Hillary Clinton enjoying surge of enthusiasm after her speech in California calling Donald Trump "dangerously incoherent."

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

“Yesterday in San Diego, I had the opportunity to—” 

Before Hillary Clinton could finish the sentence, or even mention the speech, the crowd in Culver City cut her off with cheers. Later that day, in Westminster, it happened again. And again in Santa Ana. And again in San Bernardino. 

By the time she arrived here on Saturday in Oxnard, Calif. — her ninth stop since delivering Thursday’s major foreign policy address against Donald Trump — she seemed ready for the spontaneous applause that filled the gym at Hueneme High. As she spoke, a handmade sign popped up from the crowd: “Madam President,” it read in thick red and black sharpie. “We were proud of your speech in S.D.” 

In the days since San Diego, aides and supporters have said they see the speech “breaking through the noise,” as one put it — and resonating on the trail to a degree Clinton hasn’t seen in past efforts to draw sustained attention to Trump’s failed businesses, for instance, or to his comments about profiting from the housing crisis.

Here's more courtesy of Tuscon News Now:

As the likely Democratic nominee toured California Saturday, crowds burst into applause at the mere mention of Thursday's speech, in which Clinton cast Trump as dangerously unqualified to be president. Supporters say they feel more confident and excited in the wake of the address - which could benefit Clinton, who has struggled to inspire enthusiasm throughout the drawn-out primary contest. 

"I loved it. I was waiting for that," said Leslie Milke, 56, of Woodland Hills, a professor at Los Angeles Mission College, who saw Clinton. "I knew she was capable of that kind of speech....It really made me feel energized. It made me feel like we can win."

As I said last Thursday this speech was the first time that I really felt inspired by Hillary Clinton, and clearly I was not the only one to be inspired. 

Is anybody drawing larger crowds than Bernie Sanders right now?

Courtesy of Time Magazine: 

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders addressed more than 11,000 people in the biggest rally of his campaign in Phoenix on Saturday, building on the growing tide of enthusiasm for his campaign. The 

Democratic candidate for president spoke for nearly an hour, focusing on the central themes of his campaign, including income inequality, money in politics, and growing wages. 

Though he remains 40 percentage points behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Sanders has seen a surge in interest among liberals in the Democratic base with a message of economic populism and a defiant tone.

As far as I can tell Hillary has only attracted crowds numbering around 5,000. Which is still quite impressive, but Bernie is blowing the doors off right now.

It should also be mentioned that this rally was in Arizona, which is not usually considered a bastion of liberalism to say the least.

We also know that Trump bragged about drawing larger crowds than Sanders and apparently drew one estimated to have been around 5,000 strong.

However we also know that he had to pay people to show up.

Somehow I doubt that Bernie Sanders has to pay people to overfill his venues.

Let's start this beautiful morning with a victory speech from our President shall we?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Damn, can that man give a speech or what?

For the second time I got to share an historic election with my daughter by my side. For that alone I will be forever in this President's debt.

Update: Here is the text courtesy of the Huffington Post.

Let's start the day on a high note. What do you say? Update!

Here is the President yesterday speaking in front of an estimated crowd of 15,000 supporters in Richmond, Virginia.

According to a PPP poll the President leads Romney 51 to 46 in Virginia, though of course the Fox poll still has Romney leading by two percentage points. However judging from the size of that crowd I tend to agree with PPP and Nate Silver that the President has some O-mentum in the "Old Dominion."

That is not the only place that Obama has started to put some distance between himself and his flip-flopping opponent. Currently in what is considered the focal point of this election, Ohio, Obama now leads Mitt the Twit by five points among early voters, according to a Time magazine poll.

All of this is of course great news, and I have a feeling the news will only get better.

However we still have eleven more days before this long journey comes to an end, and even after that I think we all realize that in many ways it will only be the end of one skirmish, with many more just over the horizon.

Update: Here is a graphic, that I borrowed from Andrew Sullivan, which demonstrates all of the various pathways to victory possible for President Obama in November.

As you can see it is looking pretty good.

Possibly the BEST endorsement that Joe Biden, and his running mate Barack Obama, have received thus far.

"He talks about not eating crocodiles because they will bite you." Well he's right you know, they WILL bite you.

If only EVERY Obama/Biden supporter was that enthusiastic. And adorable.

The debate certainly does not seem to have negatively affected enthusiasm for the President.

This was the crowd that turned out to see the President at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus yesterday.

Estimates are that there were 30,000 people that attended the rally, and according to this newscast there were an additional 6,000 that were turned away.

I guess the President's "poor" debate performance did not have any affect on THEIR feelings toward him, now did it?

Over 18,000 people stand in the rain to see President Obama during soggy Milwaukee rally. Obama 1- Enthusiasm Gap 0.

The crowd

The rain soaked overflow

Courtesy of Wisconsin State Journal:

Obama, speaking to an energized throng of 18,000 people in an at-times-rainy outdoor amphitheater, made a point of renewing his pledge to create a million manufacturing jobs as he campaigned in a state whose manufacturing industry has been hard hit in recent years. 

With just six weekends left before Election Day, both candidates were devoting considerable time to raising cash to continue bankrolling the deluge of ads already saturating hotly contested states. 

Baseball great Hank Aaron supplied the star power at Obama’s Milwaukee fundraisers. 

“As one who wore the number 44 on his back for decades, I ask you to join me in helping the 44th president of the United States hit a grand slam,” Aaron said. 

I know that Hank Aaron is much beloved, but you KNOW 18,000 people did stand in the  rain just to see him.

Obama 2012!

(H/T to the Obama Diary for the pics.)

Sarah Palin accuses the President of issuing a "slap in the face" to the American people by offering promises of a better future. Yeah WHO does that in politics?

Click anywhere to start video, but watch the precariously perched roadkill wig.

Hannity starts off accusing the President of breaking his promises and of a laundry list of failures. So who better to bring in to talk about being a failure than the Lunatic from Lake Lucille herself?

However apparently out of fear that the dipshit will say something truly stupid again Fox only had her on for a grand total of about five minutes, with plenty of video interspersed throughout to cut down on her ranting time. (The Palin word salad begins at the 3:00 mark)

Hannity starts off asking Palin whether or not we should hold the President accountable for his old promises (You know the ones the GOP keep blocking him from keeping) before believing in his new ones.

Batshit -crazy Barbie:

(Starts off barely audibly) "Well we do. And those repeated promises, and then as you are suggesting, a whole host of new promises..um really is a slap in the face of the electorate. There's an estimation of an unintelligent voting block out there I think that...uh...President Obama is assuming will continue to want to get free STUFF, despite free stuff will replace freedom. And he's just assuming that that voting block will be large enough to get him back in there, but I just pray that Americans will open their eyes between now and November when they know that they'll have to make that choice between free stuff and freedom, you can't have both."

So in a nutshell the woman who charged the state of Alaska a per diem to stay in her own house, and often demands bendy straws, free airfare, and hotel accommodations for family members before agreeing to give a speech, is accusing Obama supporters of wanting "free stuff?"

Okay I was either just overcome with irony, or the home studio lights reflecting off that cheap gaudy Star of David just blinded me. Hang on.

Okay I feel better now let's move on to Hannity accusing the Democrats of putting on, and these are HIS words, a "boring," "stale," and "uninspiring" convention. (Sorry it took me awhile to finally stop laughing out loud at that. Hey Hannity have you HEARD Jennifer Granholm?) And then asking Palin which "adjectives" SHE would use.

Blank stare Barbie:  

"Uhhhh, well last night it was very painful to watch ("Painful" THAT'S an adjective, right?) the President's speech. (That's cause it was full of all those big wig elite words and such!) And..and..not just because we knew he was not telling Americans the truth, with his suggestions of how well things were going and how well things will go if we gave him four more years of these repeated felled (sic) policies. But you're right there was a lack of enthusiasm, and a lack of passion for this country. A lack of sincerity when it came to, for instance, his claims of supporting our troops and yet many of us look back just a number of months ago and remember a specific about the troops, for instance, where he was ready and willing to throw our troops under the bus if he didn't get his way on budgets and debt ceiling increases, he was going to withhold, or was willing to, the troops paychecks! So as he talked about the support that he has for, again for instance, the troops, all you have to do is go back in time to the very recent past and realize that he contradicts himself  he really is...uh the antithesis of consistency that you would hope would be in a President."

Okay first off all of that is bullshit! The reason that the debt ceiling almost did not get raised was due to obstructionism from the Teabagggers that SHE helped to get elected. But what can one expect from a woman who set the very standard for avoiding the truth that the current GOP seems to have adopted as their most important political platform?

What is more telling here is that Palin and Hannity are clearly doing their level best to deny the reality of how well the Democratic convention came off as compared to the steaming pile of political malfeasance and crazed elderly antics that represented THEIR convention.

They are essentially urinating all over the President's parade, but the fact is he, and the rest of the Democratic party, won't even bother to take notice as they march toward certain victory in November, leaving a fuming Sean Hannity, and soon to be unemployed Sarah Palin, choking on their dust.

Hey I have an idea. Maybe if Palin plopped an even LARGER fright wig on her pointy noggin, while wearing an even MORE obnoxious religious symbol against her bony anorexic clavicle, somebody might actually pay attention to her bullshit.

Hey, it's worth a try! After all, what ELSE does she have to offer?

The only headline I could come up with is "Holy Shit!" Update!

I missed these pictures of the President meeting with college students in Charlottesville, Virginia from last Wednesday, which is a shame because they are amazing!

On a day where temperatures reached 84 degrees, the President still managed to attract a crowd that numbered close to 7,500.

Enthusiasm gap my ass!

You know seeing these pictures really makes me hopeful that even with ALL of the bullshit that the GOP is throwing at the voters of America, that they will STILL do the right thing for this country.

Well let me update this bad boy: Here are a few pictures from the President's visit to Urbandale, Iowa just today.

Damn, that's impressive!

(H/T for the photos goes to the Obama Diary.)

MItt Romney invested in firm that disposed of aborted fetuses. Pro-life heads to explode in 3..2..1.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion. 

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

Wow, making money off of aborted fetuses! I have to say that if THIS connection had been well known during the primary, I don't think that Romney would have had a snowball's chance in hell of winning his party's nomination.

I have always believed that, despite their endorsement of this candidate, the Evangelicals were always going to vote for Romney while holding their noses, but I am pretty sure that something like this is going to dramatically tamp down the enthusiasm factor, and inspire some of the true believers to give this election a pass.

Let's end the day on a high note. Such as President Obama's visit to Washington-Lee High School.

The President also sat down for a round table discussion with the students to discuss college affordability, which you can see here.

I keep hearing the Right Wing say that Obama has lost the youth vote, or that they are not as enthusiastic as 2008, but I have yet to see it.

The Atlantic thinks that Obama's strategy of reaching out for the youth vote might have also have another, more subliminal, agenda:

What Obama's really doing may be more about optics: the symbolic value of all those pictures and video where he's surrounded by fresh-faced, enthusiastic young adults. Every one of those images, and their repetition, drives home his association with the new generation, the future, and the transformative promise of progress -- the mantle of hope that he's straining so hard to reclaim after a strenuous, wearing first term. It's of a piece with his new slogan, "Forward," and his campaign's portrayal of Mitt Romney as the candidate of the past. The cheering crowds of young people are there to serve as a stirring, hopeful sight to older voters, whether they're remembering their own youthful aspirations or thinking about the future that awaits their children and grandchildren. And it's an effect Romney can't summon, as evidenced by his appearance at an Ohio college last week: Some students appeared to struggle to remain conscious as Romney delivered a lengthy riff on office supplies.

Well if that is indeed Obama's strategy, I think it's working.

(Photos courtesy of the Obama Diary.)