was held from August 30 through September 2. It was held in New York City, and clueless Democrats (an oxymoron, I know) and the politicos all parroted the conventional wisdom that President Bush was trying to take advantage of the proximity in date and location to further wrap himself in the cloak of 9/11. (though it’s never been fully explained to me how or why the President benefits from so closely associating himself with the worst foreign attack on American soil in history and on his watch. Roosevelt didn’t speak from Pearl Harbor in ’44).

 

As we now know, though many Democrats still don’t get it, the real reason the Republicans held their convention then was to take advantage of the presidential finance rules that distinguish between the primary season and the general campaign, with the nominating convention as the official transition mark between the two. In short, Republicans were able to avoid having to expend any of their general campaign funds until the beginning of September. By contrast, incompetent Democrats (another oxymoron, I know) held their 2004 nominating convention from July 26-29 in Boston. The result being that while nearly everyone fixated on the Republican dates and the linkage to 9/11, Karl Rove was focused on giving his candidate a month long financial advantage. Ultimately, John Kerry and the Democrats had to pay for a general election campaign that officially lasted one full month longer than George W. Bush’s and the Republicans presidential campaign. One month is an extraordinary advantage when the general election campaign only lasts from September to November (or in the case of the Democrats, from July (!) to November).

 

Democrats may have finally realized their strategic ineptitude by scheduling this year’s convention for August 25-28, forcing the incumbent party to go after that, and into the Thursday night of the NFL opener.

 

What’s amazing to me is that for the past 40 years (!), the Republicans have only held one convention in July (1980 - though the 2000 convention did start on July 31). The two most recent ones were held in September. In contrast, Democrats have held 5 (!) conventions in July during that same time span and have NEVER held a convention that had at least one September day. In other words, Democrats have systematically and self-inflictedly disarmed themselves financially against their Republican presidential opponents. Is it any wonder Dems have lost 5 of the last 7 presidential elections? They can’t even schedule their conventions to give their nominee a level playing field, much less a favorable one.

 

But finally, this year, things are finally looking in the Dems favor.

 

They needed a miracle. And they got…the N-F-L.