They went in for big money.
Corporate grants.
Government subsidies.

In fact, I think C-Span is the best way to gain a handle on the race.  I learn much more watching unedited campaign events than from the babbling morons on cable news.

And when C-Span does have babbling morons they are featured in longer appearances, also unedited, which are generally more academic in nature.

"Biden just mentioned 'prosperity.' Meantime, White House trashes and bullies Americans for Prosperity."
- Michelle Malkin via Twitter

Obama n'a rien dit mais il l'a bien dit.

Austerity does not work, so why is Obama so determined to go there?

I think he's really stuck in the republican way of doing things.

Clinton got the deficit under control by raising taxes - some of them retroactively as I recall.

President Obama repeated a claim made by former President Bill Clinton the night before, but even less accurately. Clinton referred to a "plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade." Obama leaves off the time line, and makes it sound like the current $1 trillion deficit would be eliminated, resulting in a surplus.

But, while the numbers seem large, the results are unimpressive. At the end of the 10-year budget window, Obama would have the national debt at a 76.5 percent of gross domestic product. That actually would be an increase over the 74.2 percent of GDP in this year. In contrast, the debt reduction plan envisioned by the Simpson-Bowles commission -- cited by the president -- would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio close to 60 percent.

Moreover, independent analysts have criticized the administration for claiming some $800 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end. (The Bush administration had started the wars on borrowed funds.) Then, the president proposes to spend a good chunk of the nonexistent money on other spending -- as he put it in his speech, "rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways."

The $1 trillion in savings negotiated with Republicans, mentioned by the president, actually accounts for the bulk of his proposed reduction in spending. Indeed, much of the president's debt reduction would come from tax increases on the wealthy, not spending cuts.

They put it better when Bill Clinton said it:

The repeated claim that Obama's budget reduces the deficit by $4 trillion is simply not accurate.

By the administration's math, you have nearly $3.8 trillion in spending cuts, compared to $1.5 trillion in tax increases (letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income Americans). Presto, $1 of tax increases for every $2.50 of spending cuts.

But virtually no serious budget analyst agreed with this accounting. The $4 trillion figure, for instance, includes counting some $1 trillion in cuts reached a year ago in budget negotiations with Congress. So no matter who is the president, the savings are already in the bank.

Moreover, the administration is also counting $848 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end.

In other words, by projecting war spending far in the future, the administration is able to claim credit for saving money it never intended to spend. (Imagine taking credit for saving money on buying a new car every year, even though you intended to keep your car for 10 years.)

Rather than good arithmetic, independent budget analysts called the maneuver "a major budget gimmick."

The administration also counts $800 billion in savings in debt payments (from lower deficits) as a "spending cut," which is a dubious claim. We didn't realize that debt payments were now considered a government program.

There are a number of other games being played, so fake money is being used to pay for real spending projects. In effect, most of Obama's claimed deficit reduction comes from his proposed tax increases.

U.S. job creation grew at a distressingly slow pace in August, as employers added just 96,000 positions and more discouraged people stopped looking for work, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Despite the weak growth, the unemployment rate dipped from 8.3 to 8.1 percent. But even that was bad news. The jobless rate shrank only because more than 300,000 workers dropped out of the labor force in August, following a trend that has accelerated with the nation's economic problems. The Labor Department counts only those who are actively seeking a job as unemployed.

The report also said that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in July and June than first estimated. The revisions mean that employers have added just 139,000 jobs a month since the beginning of the year, below last year's average of 153,000.

And while Modern Monetary Theory's proponents take Keynes as their starting point and advocate aggressive deficit spending during recessions, they're not that type of Keynesians. Even mainstream economists who argue for more deficit spending are reluctant to accept the central tenets of Modern Monetary Theory. Take Krugman, who regularly engages economists across the spectrum in spirited debate. He has argued that pursuing large budget deficits during boom times can lead to hyperinflation. Mankiw concedes the theory's point that the government can never run out of money but doesn't think this means what its proponents think it does.

Technically it's true, he says, that the government could print streams of money and never default. The risk is that it could trigger a very high rate of inflation. This would "bankrupt much of the banking system," he says. "Default, painful as it would be, might be a better option."

The GOP supported a lot of their claims with evidence that was problematic to incorrect.

The Dems did some of that too.

But the more damaging thing they did was claiming to support things that they just haven't been supporting.

But in the conventions battle, this was clear advantage Dems from the opening day and each day thereafter.

No Q he would have been our best candidate and, unlike MikeyD, wouldn't have stood passively as Poppy-Atwater kicked him in the shins:  they would have gotten a knockdown blow to the jaw in return.