Party links

Too much material and too little time for a respectable blog post. Some links will have to do.

• Jonathan Bernstein wants the lesson of Romney's missing bounce to be that you shouldn't base a convention around an out-of-context quote or have one of your nominees lie repeatedly. Oh, and a nice description of most of the the GOP convention speeches: "Their main complaint about Obama wasn't that he ruined their businesses; it was that he didn't properly respect their success."
• John Sides says debates usually don't matter. Except, of course, the one that DU will be hosting on October 3rd.
• A great app for real-time polling on the presidential debates in the classroom.
• Good reminder from Jamelle Bouie: John Kerry out-performed the fundamentals in 2004. We tend to recall him as a crappy candidate because that's how we usually rationalize electoral loses. In fact, he was quite strong, particularly in the first debate. (Also, kudos to Kerry for mentioning Rocky IV in his DNC address this year.)
• Really, really interesting interview with Michael Grunwald about the stimulus. Obama, he argues, fulfilled a very large number of campaign promises through that one piece of legislation.
• Sasha Issenberg on why campaign reporters have such a hard time covering campaign strategists.
• My favorite photo of the campaign thus far.