Liveblogging Bill Clinton's Concession Speech

It was a hard-fought primary, but in the end, Bill Clinton's old Arkansas magic just couldn't work another time. So now he's stuck with a boring old prime time slot on the second-to-the-last night of the convention, yammering about national security when he really wants to talk about math and numbers and dollars like he did in the 90s. Let's see how he muddles through...

8: 56 PM -- Wait, what? "Chain of Fools"? Really? The symbolism is thick. People are all clapping on 2 and 4, at least.

9: 01 PM -- Some loser comes out for more boring crap before Bill Clinton. Oh thank God here he is. Rapturous applause, etc. The nice thing about this terrible seat is at least you have a good view of the delegates on the floor. YESTERDAY'S GONE...

9: 03 PM -- If there are a whole bunch of Democrats in this audience who hate Bill Clinton for his tacky behavior during the primaries, they are being drowned out by all the screaming middle-aged women who still want to get with him. God, he is still more popular than his wife, isn't he?

9: 04 PM -- "I am here as a proud mother, as a proud wife..." ha ha, just kidding. Well, he got the support for that other guy out of the way pretty quickly.

9: 06 PM -- Multiple reassurances that he and Hillary will not do anything terribly obvious to sabotage the Obama candidacy.

9: 08 PM -- We are sandwiched between very young page-looking people who have been scheming for an hour to get a better seat, and finding none, they have settled for standing up and blocking the view of the very irritated people behind them. On the plus side, one of their jackets is covering your editor's chilled shoulder. It is still deathly cold in here, even in this arena of like 40,000 people.

9: 10 PM -- Michelle Obama does not like this manat all.Her seething distrust is visible even on the 75% obscured Jumbotron across the hall. Oh, right. Bill Clinton is talking. Too bad we can't hear a fucking word of it.

9: 12 PM -- "Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States." Now was that so hard? He is talking about leveraging things now, and global warming and biological weaponds. But enough about Obama! Let's talk about how Bill Clinton singlehandedly defeated AIDS, with his many corporate sponsors.

9: 16 PM -- "Wonderful new jobs for our young people." Well, that sounds nice. We'll take three! Oh, nice line -- something about the power of our example rather than the example of our power. Now everyone in the audience wants to have sex with Bill Clinton and USA!

9: 18 PM -- Ooh, Angry Bill Clinton came tonight. Finally Michelle cracks a smile. This arena is too large for everyone to shout "Yes we can!" in unison. It echoes around the hall. Tomorrow night will be a disaster.

9: 20 PM -- He has a great talent for explaining things in a way that make sense to stupid people. This is a vital talent for any American politician, and one we fear is lacking in Barack Obama, who "trusts in people's intelligence" or whatever. Like this bit that Clinton just said about "the Republicans want us to reward them for the last eight years with four more" -- reward and punishment, even morons get that. Labrador retrievers get that.

9: 23 PM -- Clinton: I was young before Barack Obama was young. But we are maybe too hard on him. He still gives a good speech, and lays it all out very simply and forcefully.

9: 25 PM -- And WOW that's it? So succinct! Next up, some boring live sex shows until Biden comes out on a carpet of human hair. Stay tuned.