Wait, are people on the left supposed to believe that government is the engine of job growth?  That doesn't make any sense.  

Calling business (where most of our jobs and the majority of our GDP exists) the "engine of job growth" seems pretty non-controversial to me.  Does that make me a right-winger?

Great speech!  But he actually makes a goof right off the top: only 43 Americans have taken the presidential oath...

Obama just called Sarah Palin a pig and John McCain an old fish, all within one artfully constructed soundbyte of plausible deniability.

I think we're going to be ok.

Hello plausible deniability!

To be more on a little more on-message, I think Obama needs to come out and say:

"The reason Washington always fails to protect our kids and protect our families is because sleazy politicians like John McCain, Sarah Palin and George Bush like to play political games with issues as important as the threat of child predators."

You're basically comparing Obama's convention peak to McCain's convention peak.  We've never had back-to-back conventions before, so looking at past elections isn't terribly helpful.

It's a bounce; bounces fade.  Don't worry about it.

* ideology

Disregarding ideologically, I'd say an equivalent would be John Kerry tapping Barack Obama following Obama's 04 convention speech.  

He wasn't (and isn't) as big a leftie as Palin is to the right, but there would have been considerable excitement among progressives, I think, accompanied by the same questions regarding his experience and readiness, etc. etc.

What went down?  I missed it

I don't think the polls coming out these days, especially this weekend (between conventions, over a holiday) actually do matter at this point.  Too much noise and uncontrollable variables, not too mention unprecedented situations (back-to-back conventions, etc.).

We should probably give it a couple weeks before diving into the polls too heavily.

* through

I don't know why any politician would trust a background vet that didn't include any sort of background investigation, even one as superficial as a look throw local paper coverage.

Good point, it was written in 1892.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more people on Barack Obama's campaign payroll than there are in Palin's State House, and they've been running the two for approximately the same amount of time...

Your entire analysis is based on Biden's impact over the next 80 days, not the next 8 years.  We should be more concerned with his abilities as a potential VP, not a VP candidate.

And in that sense, Biden is a solid and confident pick.