U.S. Sen. Joe Biden [AP Photo]

American presidential politics has seen the so-called "Soccer Moms" replaced by "Hockey Moms," as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin describes herself while running for vice president on the GOP ticket with U.S. John McCain.

Mike McAleer, leader of the city's 66B Democratic ward, today said his party must target the "Dunkin' Donuts crowd" to help elect U.S. Sen. Barack Obama as president.  McAleer spoke after an event this morning at the Ironworkers Local 401 headquarters where U.S. Sen. Joe Biden made a speech. It was pretty clear that McAleer was describing blue-collar workers who might hesitate to vote for an African-American candidate.

"The Dunkin' Donuts crowd tells me we've got everything going for us but Obama," McAleer told PhillyClout contributor Dave Davies, who asked what the issue might be with Obama.  "His color," McAleer continued. " I tell them he's half-black and half-white. He's got a better perspective for everything in this country."

Biden, running for vice president, surveyed the crowd, thick with senior citizens, and ripped off a line sure to connect.  He described McCain as too close to President Bush on terrible policy decisions.  "My friend John McCain and George Bush are joined at the hip and we need a hip replacement very, very badly," Biden said.

Mayor Nutter helped warm up the crowd, saying he found speeches at the GOP convention Wednesday night by Palin and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to be repulsive.  "Between Guiliani and Gov. Palin, insults have now replaced ideas, invective has now replaced innovation."

Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin

Will Bunch wades through U.S. Sen. John McCain's speech from last night and John Baer predicts a ticket with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as V.P. will make Pennsylvania a very interesting place for the next two months.

Speaking of Palin, Jill Porter and Elmer Smith get in on the media frenzy.  And Clout cleans up on the convention ephemera.

Back here in Philly, we tell you more about the W. Wilson Goode Jr. plan to shrink City Council from 17 to 15 seats by eliminating two at-large positions reserved for minority political parties.

And our pals from over at Philly Confidential launch a story today about "three pals, some lipstick, a wig and a Taser."  Read it to believe it.

Mayor Nutter goes back to school.

Which has us thinking back to the old days:  Did you ever take a playground beating based on the outfit you wore -- or someone picked for you -- on the first day of school?

From the city's web site this afternoon.  We're just saying.

Sarah Palin at the walkthrough before tonight's speech in St. Paul. (ABC News via AP)

So Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is about to give her big-time speech at the Republican National Convention and the GOP strategy is pretty clear:  Attack the media for reporting anything that doesn't shower her with praise as a maverick compatriot cut from the same cloth as U.S. Sen. John McCain.  Nothing new there, really.  Certainly not the first time a political campaign saw the upside in trying to pick a fight with the media.

But the left wants in on the action too.  Media Matters for America tonight started circulating complaints that the media -- as if it was some sort of giant monolithic agency that doesn't run the gamut from Fox News to MSNBC -- has bought into McCain's reasons for picking Palin to run for vice president.  A sampler:  Media Matters says the media has ignored the fact that Palin switched her position on the so-called "bridge to nowhere," that she hired a lobbyist to bring back millions in federal "earmarks" to the tiny town of Wasilla when she was mayor there, and that she faces an ethics investigation from alleged pressure from her administration to fire her former brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper.

As you can see from the links above, the media has chased all those angles pretty well.  In fact, Media Matters credits many media outlets for reporting on the stories that the media won't report.  Really.

That's not what the GOP has been complaining about, at least not up on the surface.  Instead, we're hearing a roar of righteous indignation -- from both Karl Rove on Fox News and Pat Buchanan on MSNBC -- about how Palin has been treated poorly in media reporting.  The chief complaint:  That it was revealed that Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant.  The chief point left unsaid:  McCain's camp revealed that first in a press release on Monday.  They did so in response to the rumors circulating on left-wing blogs during the holiday weekend about the personal lives of the Palin family.  But a Lexis-Nexis search shows that no so-called mainstream media outlet -- print, wire or broadcast -- reported the pregnancy or the other rumors until the McCain camp announced it.  The rumors were included for context, to explain why the McCain camp, which had known about the pregnancy but not announced it earlier, decided to change direction on all that. 

But why let all that get in the way of an effective strategy, no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on?

Here's a dispatch from PhillyClout contributor Dave Davies: