DNC speeches will top RNC nonsense

"Highlights" of Republican convention leave Democrats low bar to contend with

The Democratic National Convention is set to kick-off tonight, with several speakers to speak during the next few days and in prime time (tonight, Michelle Obama will speak). President Barack Obama will accept the party's official nomination on Thursday night, with Wisconsin's own Tammy Baldwin speaking earlier in that evening as well.

The DNC could potentially upstage the Republican convention held last week, for a few reasons. First, it's the latter of the two conventions, meaning the president's speech later this week will be fresher in the minds of voters come time for the debates and the election itself.

Second, and more importantly, the GOP didn't deliver a "knock-out punch" during its own convention. It didn't even deliver a decent haymaker (OK, enough with the boxing terms). In fact, the highlights of the RNC included whether a hurricane would drastically hit the event (and the inappropriate comments that followed the storm's departure), blatant racism on the part of some delegates, a speech delivered by vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan that was riddled with inaccuracies, and a confusing conversation between Clint Eastwood and a chair.

Those "highlights" are problems for Republicans for many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that presidential nominee Mitt Romney's speech wasn't as remarkable as everything else that went down last week. And when your presidential candidate can't pull off a remarkable performance at his own nominating convention, it spells problems for your party when November rolls around.

Indeed, the Republican convention only netted Romney a 1 percent bump, according to CNN.com. The "improvement" is within the statistical margin of error, meaning it's possible that no "bump" even exists at all.

The Republicans in effect gave President Obama a huge gift by having one of the worst conventions held in recent memory. The president need only to have a speech that is memorable in order to come out ahead of Romney before the debates. That shouldn't be too difficult of a task for Obama to carry out.