Sarah Palin will decide the election tomorrow night.
I called her selection a political master stroke, and I still believe that. However, since then, the McCain campaign has done almost nothing correct with her. The constraints on her have been rarely defensible and mostly ridiculous.
Palin’s greatest strengths are her charisma and her background. To have caged her to this degree, and to have so obviously and severely controlled her permissible answers on those rare occasions she is “let out,” is absurd. It’s like no one on the campaign is paying any attention to why she is appealing in the first place.
Mark Goldblatt has the right idea.
Palin needs to come out with candor and swagger. The person who delivered that convention speech needs to be the person at the podium tomorrow night.
It’s not too late. If the strategy is to trap Biden into being the rhetorical buzzkill he is, contrasted with straight talk and good humor, then this is a contest.
But if they’re prepping her to try to out-Biden Biden, then it’s over.
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I have no real problem with Palen, except for her “Joe Six-Pack” remark. Yeah, I want Jethro Bodine in Washington. The problem I have with this election is the number of people who say they are voting for McCain because Palin is a woman. That’s every bit as stupid as voting for Obama because he’s black. As I was walking into the grocery store the other day there were women trying to get people to register to vote. I overheard one passerby reply to the question, “Are you registered to vote?” with, “You mean, like, this year?” I had to restrain myself from saying something like, “Please DON”T VOTE!” We have far too many uninformed people voting already.
Cheryl, all of the “vote!” propaganda gets on my nerves for the same reason. Moreover, the right to vote is also the right not to vote.
I’ll be surprised if tomorrow isn’t one of the more entertaining debates in recent history.
(BTW, if my choice is between him and a career Washington insider, I definitely do want Jethro Bodine in Washington…)
Technically, we don’t have the right to vote in national elections. Or did I hallucinate and not see where that was in the constitution? But, I am still voting this go round.
I have the feeling that if Obama had been white then McCain would be facing Hillary Clinton right now. The fact is that both parties want minorities/females on the national ticket. With the tight margins in the last two elections Republicans and Democrats are using any angle they can to swing a few more votes their way. Personally, I think Palin is more qualified than Obama. She has real executive experience and has demonstrated that she’ll even stand up against the corrupt powers in her own party. Obama on the other hand has only offered platitudes about hope and change and really not done a whole heck of a lot legislatively.
As for Joe Sixpack…well neither party willing pass up the uneducated vote. While the Repubs are appealing to the trailer court set the Dems are running shuttles from the homeless shelters to the polls.
Bob, you’re going to just disappear one day, talking about Obama that way. He is The One we’ve been waiting for. You start speaking of him messianically and audaciously hopefully at once, or suffer the consequences.
And who says Joe Sixpack is uneducated?
I just don’t think Palin is aware enough about handling questions she is not prepped for to save McCain from himself. The debate is going to be a tightwalk for Bidin, he’ll lose it if he is too rough on her and yet he needs to push enough to get her to trip herself up. Maybe McCain will send in Tina Fey as a body double.
Buzzregog: To me, the mistake she’s/they’ve made there is not acknowledging her lack of knowledge about this or that, and giving it a diplomatic “yes, but I will.” There’s no reason for the governor of Alaska to have a comprehensive understanding of trade agreements with China, or the precise structure of the Pakistani government, or whatever, and there needn’t have been any tongue-clucking over whatever she didn’t know. There were good and ready answers to these kinds of questions that would have both defused the bomb and forwarded a positive agenda. Instead, she/they took the game on dictated terms and suffered accordingly.
As (I think Derbyshire) said this week, we’re electing an executive, not a philosopher king. Hell, a sitting president doesn’t know all this shit off the top of his/her head either. How could s/he? But, s/he is surrounded by people who do have the answers s/he needs to make decisions. That’s the way it works. No shame in saying so, if it’s said so correctly. Again, see Goldblatt above.
Incidentally, I fully expect Biden to make an ass of himself. He rarely disappoints in this regard.
It has crossed my mind that it might be risky making unflattering comments about the Great Leader. There is indeed some possibility that I may be rounded up by the Obama Youth and frog marched down Whitesburg Drive wearing a dunce cap and bearing a placard branding me an enemy of the revolution.
While Palin’s media reputation as a backwater, redneck moron is exaggerated by popular media (SNL, Bill Mahr, et. al.) so too is Obama’s “The One” reputation (RNC, et. al.).
I do believe that you’re correct that Palin can decide the election tonight. I don’t think she can win it for the Republicans but she has every possibility of losing it. As a gambler, I see the upside of tonight’s debate as slight for the McCain camp and the downside as huge. This disparity is so great, in my opinion, that there is a 50:1 chance that the Republicans find a reason to cancel tonight. Yes, even at this late a date.
I’ve still not reached a conclusion on Palin. While my gut feeling about her isn’t good, I do have several very smart friends (you being one) that seem to like her a great deal. I have questioned whether or not my gut feeling is caused by my desire to deny the Republicans another 4 years leading our executive branch. On that same line, have you considered if Palin’s appeal to you is your desire to keep a liberal out of the Oval Office?
On voting: I agree with you Bo! Just because you can vote, doesn’t mean you are compelled to vote. Additionally, not voting does not negate your First Amendment right to complain later. I will vote but since I live in a state where my vote won’t count (I do intend to vote for Obama at this time), I could easily just sit home that day.
Lastly, much has been made about gender and race so I’ll toss out a fact and an opinion for discussion fodder…
Exit polls during the the democratic nomination race showed 5%-7% of those polled openly admitted that they would NOT vote for a black man for president. If that many will admit it, how many aren’t? Therefore, if Obama doesn’t go into election night with a minimum of a 7% lead in the polls over McCain, the Republicans win.
So you really think that it will be decided by the dabate?
Frankly, I was bored, which was particularly disappointing given the potential for theater.
I don’t see it changing much. Both did well here and there; both did not so well here and there; but no real gaffes or knockouts. I think you liked your candidate.
Carey: It was Obama himself who said all of the following:
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
“At some point in the evening, a light is going to shine down and you will have an epiphany and you’ll say, ‘I have to vote for Barack.’”
This stuff may clear your filter for regular old politispeak, but to me it sounds ridiculous. I think I’ll start calling him Neo.
Of course I don’t want a liberal in the White House, unless it’s one of the classical variety. I submit my public and longstanding apathy until Palin got in as proof that such is not my motivation. (After all, McCain isn’t a vanilla conservative, but he certainly isn’t liberal.)
I’m not sure how much I believe in in-the-booth racism. I guess we’ll see.