There’s no doubt that the Democrats had a very successful convention last week. They were able to present as a unified party – with even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders giving a full-throated endorsement of Joe Biden. The lack of an audience prevented the kind of contagious cheering that usually accompanies convention speeches – but it also prevented the kind of dissent that marred 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton’s acceptance address.

The Dems did a particularly good job in presenting Biden as a decent person. After a week of anecdotes, how many Americans don’t know how many hours he spent commuting to D.C. while being a single father, how he was friends with Republican 2008 candidate John McCain, or how he sneaks bites of vanilla ice cream from the fridge every night? And they did a good job of attacking Trump for the COVID pandemic.

For reasons that are not clear, however, for all their talk about how horrible and “out-of-his-depth” the president has been, they didn’t provide a great deal of evidence for that conclusion. Instead they relied on their assumption that Democrats don’t like Trump (correct), without trying to make the case with specific examples. As they teach in creative writing, so they teach in political consulting – don’t just use adjectives, provide examples.

But to an extent, that’s nitpicking about the Democratic convention. In the RealClearPolitics national average Biden is at about 50% in the polling and ahead of Trump by almost 8 points.