A few weeks back I took on the Real Republicans who were bellyaching over the alleged exclusion of Real Republicans (read: the inclusion of too many moderates) who are scheduled to speak at the GOP Convention later this month. At the time, the Real Republicans™ (and at least one non-Republican Real Conservative™, which is worse) argued, in effect, “gee, the Democrats aren’t giving much of a forum to those who don’t toe their party line, why should our party do anything different?”

The answer to that question is now obvious. Now, with one convention down and one to go, no one’s dreading the GOP convention anymore. Instead, everyone’s gloating over John Kerry’s pathetically small “bump,” which may in fact have been a dip. It still remains to be seen what kind of a bounce, if any, George Bush will get from his convention, but at this point he’d really have to try hard to fare worse than Kerry did.

Personally, I thought the Dems did a pretty good job at the convention. With the exception of Don Mischer’s now-infamous balloon tantrum, everything went according to plan. Michael Moore caught Bill O’Reilly horribly unprepared, while the other Bill was nowhere in sight to help out. Ann Coulter’s column got spiked, which initially drew too much attention to her, but ultimately called more attention to how crappy her column was. Meanwhile, on the floor, Bill Clinton delivered a speech that earned rave reviews, from Democrats and Republicans alike. Al Sharpton kept them all entertained. John Edwards smiled and spoke about America, without mentioning how many of them he thinks there are. Joe Lieberman talked some sense and put everyone to sleep, but that too was part of the plan; everyone needed a good afternoon nap to gear up for the real speech during prime time. John Kerry ended up looking like a douche, but hey, he’s John Kerry, and there’s only so much you can do about that. At least he didn’t look like as much of a douche as he usually does. [I know, I know, he's not really a douche, technically speaking. Work with me.] Everything, except Mr. Mischer and his precious balloons, went flawlessly. Even the Hildebeest managed to open her yap without frightening my pit bull. Folks, it doesn’t get better than that, at least not for Democrats.

And therein lies the problem. A convention that “succeeds” only in riling up support among the true believers is, by definition, a failure. So it should come as little surprise that while the Democratic Convention played wonderfully for committed Democrats, and for political junkies like me who enjoy political theater but are rarely swayed by it, it failed miserably among the audience that should have been its target: the uncommitted independents who will decide November’s election.

One such independent, and perhaps part of Kerry’s -4% bounce, is my brother, Bubba Xrlq. He’s an independent, but he’s pretty liberal on most issues if not all. He’s never been a fan of George Bush, less so after Iraq failed to turn into a model democracy in record time. His is Kerry’s to lose, and so far, Kerry seems to be succeeding. Here’s the email he recently sent to my ultra-lib aunt, whose only beef with Kerry is that he isn’t liberal enough:

Aunt Rant,

I’m curious what you, as a committed Democrat, thought of the convention–not how well it spoke to you, but how well it made the case to the undecided. I’m a Bush-disliking independent, who really wants to like Kerry, so I’m certainly part of the target audience. That being said, I thought they stunk up the joint pretty badly.

There were a couple of times when the conspiracy theorist in me wondered if Karl Rove had secured a double agent in the Kerry campaign–whose idea was it to give Al Sharpton a speaking spot? I’m trying to think what an analogous bonehead maneuver would be for the Republicans: Ken Starr? Ann Coulter?

And the speech of former Republican Teresa [insert U.S. Senator surname here] certainly lent credence to my wacky conspiracy theory.

As for the big night, it seems as if Kerry thinks that being a veteran is sufficient to convince the American people that he would be a good President. Has he heard of McGovern or Carter or the two WWII veterans that lost to Bill Clinton?

Anyway, what did you think?

Bubba Xrlq