James Forsyth

Day two and again what the press want to talk about is the Clintons.  Tonight Hillary speaks and, to be fair, she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. If she takes it to John McCain, the pundits will say look what the Democrats are missing. But if she talks more about her primary campaign and Obama, she’ll be accused of pulling her punches. The word is that she will indeed go after McCain hard, something that the Democrats failed to do in prime time last night. The problem is that the keynote former Virginia Governor Mark Warner is not a red-meat speaker so he’ll likely not hit McCain hard. The contrast will set off chatter about how the Clintons are the only Democrats who know how to play hardball.

Tonight’s message is going to be all about Obama and the economy. The Democrats want to paint Obama as a tribune of the middle class and as a member of it; they want to reduce the sense of otherness about him, what Mark Penn called his ‘lack of American roots.’  This is a crucial task, if they can’t do this then you have to expect the undecideds to break heavily for McCain which given the current closeness of the race would be enough to put him in the White House. In the security queue we got talking to one of tonight’s featured speakers, Tom Balanoff, a Union official from Chicago who is getting a few minutes in cable primetime to describe Obama’s community work there.

If there is a Labour leadership election, the candidates are going to need slogans and in an actual contest they’ll need something that draws a contrast. (With no opponent, Brown could run under the banner, ‘Gordon Brown for Britain.’) Thinking about what slogans, the various possible candidates might use does give you an idea of what they’re trying to sell. In Miliband’s case youth and a bit of excitement about Labour again, for Johnson an ability to unite the party and ease the dislike that the public feel towards the government while Jack Straw wants to emphasise his ability to steady the ship.

Time Magazine: One of the biggest moments in the campaign is going to be your announcement of a Vice President. What is that decision going to tell voters about you? Barack Obama: Hopefully, the same thing that my campaign has told the American people about me. That I think through big decisions, I get a lot of input from a lot of people and that, ultimately, I try to surround myself with people who are about getting the job done and who are not about ego, self-aggrandizement, getting their names in the press, but are focused on what's best for the American people. I think people will see that I'm not afraid to have folks around me who complement my strengths and who are independent. I'm not a believer in a government of yes-men.

The Conservatives have jumped on the confusion in the government’s foreign policy revealed by Nick Brown’s outburst on Comment is Freee (see Fraser’s post), with William Hague asking the Prime Minister to clarify who speaks for the government on foreign policy—the Foreign Secretary or the Deputy Chief Whip?  Gordon Brown has to get a grip. He needs to tell his attacks dogs—who are by all accounts straining at the leash—that foreign policy is off limits. British foreign policy can’t be turned into a battleground for the Labour party’s factional fighting.