You finally got something right. Barack delivered big time tonight. I can't wait for the contrast with the GOP snoozefest next week.

OK he finally won me over. He always had my vote, but not my enthusiasm.

I had to laugh at his seeming slam of Biden's bankruptcy bill though, might as well let him know up front who is in charge.

I think part of the speech's success was that it was like one of those long programmatic Clinton State of the Union's. Hillary also followed that model.
The Repubs mock Obama for high-faluting rhetoric so he just messed them up!

The thing I thought was communicated much more effectively in this speech than any other Obama speech I have seen was a stunning quality of verve or fight. You really had the sense that here's a guy who knows exactly what he wants to do, is incredibly determined, and will keep fighting until he gets it done. It really overcame any lingering feelings I might have had that he might be big on hopes, vision, brains, and the right ideas, but deficient in intestinal fortitude. He was a champ.

I think this is the first time I didn't just agree with the high aspirations in an Obama speech, but I really came away firmly thinking, "Yes, if this guy is elected, we will be independent of Middle East oil in ten years; we will totally transform our energy economy."

It was almost as though he declared a patriotic holy war on all the things that are weakening and wrecking our country. "Enough!"

He got right in McCain's face, but somehow did it without any bitter resentment, or hatred, or even contempt. The message was simply "John McCain, you just don't get it, and are on the wrong side of the issues and the demands of the times."

And one of the things I have always really liked about Obama, and that came through again brilliantly tonight, is that he really does represent a new generation, and doesn't seem to struggle with the crippling insecurities and self-doubt of so many men of the boomer generation. This guy has no doubt at all that it's awesome to be a Democrat, and that being a Democrat puts him on the side of America and the American way. He doesn't dance around touchy points; he doesn't avoid the attacks; he doesn't whine about unfair treatment from the media; he doesn't sound like he's trying to talk himself into something he's not sure he believes. He just faces down the criticisms and communicates his absolute certainty that the critics are dead wrong. He stood up for Democratic honor.

Beyond that, the guy just has so much panache and dignity, it's incredible.

O yee of little faith, Obama always had it in him but unless you were paying attention back when the Prime Minister of Australia attacked him the day after he announced his run, you missed a seminal moment that displayed Obama's ease at punching back "above his weight".

Lucky me, I happened to catch him in action; smacking down PM John Howard as a reporter caught him on the run.

Obama did the dozens on McCain tonight and I suspect it was the plan all along. Obama played it his way, in the time of his own choosing.

gretz, this statement is a classic:

"he's convinced this former PUMA to vote my party rather than my irritation."

Salud.

This was the speech I had been waiting for. I loved it!!! No more 'turn the other cheek' type of democratic candidate...to use a boxing analogy he caught McCain with a campaign equivalent of a left hook flush to the jaw. The McCain camps dazed and confused response was even ridiculed by Tom Brokaw.

Obama was looking for a way to tell his story and connect with the American people? He just did. And I think the American people will admire how he got right back in McCain's face...

I am very happy... :-)))))

Overall, I thought Barack Obama did an excellent job on his acceptance speech -- with only a couple of caveats.

First, I really had to groan out loud at his cheap, throwaway bear-baiting of "Russian aggression." It betrayed a complete and simplistic misunderstanding of not just the situation regarding South Ossetia and Georgia, but of America's active belligerence in trying to encircle and threaten Russia with needless NATO expansion. I sure hope that those Russian astronauts who keep repairing, supplying, and operating our "international" space station for us have the sophistication -- which I suspect they do -- to recognize political hot air when they hear it. Someone needs to explain to candidate Obama the true nature of American national interests. Russia counts as one of them. Georgia's pipsqueak napoleonic fantasies don't.

Second, I realize that Obama felt he had to publicly genuflect and do the obligatory smootching of hirsute Hebrew hindquarters; but fortunately he kept the grovelling and fealty-pledging to Israeli Zionism short.

Third, since the prosperity of the Clinton years owed mainly to the once-in-a-lifetime "peace dividend" from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the corresponding DECREASE in America's bloated Warfare Welfare spending, Obama's pledge to "rebuild" America's platinum-plated (and spectacularly ineffective) military only promises to make any other domestic spending proposals of his non-starters. The corrupt and wasteful American military needs a radical downsizing and subjection to at least minimal standards of management before any domestic agenda worth the name can stand any sort of chance whatsoever.

Other than the three small quibbles above that mostly negate everything else Obama said or promised, I found his speech ... well ... nice. Given the pathetic John McBush and the Geriatric Old Poops to run against, I'd say Barack Obama ought to have a decent shot at a narrow victory in November.

I'm not so sure that this wasn't planned. The holding back of his exact specifics and end-run campaign strategy in order to completely confound the other's campaign. We'll see. Explains the calmness during the dipping poll numbers. Then blammo. A severe sucker-punch. Now what does McCain Inc. do? They have less than a week and a hurricane-in-the-making.

Right, except I don't think he did it by listening to the critics. I don't find it at all surprising that Obama was the one to deliver the most direct attack on McCain's entire platform. The 'old politics' of having surrogates and VPs deliver the attacks while maintaining the high road isn't his style. He believes in having the debate, directly, personally, assertively. And he let McCain flail away with a bunch of attacks and smears that he made look childish and immature last night when he showed McCain how a grown up dialogs. I suspect McCain still won't get it, but a bunch of thoughtful Indies will see the real maturity of Obama's style vs. the snideness of McCain's

And he did it by listening to the critics and delivering not soaring rhetoric but detailing an agenda, bashing John Mc Cain and explaining precisely how he differs from the Republicans

Or perhaps it has been the strategy of the brilliant Obama campaign team all along. And perhaps laying low during August, the month when the Rep smear machine traditionally escalates, was also part of the plan. Perhaps those TPM readers who posted analogies to the Ali rope-a-dope strategy were correct.

I think, generally, folks have consistently under estimated Obama, Axelrod et al.