The conventions and global warming: Let’s forget

Jonathan Chait points out some perfectly obvious but little noticed national jujitsu that Bill Clinton threw us for last night: 

In an otherwise factual and persuasive speech, Bill Clinton made one argument so astonishingly brass I half-expected the crowd to laugh him out of the hall. It came when Clinton cited his own presidency as a bygone era of partisan cooperation, when he couldn’t hate the Republican Party, and the two sides would come together for the good of the country. This nostalgic riff went down like a charm, not only with the partisan crowd but with the blown-away commentariat afterward. Did none of them remember the Clinton presidency? Where the mainstream Republicans accused him daily of socialism and the conservative ones accused him of being a murderer? The apocalyptic government shutdown fights? Impeachment?

Dave Weigel points out the man who wasn't there: 

No Al Gore at this convention, at all, but nobody seems to care.

And Dave Roberts points out what's not being said:

Here we are, six days into the political conventions and no politician has even mentioned the biggest problem facing humanity.

Is there a connection of denial here?

Stray thought: What I'd like to see and hear Barack Obama talk about tonight is enemies. 

Enemies in our present, real and imagined; and enemies in our future, real ones, like global warming.