It’s easy to forget, amid the frustration with his weak-kneed 2004 campaign, that John Kerry is actually a very talented politician. He is offering up exactly what this convention has been missing. Strong linkages between McCain and Bush. Humor. And a great refrain that has become a call and response with the audience. “Who can we trust to keep America safe? Barack Obama!”

Kerry continued, “How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself? How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first?”

Now a tribute to Obama’s (very white!) World War II vet uncle, who liberated a concentration camp and is here at the Pepsi Center tonight.

It’s easy to see why so many Democrats believed Kerry’s life story as a Vietnam vet who came home to protest the war would be a winner. A shame that it wasn’t.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.