RNC Day Two -- The Obama Bounce
I have to admit that I had a ball watching the RNC tonight. I turned the audio way down and enjoyed the constant HD close-ups of the GOP party faithful. I don't want to engage in too many cliches, but what I saw definitely didn't look like America. It looked, instead, like a predominantly elderly, white and prosperous slice of America -- with a disproportionate number of goofballs mixed in. Sorry, but true.
I turned the volume up, I admit, for the speeches by Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman. Two greater cynics would be hard to find! Thompson's usual cornpone act went on seemingly forever. Nothing like a Gucci-heeled corporate lobbyist railing against the Washington Establishment and soiling the persona of Obama.
Special shame, of course, for Joe Lieberman who directly attacked his Democratic colleague Barack Obama. Then again, some of us have the luxury of saying we were never taken in by Holy Joe and refused to vote for him in 2000. Give me another opportunity and I would make the same decision.
OK, enough of that. Here's the real news on RNC Day Two: Obama has now opened a 6-9% lead in all major tracking polls and in some surveys has now crossed the 50% mark:
Rasmussen's tracking poll, which had the race for the White House essentially tied on August 28th now shows Obama up by 6 points, joining Gallup's daily tracking poll, in which Obama's expanded his lead over McCain to 8 points. Hotline's latest shows a 9-point spread, and CBS shows Obama up by 8. Real Clear Politics rolling average of recent polls shows Obama up by 6.4 points.
In the Gallup Poll, Obama now has the support of 50 percent of registered voters (to McCain's 42 percent), the first time he's hit that mark and his highest level of support to date.
In CNN's polling, we get an indication of how the selection of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin played into the bounce. In its last pre-convention poll, which didn't mention vice presidential candidates, McCain led Obama by 2 points (42-40). In the latest, which did mention the candidates' running mates, Obama/Biden are up by 3 percent over McCain/ Palin (48-45), a 5-point swing. According to CBS, 71 percent of Americans said they watched the Dems' convention, including 63 percent of Republicans. CNN notes, "the convention made people who watched more likely to vote for the Democratic ticket." By a 51-32 spread, registered voters said the convention made them more likely to vote Dem come November.
Say it ain't so, Joe.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Regarding the GOP’s traitor trophy, NPR’s Ron Elving had a brief, but great, contrast of Lieberman’s speech tonight versus the speech Zell Miller made 4 years ago. Whereas Zell Miller basically went nuts (… remember Miller calling out Chris Matthews to a duel?) in praising GWB to the high heavens, Lieberman seemed to be offering rather “weak tea” (Elving’s words) plea to borderline Democratic or Independent voters to vote for McCain.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I hope your sprightly confidence in a smashing Obama victory come November is justified and that worries to the contrary will prove to be just alarmism.
But there are so many doofuses in our society who stand ready to vote for Bush’s Third Term no matter how extravagantly he and his cronies have in many ways irreversibly trashed the nation and the rest of the world.
If these people prevail and McCain manages to assume office, whether or not he survives his term, nothing can stop the slide of the United States to its new status: nuclear-powered banana republic.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Importing it’s bananas….
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I think Florida might be within reach:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/anti-jewish-ter.html
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Irony is back with a vengeance.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman.
A pair of draft dodgers from back in the day.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:30 am
Thanks, reg. I’ve now managed to link Sarah Palin to … Barack Obama.
This is great fun, and also very meaningful, if you happen to think that links are very important. Very, very meaningful.
Sarah Palin attended a church service at Wasilla Bible Church where the executive director of Jews for Jesus, David Brickner, gave a presentation. Messianic Judaism is a very small world, so it’ s likely that Brickner has crossed paths with Dr. Leonard Horowitz; in any case, the two clearly share certain unusual religious beliefs, including apocalyptic ones. Dr. Horowitz has advised the Nation of Islam about vaccine program resistance, and also probably came to their attention because of his theories that HIV might have been engineered as part of a program of genocide against black people. (Horowitz also lived for a while in right-wing-militia-infested Sandpoint, Idaho, which was Sarah Palin’s birthplace.) The Nation of Islam provided security at a notorious press conference given by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during which Rev. Wright defended his longstanding association with Louis Farrakhan, and also defended his belief in AIDS-as-genocide by reference to a book by Dr. Horowitz. And, of course, Obama is clearly linked to Wright.
I’d flesh all this out a little more for you, but I am in a hurry to finish this next batch of meth, so I can use the proceeds to buy some more M16s and RPGs before my men and I head out. I admit was taken in by Sarah’s little game. For a while. But now I see how closely linked she is to the coming islamic takeover of America, after our nation is weakened by savage black-white race war. So there’s nothing left to do but take down as many of the U.N.’s black helicopters as we can, before we die in a blaze of glory. I know that I’ll be with my militia brothers in heaven, so I don’t care. I welcome it, actually.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:35 am
“Thanks, reg. I’ve now managed to link Sarah Palin to … Barack Obama.”
Uh…what took you so long ? The “experience” card pretty much assured that out of the gate. But I see what you mean…Palin sitting through crazy reverend speeches is good news for…John McCain !
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:54 am
Oh - I wrote that before I read the OCD part of your comment. Which is funny, but I doubt it will be on Headline News or US magazine. Thought you were simply saying something which is, in fact, the Dems worst vulnerability here - i.e. attacking Palin has the danger of Dems mirroring rather than refuting stuff the GOP has raised as concerns about Obama, which since he’s #1 and she’s #2 automatically diminishes him. Even if the Dem argument is sound. The interesting thing about this isn’t Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but what I’m seeing as the liklihood of a weird jiujitsu being set in motion.
I’m starting to wonder if McCain’s team didn’t choose Palin in some kind of “poisoned pawn” strategy, to start to get the Democrats - or at least the media and enough down-line Dems and netroots if not Obama’s team directly - to go after Palin’s manifest vulnerabilities with such a vengeance that she starts to symbolize an argument against Obama that they hadn’t been making successfully prior. But this time you’ve got the other side making it and making it noisily. Otherwise it’s baffling.
On the other hand, there’s some stuff coming out of GOP circles that’s at such a high level of stupidity, it could just have been McCain being impulsive since he was pissed he couldn’t have his buddy Joe (which I contend would have made the strongest ticket - with the 2000 Democratic VP up there in a year when people don’t want to vote Republican but might have some Qs about Obama, legitimate or not.) And now you’ve got guys like Graham or neo-con national security heavies like Frank Gaffney making fools of themselves with pretzel logic (Gaffney wrote a column that was basically a riff off of the Alaska-Russia proximity, claiming Palin had national security experience by “osmosis.” No kidding.) Like many “big” decisions, this is probably some mix of genius and stupid and it will end up being simply judged one or the other after either success or failure. I’m predicting failure, but while I’d make what I’d consider a sizeable bet, I wouldn’t bet my house.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 am
Matt Yglesias makes a curious point: None of the speakers at the RNC tonite - not Thompson, Lieberman nor Bush - even mentioned the war in Afghanistan. Very weird.
Maybe they’re leaving it to Palin - who clearly has the stones to face down America’s worst enemies…like Ted Stevens and the Alaskan GOP … and has to govern Alaska constantly looking over her shoulder at The Hordes of Putin ready to pounce - to do the heavy lifing on that one.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 am
“None of the speakers at the RNC tonite - not Thompson, Lieberman nor Bush - even mentioned the war in Afghanistan.”
Yeah? Are they the only ones averting their eyes? I think not.
I’m reminded that Robt Redford’s “Lions for Lambs” made hardly any money at the box office in the U.S. (I think it broke even, finally, in foreign receipts). It was panned as “saying nothing new”, and as being little more than a long op-ed. Well, that can’t be it — after all, for the most part, Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentaries say nothing new, and he himself has called them op-eds, but they still make money hand over fist. The real difference: Moore’s movies can be fact-based (to some extent) because they are mostly about the recent past, a past with video clips and quotes that can be cherrypicked for humor value, in a way that appears “reality-based”. “Lions for Lambs” was a kind of bad dream about a looming future, the kind of bad dream that you keep waking up inside of, thinking it’s over, but then it turns out you’re wrong, that you’re still in it.
After all, the premise of the film is bold and compelling, but highly unflattering to us; a premise that Americans, who are still mostly in favor of fighting in Afghanistan, would prefer not to contemplate: forget Iraq, it’s in Afghanistan where we’re more likely to see something like a repeat of the Vietnam debacle.
It makes some sense, though, doesn’t it? The Russians couldn’t prevail there, despite the logistical advantage of proximity. Afghanistan is populous, as was Vietnam — it has about the same population as Iraq, an easy fact to forget. As it in Vietnam, it has a stubborn insurgency, one that is ethnically relatively homogeneous (Pashtun), ideologically unified (Sunni fundamentalist theocrats), and has deep-pocketed foreign patrons (certain islamic “charities”). As in Vietnam, the insurgency has mountain strongholds. (Colin Powell once said before Gulf War I, “We do deserts, not mountains”, and he was only half-joking.) As with the Indochina conflict generally, Afghanistan has a lucrative renewable resource that can feed government corruption and can be turned against us, by enslaving our soldiers to addiction: those waving fields of poppies. As with the Viet Cong (until we started bombing the North, and Cambodia and Laos) this insurgency has safe areas and logistical support on the other side of a border — safe, that is, until we bite the bullet and decide we’re never going to root out the Taleban unless we engage them in Pakistan as well. (As Obama has suggested, IIRC.) But would even expanding the war into Pakistan that root out the Taleban? Or would it just make matters worse?
Nobody wants to talk about losing in Afghanistan. Hardly anybody wants to even think about the possibility. The GOP would rather point to “victory” in Iraq. The Dems would rather say we that could have settled Afghanistan by now had it not been for blundering into Iraq. Neither side wants attention on something that’s pretty damned embarrassing: years after our exultant “liberation” of Afghanistan, the Taleban are back to running wide swathes of the country, and intimidating even wider swathes of it by night, rather as the Viet Cong used to do.
But everybody’s too busy trying to find the pottymouthed MySpace page of Bristol Palin’s boyfriend to care about any of that right now.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:53 am
I saw a couple of the MSNBC bloviators claiming that Obama’s bounce was actually disappointing and attributing that to the Palin choice, which blunted his expected post-speech momentum. The fact is, just before the Palin selection his bounce actually was a bit disappointing, and the day of her selection really did blunt his momentum (however briefly). But the bounce has grown in the last couple of days primarily because of her, and what the Veep selection process says about McCain. Still, the obvious stupidity of these pundits, their inability or unwillingness to grapple with kindergarten-level nuance, made my stomach sink. It reminded how much of the election narrative resides in their simpleminded skulls, how arbitrary this all can be. So I can’t yet share your triumphalism Marc. In a just and sane world you’d be on the money, but the world of cable news is like the world of the Greek gods, where spite and randomness rule.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 am
The Democratic party of today is not the Democratic party of yesteryear. It has no stomach for war. It no longer believes in American exceptionalism. It no longer believes there is good and evil. It no longer believes our moral base and behavior is necessarily better than others. In fact, at its extreme, the left believes America is the problem, and creates innocent enemies. I am not saying the Democratic Party is this leftist yet, but it has drifted left enough to cause it to be no longer morally ground and sure enough of American exceptionalism and values to commit money, that could better be used for social programs, and young lives and blood, required for war. They cling today, more that ever, to the belief peace is possible without strength.
The question we face in this election is will Democratic leadership commit to win in Iraq and Afganistan? if you believe these wars must be won. I say their current ideology base, demonstrated by recent behaviors in their Congressional dominated leadership, clearly shows they will not. If you believe it is not necessary for the US to win these wars, and is not worth the money and lives, then Obama is your candidate.
Regardless of necessary election time statements to the contrary, if the going gets tougher in Afganistan, a Democratic dominated Executive, the only thing that has prevented an unmitigated disastrous loss in Iraq, will no longer be there to prevail in Afganistan. There is no stomach for it. There is no ideology for it. There is no record of it in the new Democratic Party.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:13 am
It no longer believes there is good and evil.
Sure we do. We know that, for example, torture is evil, something apparently lost on the Republican party.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:24 am
We also believe that it is evil for people to go bankrupt due to health care costs. We believe that it is evil for a rape victim who gets pregnant to have to bear their rapist’s child.
We believe it is evil for children to live in poverty without healthcare, while so much of the nation’s resources go to expensive military hardware.
Disabuse yourself of the notion that your side holds a monopoly on the moral high ground. They don’t.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
Thank you Randy for supporting my premise.
Btw. Biden, an old Democrat with some sense and wisdom of the ways of the world (another necessary political move forced on Obama to win this election) will not stop the final decision of the young Commander in Chief.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Randy, I guess you’re right about the party as a whole, but still, look at the exception of McCain himself. He’s proof that a Republican can figure out that torture is evil.
The bad news: if McCain is any indication, it looks like you’d have to torture most Republicans to get them to figure out the same thing McCain did. And … that would be wrong!
I think I see a way around this Catch 22, though. Let’s solidify the Dem majority in Congress, and elect a Dem president. Then we can say to the Republicans, “It sure hurts, doesn’t it? Now: just imagine ten times more agony. Got it? Now, on top of that, throw ‘genuinely fearing for your life’. That’s what torture is like. Do you get it now?”
I bet a lot of them will figure it out. But perhaps I have too much faith in the essential goodness of human beings.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 am
Thank you Randy for supporting my premise
Poppycock, nonsense, basura, bobagem, pórcaria
MT,
McCain merely supported restrictions for military interrogators. He voted against the same restrictions being applied to the CIA.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
“It no longer believes in American exceptionalism” - Which is good because that’s a pretty nutty belief. Reinhold Niebuhr quoted John Adams in his contemplatin of “exceptionalist” arguments thus: “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.”
You can the quote Founding Fathers when they were being less clear eyed or more poetic all day and all night and/or celebrate Andrew Jackson, Manifest Destiny, etc. etc. til the cows come home, but basically what I would call “essentialists” who seriously extol “American exceptionalism” are dangerous utopians who put their own country at peril. It’s happened time and time again. “Stomach for war?” I think a better word coming from those who take notions like “American exceptionalism” seriously as the central fact of our history would be “zeal.” That would be the utterly wacky John McCain chomping at the bit to invade Iraq about 3-4 days after 9/11. McCain is the face of American exceptionalism, as is Bush. (I doubt Richard Perle or Douglas Feith or David Wurmser are A,E,s because frankly I consider them 5th columnists for Likud.)
It’s good you brought that “exceptionalist” term up, Jim R. because it helps me understand what’s totally fucked up and dangerous over the string of comments you write that leave me just scratching your head. I hate to sound like a broken ideological record, but I you could use a serious dose of Reinhold Niebuhr (Ironically he has been ground through the sausage machine of contemporary American Exceptionalists-in-extremis in some of their writing as an example of a liberal who still had fire in his belly. Actually, when John McCain - or even David Brooks with his sweet smile and his pink tie - quotes Niebuhr they’re pissing on his grave, whether they know it or not. Niebuhr understood what a disaster Vietnam was and the hubristic, imperial thinking that generated such tragedies, but he’s quoted out of context by fools who equated Saddam’s Iraq to Hitler to rationalize crap like the Iraq invasion by folks who are either foolish or dishonest.)
As for mongering the word “Evil” as though it explains most of what we need to know about America’s enemies, when a David Frum - who, inexplicably titled a book “The End of Evil” - writes lines like “The Axis of Evil” for George Bush, he’s aiding the cause of evil, insofar as incoherent demagogy in the service of very badly concieved wars is an evil. I think it’s fair to go that far.
I can’t go on with this - because among other things I’m pretty sure this discussion is futile with someone so drunk on their own ideology and ingrained biases - but PLEASE read Andrew Bacevich’s new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, or at the least, this from the journal World Affairs
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2008%20-%20Winter/full-prophets.html:
I know this is going to be full of typing uglies because it was hastily tossed off, but I have real trouble proof-reading in that little box.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Thank you MT for supporting my premise.’
The political enemies in our own country are to be defeated and punished. They are the real enemy.
At least you and Randy are up front and honest about it. But you would agree, being up front and honest about your real position will not fly in an election and must be hidden and suppressed. Another of my premises.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 am
“just scratching your head” - funny, but I meant scratching mine, of course.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:05 am
It’s remarkable how thoroughly full of your own nonsense you are, Jim R.
Please tell me exactly how Reg and I have undermined America. Tell me what specific acts we have conducted that have endangered the nation.
Disagreeing with your point of view doesn’t count.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:15 am
“I can’t go on with this - because among other things I’m pretty sure this discussion is futile with someone so drunk on their own ideology and ingrained biases”
But not you reg. There you go again.
Another new Democratic supports my premise about them. Thank you guys. I’m loving it.
America is not the last vestige of hope, light and support for people longing to be free of terrorism, communism, socialism, and totalitarism in general in the world. We are not and exceptional Country. Our values are not exceptional values. Therefore, it is exceptionally stupid and backward to commit money and blood for something that is none of our business.
The differences are being well defined here lurkers and voters. Make your choice with at least open and explicit information, not election infomercials.
Thank you Marc for permitting it. One of the reasons your blog is a more interesting spot to debate than many others that won’t.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
“McCain is the face of American exceptionalism” - I’m going to state boldly the fact that I believe whatever it was in the thinking and strategizing of successive U.S. foreign policy elites - who probably started “idealistically” in some cases but certainly ended very cynically by the time you get to Kissinger at the least - that led the young John McCain who’d dedicated his life to “serve his country” and the seminal event of that service was dropping bombs on the Vietnamese - and being lucky enough to be saved from drowning by one of the folks who’d been in his bombsights just shortly before - was the kind of hubris and blindness that Niebuhr refers to in the final quote Bacevich uses in that link I gave you:
“Should the United States perish, the prophet (Niebuhr) writes,
“the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster.
“The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed
“by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would
“be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.
Bacevich continues from that quote “Change each ‘would be’ to ‘was,’ and you have an inscription well suited for the memorial that will no doubt be erected one day in Washington honoring those who sacrificed their lives in Iraq.”
(Bacevich lost his son, a Marine Lt. in Iraq last spring.)
And lest some bloviator start telling me how “the surge worked’ (McCain is a disaster on this and doesn’t even show knowledge of elementary facts about the Anbar Awakening, which preceded the “surge”, which he never anticipated and which he never proposed as a strategy, incidentally. He’s not a military strategist but a bitter loser, so why would we expect any common sense on Iraq from the twisted old coot), anyone who doesn’t realize the ultimatehuge benefit to Iran of the American blood and treasure expended in Iraq over the last five years helping to install a Shiite majority regime in Baghdad doesn’t know much of anything and is literally pulling arguments out of their butt. I have no problem with Shiites ruling iraq - I think it’s some sort of advance for “Iraqis” - such as that describes a national identity badly cobbled together by the Brits - but to consider the Iraq war as having any liklihood of in balance ending as a U.S. strategic victory - even as the dust inevitably clears after years of ethnic cleansing and civil war - is the essence of blindly moronic.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 am
Jim - I’m sorry to say this so bluntly, but frankly I consider you, in a tragic and unintended twist, an “enemy of the country” when you bitterly pursue your crackpot thinking and blame other Americans first.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
I have to admit, both Fred N’ Joe put me to sleep. Someone should have given Fred a throat spray so he wouldn’t have had to clear it so often. Sigh…. BUT soil Obama? Oh PUHLEZE Marc, you lefties (no, you are NOT progressive) just can’t stand it that Obama has soiled himself so much and so often. Rezko, Ayers, Wright, CAC, House deals…. come on, admit that your inexperienced standard bearer is just that, inexperienced in any way measurable other than the ability to write self congratulatory auto-biogs.
Lets see what Palin does tonight and lets see how far the so called Progressives slam and slander a woman who has done exactly what they have been calling for.. either that, or lets find out how much Biden was vetted and lets find out how The obamamessiah and his wife have managed to raise 2 girls… where is the stay home don’t have a career yelps about that?
Marc is letting his common sense be subverted by his conversion to the borg of Obamabotism.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
I really wish I could edit the mangled grammar and runons in those longer comments, but I think the key points can be deduced.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:43 am
Let’s see if the good Christians at the RNC - any of them - mention the Vietnamese who saved John McCain from drowning and being beaten to death by angry villagers (the Jim Rs of wartorn Vietnam?) Or does that add “nuance” that doesn’t fit the parameters of their Angry Crusader approach to constructing national security narratives. But I should think that humble man would at least deserve a mention in the context of this coronation. Even more so than the likely-apochryphal “cross in the dirt” guy we started hearing about after McCain hired Mark Salter to write his books.
We’ll see…
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:43 am
Randy, Jim R: take a chill pill. Take a couple. You can’t tell when I’m joking?
reg wrote: “… basically what I would call “essentialists” who seriously extol “American exceptionalism” are dangerous utopians who put their own country at peril.”
Suddenly, I started wondering: do I really know what “American exceptionalism” means? So I checked Wikipedia, even though it’s reportedly overrun by marxist communist greens who want to enslave us to the international jewish banking conspiracy or something.
It turns out the term can be used a number of ways, though reg’s “essentialist” view seems to cover the main ones.
However, there was a longish, unsourced section of unusual eloquence, plagiarized for all I know, perhaps only representing somebody’s POV, but nevertheless expressing what I like to think “American exceptionalism” should mean. I’m such a sentimental idiot I almost cried. Here’s the money quote for me:
“Today the U.S. is a syncretic amalgamated pluriform multiethnic polity, consisting of citizens of many ethnicities: British, French, German, Irish, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavian, African, Arabic, Russian, Balkan, Latin, South American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australasian, etc–in essence, a sample of all mankind, who are proud to call themselves Americans, and share a common citizenship and a land. This kind of exceptionalism as difference extends even beyond the synthesis of ethnicities that America represents: it also speaks to a shared experience. Unlike the empires of the past, it can be said Americans do not believe they are the “Chosen People”; they believe that they are a people who chose. When famine, oppression, warfare, religious persecution, tyranny, or stagnation threatened their old country, unlike those who remained behind, they chose to not be the passive victims of history, they chose to get on a boat or a plane, they chose to seek a new life in a new land. Whether that is exceptional, in terms of difference, or exceptional, in other ways, is a matter for history and the reader to determine.”
A few years back, I was attending a scientific conference in a resort area a few hours from Tokyo. One day I ended up talking in the cafeteria with a Russian scientist who had left Russia to seek his fortune in Germany. He complained that the Germans seemed rather rigid — advancement was difficult, acceptance of him as a Russian somewhat grudging.
“Get to America!” I said, almost involuntarily. “At U.C. Berkeley, I worked in research labs where everybody was from somewhere else — Russia, China, Turkey, India, France, Italy, Portugal, Japan — and everybody outranked me, even though I was born only a couple miles away from the lab. In America, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. It only matters what you can do.”
I think it’s a very American thing, to want to make more Americans in this way. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I’ve known so many people of so many nationalities, and have lived abroad for a long time now, and I haven’t seen or heard much to contradict my view on this.
I told that Russian he had a choice, a choice that would probably lead onto more choices than he’d have anywhere else. And I left him with that choice. I left him thinking. I still don’t know what he and his wife might have chosen. But if he chose America, that would make him exceptional, and very American to me, no matter how fresh off the boat.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Here’s a link for MT on Salter/McCain, just in case he needs fodder:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/13/inventing_john_mccain/
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
MT,
I’m calm. I just have no use for those who call me an “enemy” for having the temerity to disagree with them.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Your immigrant story brings a tear to my eye MT, but not as many as the war in Iraq - a classic product of “American exceptionalism” run amok - brings.
You may argue that theres a “good” American exceptionalism, and I’m sure we could construct one over coffee. We could also construct a “good” communist utopia - one for which we’d never put people in prison or any of the bad stuff. But there’s a real history here in discussion. And the history of “American exceptionalist” thinking as the indespensable driver for U.S. foreign policy is problematic to say the least. What’s particularly despicable IMHO is when folks who consider themselves “American exceptionalist” - and frankly most of what we’re talking about her is a country with some very good luck and some very abundant resources - ‘cuz baby when the oil runs out, it starts to get ugly as we’re seeing - that gave us more “choices” such as you mention. History has definitely been kind to us, compared to most. If you wanna believe that’s because God shines his light on us more than others, you’re treading on dangerous ground. Frankly, my own view is that we should be even more sure we’re aligned with our best moral selves - because in truth we have certain luxuries - rather than that we have some superior instincts that generally or inevitably exempt us from what has dragged so many other powerful counties down.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:04 am
CORRECTION : “What’s particularly despicable IMHO is when folks who consider themselves “American exceptionalist” start stomping on some of what are truly, by history’s standards, exceptional achievments - like no torture and habeus corpus. And frankly most of what we’re talking about….”
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 am
I will give you this Jim R - you bring out the better in me. It’s a lot more satisfying to come back at someone with this (ridiculously long) argument of my own than simply telling a complete and total moron that he’s a complete and total moron in front of an audience that already decided long ago that the guy is a complete and total moron.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Michael Turner:
I hope your Russian friend made it to the US, but as an immigrant here myself, I can’t get misty-eyed about your definition of American exceptionalism. I recognize what you are proposing on a social/personal level, but that cultural generosity has little to do with an immigration system makes it incredibly hard for people to stay here legally. The idea that you can just “choose” to be here under current immigration policy is downright fanciful - you’re writing a check that your government won’t cash.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
Does anyone suspect that McC is one step ahead on this? Could Palin, with her smarmy vulnerabilities, have been chosen in order to set up the Checkers-speech stuff McC is coming out with today?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Jim R> The political enemies in
>our own country are to be
>defeated and punished. They are
>the real enemy.
What, specifically, do you mean by “defeated and punished?
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
Can’t wait for “Palin’s” speech tonite: “There was a flutter of attention when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told a group of Post reporters and editors yesterday that his team was having to rework the vice presidential acceptance speech because the original draft, prepared before Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen, was too ‘masculine.’” WAPO.
Television talkingheads referring to “Palin’s” speech need to do that little “quote” thing with their fingers when they discuss “her” speech tonite. We’re being treated to a maverick, pathbreaker of a VP who is going to deliver essentially the same prefabricated speech that Mitt Romney would have given, except it’s being massaged solely to take out the “masculinity.”
Empty suits delivering pre-fab rhetoric are empty suits, regardless of accessories like a string of pearls or a brooch.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
Let’s not forget that this strategy of “blame Chris Mathews and the usual suspects in the horrible news media” (formerly known by John McCain as his “base”) for sexist attacks on Palin - and it’s a cold, calculating and supremely dishonest strategy by a desperate bunch - is being devised in defense of the woman who called Hillary a “whiner” when she complained about media bias.
McCain’s surrogates like failed CEO Carly Fiorina need that shoved in their faces - if not all the way up their asses -when they’re rolling out this charade.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
This is rich. McCain was against the Wasilla Pork Queen before he was for her:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/mccain-was-against-palin_n_123573.html
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Randy - shouldn’t we be attacking Palin’s family so that certain usual suspects can huff and puff in phony outrage ? The funny thing is that the Schlafly-types are using Palin’s family as a poster for their political agenda, then express “concern” that Palin’s space is being invaded by Evil Liberals. We’re getting double doses of irony and triple doses of hypocrisy out of this shameless spectacle.
Pretty smart National Review conservative Byron York has this remarkably honest observation:
” I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here. If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families. ” (via atrios)
Ya think ?
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Marc, you misunderestimate the Repugs again, or perhaps overestiamte the intelligence of the TV watching public.
Unless Karl Rove has totally fallen off his game, they’ll turn this into a strength. Palin will give a sanctimonious speech in a few hours about how much she loves her daughter and how she accepts her in the spirit of Christian forgiveness. And oh, by the way, her little dog loves Bristol too. Then McC and/or St. Joseph will stand as her chivalrous defenders, unironically saying that they are called on to defend her against sexism. The whole thing will be a net gain for McC.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I thiink your “poisoned pawn” scenario has a large grain of truth, but I also think that the Palin narrative is going off the rails, at least as it will play with the key demographic of centrists and independents who are still evaluating McCain vs. Obama in terms of the judgement and temperment they’ll bring to DC. Biden is going to turn out to be a much bigger asset for Obama than anyone could have predicted a week ago. They’re going to play this increasingly as the Obama-Biden team, which frankly makes the McCain-Palin team look like a bad sitcom in comparison. Slice the “TV-watchers” into a real-life spectrum of POVs and tensions, otherwise there’s an element of single-minded paranoia at work in your scenario.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
See Joe Klein in today’s SWAMPLAND. Its clear that the MCCain people have decided on a jihad - that is a “Culture War” to gin up the base and change the subject from the economy and the war. McCain won’t go on CNN; they are threatening a libel suit against the NATIONAL ENQUIERER over a story to run of a Palin Affair (Bad news on the tab front - people may not read the
NYT but they sure see those mags the check out stand).
I don’t think it will work but its clear they are going to the mattresses and hoping they can intimidate the media. Trouble is the story is too rich and John’s former friends feel betrayed.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
If anyone hasn’t listened yet…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/peggy-noonan-mike-murphy_n_123647.html
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
>demographic of centrists and independents
Well, it’s reputedly OK to go off on a tangent
on this board, so I will. I think one of the key mistakes of the moderate Dems (compared to me, you’re in that category) is a misapprehension that swing voters are “centrists” in the sense that, say, Obama and Biden are centrists. In fact, most of them have no political views at all. Most American voters could not give a coherent definition of “liberal” or “conservative,” let alone the s-word (which seems to trigger post moderation.)
This is why we have constant sex scandals and gossip about politicians’ supposed personal characteristics. Swing voters are not impressed by the DP moving even farther to the right, because they don’t even know what that means. They are swayed by McCain picking a woman running mate who’s hot, by whether or not they think Hillary Clinton is a bitch, or by which candidate can act more sanctimonious. They’re straws in the wind.
If the DP’s objective was to win elections and govern, as opposed to serve the interests of the same campaign donors the GOP works for, they would drop the dismally failed centrist approach. Instead of being a less-extreme version of the GOP, they would differentiate themselves as liberals. This is not going to alienate “swing” voters, it will attract their attention. It’s not going to happen in a million years, which is why I’m still voting for N*d*r (moderation again), or Peter Camejo, or who-the-freak-ever.
And oh yeah, I have to respond to your dig at Berkeley. There’s no God.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
>otherwise there’s an element
>of single-minded paranoia at
>work in your scenario.
There’s not a lot of purchase in accusing people of being paranoid about politics. We are not delaing with amateurs, but with people who were able to make Presidents of the United States out of sacks of bullshit like Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. Successful politicians are devious, dishonest, and cynical. I may guess wrong about the machinations in this particular case, but that’s probably because I am not paranoid *enough.*
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I don’t think that a DLC strategy makes any sense - but I do think Obama has done an excellent job of mixing the liberal and conservative rhetoric up and creating as much of an authentic identity as exists in American politics. If you think that simply moving left to appeal to people like you will “get the voters attention” and create a winning strategy for Dems, I have to respond with this: There is no God (or whatever is at the center of that quanit faith of yours.) You’re “clinging to your belief system out of frustration”, but shit’s more complicated than that. Way more. I agree that when I’m talking about swing voters there’s not clean “left” vs. “right” paradigm nor is “centrist” necessarily the real issue. But I think questions of moderation and authenticity come into play. Palin - if the Obama/Biden team do their work right and if journalism isn’t entirely dead or cowed by this asshole Steve Schmidt and McCain’s tantrums - is neither moderate on some very key issues, nor is she authentic in terms of the image that’s being buffed for her. She’s got worse “flip-flops” hanging out there - and hanging very low - than John Kerry and she’s an extremist on social issues that don’t play as well for the Repugs as they used to.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Stu - I’m not a knee-jerk theist, but neither am I a jerk atheist. I don’t fucking know and know I can’t know and am perfectly comfortable with that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find wisdom in religious ways of looking at this mysterious mess - most notably Buddhism and certain Christian theologians and pragmatic practitioners like Niebuhr and MLKing Jr. I grew up in a very religious family and became a sophomoric atheist at about 13, so I’m not impressed with Hitchens - who reminds me of myself when I was 14 or 15 - nor am I impressed by religious dogmatics and the folks who try to sell that particular straitjacket. I am impressed with the wisdom of various thinkers for whom their religious faith was central. I don’t fetishize the secular or pure rationality like so many. In politics, ultimately I’m a pragmatist.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I have to also say that the contempt for the American public that Stu expresses is vastly exceeded by the Steve Schmidt’s of this world who fashion transparent crap like the Palin nomination and proceed to market it with all of the ingenuity and shamelessness of the folks who got a segment of the American public hooked on Flavor of Love or The Osbornes. Barnum wasn’t stupid or an anomaly, but I refuse to hand the political sphere over to his heirs.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
In honor of Minnesota, I’ve been cranking the Husker Du all day.
Sharpest rebuke yet of Palin as VP pick
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/03/opinion/oe-harris3
To our conservative brothers and sisters
Is this how the Republicans are going to grade Palin’s speech?
http://tinyurl.com/6a4slp
…she’s just sitting on the roof
reading books about UFO’s…
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Oh crap. Technical difficulties…
Google: Palin speech what she has to do
Trying to bring up Chris Clilizza of The Fix…
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Doodle writes: “I recognize what you are proposing [a better American exceptionalism] on a social/personal level, but that cultural generosity has little to do with an immigration system makes it incredibly hard for people to stay here legally.”
Well, maybe I chose the wrong anecdote — I don’t think recent immigration policy is very American in spirit.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Doodle writes: “I recognize what you are proposing [a better American exceptionalism] on a social/personal level, but that cultural generosity has little to do with an immigration system makes it incredibly hard for people to stay here legally.”
Well, maybe I chose the wrong anecdote — I don’t think recent immigration policy is very American in spirit, and can tell stories about that, too. I’m perfectly aware that there were some stupid hoops to jump through before. It just seems it’s gotten stupider, with a not very practical national-security motivation.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I find it amusing that some here are only now coming around to the idea of a “poisoned pawn” strategy in McCain picking Palin. I brought this up on the last thread, in a scenario where McCain gets the moderate VP he (supposedly) wanted after all, after Palin is forced off the ticket, having earned credit with the Right for at least trying.
I don’t think it’s that simple or stark, nor even that serious. I just think that McCain vetters and strategists looked at Palin’s bad points and noticed that, in at least a few cases, negative campaigning from Obama’s people based on those weaknesses could only backfire.
Weird, fringe-politics theology, with unsavory “links” to anti-semitism? Obama’s got that, with Jeremiah Wright.
Weird politics, with unsavory “links” to extremism? Got that, with Ayers.
There are other issues with Palin that, if pursued, can backfire in other ways. Her Troopergate? Mike Wooten becomes a kind of Willie Horton figure (ooh, with union backing), and then the Dems look like they are taking down a corruption fighter on charges of abuse of political power when, if anything, the Wooten problem neatly underscores how little power Palin had in Alaska, over certain sectors of government (and how bad government was and is in Alaska, in sectors where that governor didn’t have much say.)
Bristol Palin’s baby bump must have had McCain’s oppo people positively salivating. Yes, they must have thought, go ahead, go on the attack with that one. The perception (though probably not so much the reality anymore) is that black America has much more of a problem with unwed teen pregnancy. McCain gets to take some racist Reagan Democrat voters hostage without firing a shot. The “unwed” part of that image, in the case of the Bristol family, can be solved quickly enough before the election: a shotgun between the boy’s shoulderblades, a wedding procession, some photo ops at the altar. Obama didn’t take the bait, but he doesn’t have to — the McCain camp can just let it play out in the media.
And if you go after Palin too much more on earmarks, the stench of hypocrisy will become quite intolerable. There are hardly any clean hands in that department, in Congress. (And maybe voters might even look at specific cases in their own districts, and notice that not all earmark funding is wasteful pork, perhaps relatively little of it is.)
If your picture of “poisoned pawn” is of some smoke-filled room where Palin was mulled, and settled upon as dispensable, forget it. Perhaps that was noticed as an extreme scenario, but I see things going more down the middle. Most likely, some campaign strategists went down the list I give above, and in about 30 minutes, concluded that most of the problems in Palin’s background lend themselves to strategic responses that largely cancel out the problems with her — except where no strategic response is even necessary, because the media (both liberal and conservative) and the Dem base do all the required damage to Obama themselves.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
MT,
With respect, you’re being a bit selective here.
There’s the attempted book banning when Palin was mayor of Wasilla. There’s the $400,000 allocated for shooting wolves and bears from airplanes.
854 of the Republican delegates (more than one-third) self-identify as white Christian evangelicals. What you’re seeing is largely an echo chamber.
As for her daughter’s pregnancy, if she were eighteen months younger and Levi Johnston a few months older, he’s off to jail and lifetime status as a sex offender.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
“MT - With respect, you’re being a bit selective here.”
Yeah, Randy, I was being selective. I was focusing on the big things, for some strange reason.
For some even stranger reason, I missed the biggest one of all: Palin’s evident lack of experience, which only underscores how upside-down the Obama-Biden ticket looks to many people. Go ahead, keep slamming away at Palin’s lack of experience. To certain voters, it sounds very hypocritical. (Actually, Obama has as much legislative experience as Lincoln did, but how many people know that?)
“There’s the attempted book banning when Palin was mayor of Wasilla.”
Actually, all they have on that (AFAIK) is Palin asking how the library might go about banning books with language that many in Palin’s constituency took exception to. Yes, Palin also threatened the librarian with dismissal, but it’s not clear if that this was related in any way to what Palin asked about book banning.
I think she was wrong to even ask, but I have little doubt (from what I’m learning about Wasilla) that she was reflecting voter concerns. Voter concerns that you can probably find throughout the Bible Belt, not just in Alaska’s microcosmic version of it. This one probably hurts Palin almost entirely among those who weren’t going to vote McCain anyway.
“There’s the $400,000 allocated for shooting wolves and bears from airplanes.”
Hadn’t heard of that one before now, which is perhaps some indication of what a monstrously important issue it is with most voters. But, OK, I’ll bite. Let’s see what this really is …. (searching … searching … geez, this is like when I have to do Woody’s homework for him … bingo):
“My understanding is this program was funded by the Legislature to factually explain game management practices to Alaskans, and I don’t have a problem with that,” Palin is quoted as saying.
Swallowing my disgust over the idea of recreational aerial hunting of anything: It looks like these were non-endangered species of wolves and bears that the state game control agency might have been shooting anyway. Both the regions and the numbers shot are limited by law. And it seems that private aerial hunting of wolves and bears (but not of some other game, depending on region) would be illegal anyway.
$400,000 is about 75 cents per Alaskan. That’s less than 10% of the income Alaska derives from non-resident hunting licenses, hunters who might just go to Canada or Siberia otherwise. And that’s not even counting the dollars those non-resident hunters spend in Alaska apart from the license fees.
Should it all be about efficient use of the private sector for government functions, pay-as-you-go taxation? Personally, I don’t think so. And I don’t much like the idea of ecosystem management relying so much on private operators with paying guests killing animals for fun. In some ideal world, I wouldn’t have the government OR private sector going out and killing more wolves so that there would be more caribou and moose for yet more people to shoot for fun, prestige and profit. Let the natural predator/prey balance find itself.
On the other side, though, there are people up there whose livelihoods have come to depend on this aspect of tourism; and we’re talking about a governor who also apparently hates her former brother-in-law in part for killing a moose cow out of season (many hunters have their own sense of ethics, it would seem).
And here’s the upshot: “Measure 2 may have gone down to defeat anyway, as urban hunters astutely made allies with rural Natives, even though the two camps have spent years battling over subsistence hunting rights. A spate of bear attacks in the state’s largest city might have helped quell voters?sympathies for the animals being targeted by aerial hunters.”
Now let’s go back and look at what you just wrote, Randy, and try to adopt the point of view of a voter who hunts recreationally and in abidance with the law:
“There’s the $400,000 allocated for shooting wolves and bears from airplanes.”
Really? Does it still seem so simple to you now? From the point of view of the hunting voter mentioned, you might seem pretty ignorant, or rushing to judgment, or (worst of all) purposely oversimplifying for effect. Yep, stir up those GOP base voters, why doncha. If somebody can turn up some video of one of those bear attacks in “Alaska’s largest city”, you lose with this one, big-time, in the heartland. I mean, I get kinda scared sometimes on the streets of America’s cities, but I’m not worried about bears ….
“854 of the Republican delegates (more than one-third) self-identify as white Christian evangelicals. What you’re seeing is largely an echo chamber.”
Oh, I believe you about the lopsidedness, but I’m not surprised. At all. If anything, I thought it would be a little less than 1/3rd.
Now, do you believe me when I say that “white Christian evangelical” is probably around 1/5th of the electorate in the U.S.? Improve GOP turnout in that demographic by a few percent, and that’s millions more voters for McCain. Which probably balances millions of “undecideds” finally heading over to Obama only because of Palin. And then you get a wash: far from being a catastrophe for the GOP, Palin makes no net difference — which is typical for VP picks for either party. (I notice that the betters over at InTrade have only nicked a couple points off the chance of a McCain win in the wake of picking Palin, favoring Obama only a little more than before.)
“As for her daughter’s pregnancy, if she were eighteen months younger and Levi Johnston a few months older, he’s off to jail and lifetime status as a sex offender.”
Yeah, and if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. As it is, you can now watch a video clip of McCain getting off a plane, embracing the entire Palin family one by one, but giving far more tarmac face-time to Bristol and Levi than anyone else in the family. To a huge chunk of the electorate, this is merely the Christian virtue of forgiveness, and you just look like you’re casting first stones while not even being a true believer in the redeeming power of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ blah blah blah.
But you go ahead, Randy, you just keep sniping “sex offender … sex offender,” help get that once bouncing around in the other echo chamber, loud enough for the rightwing half of the chamber to hear. It’s going to sound rather petty to a big, fat slice of Americans who will puddle up while browsing the wedding photos in People magazine. To some of them, it might sound so petty that they pour out of their trailer parks by the hundreds of thousands, to go vote for the first time in their lives. As with hitherto-untapped segments of eligible blacks and youth leaning for Obama, they are a huge potential force just outside the sweep of existing political radar.
Or, as I said before, you can concentrate on making this election about competing visions of hope and the future of America. Or something. Anything but this stuff.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Interesting bit here, getting some national-level press attention. The author of the note, Anne Kilkenny, speaks of about 100 Wasilla citizens banding together in support of a city librarian whose job may have been under threat for thwarting what may have been an attempt by Palin to ban books.
But was there real pressure, and was Palin’s attempt to fire the city librarian motivated by the failure of that pressure? Or maybe what we have here a city librarian with a strong civil libertarian streak (hardly unusual among librarians) and no fan of Palin (most librarians of my acquaintance are liberals) who took a call from Palin she didn’t like the sound of, and decide to make an issue of it? Is it impossible that when Palin called the city librarian about book banning, she was motivated by little more than a desire to build a quiet, gentle case for saying “no” to a contingent in the city that wanted to ban some books from the library? I’d like to find out.
Some of what Anne Kilkenny writes is, as the (unrelated?) Cindy Kilkenny points out, slightly suspect in its reasoning. For example, the argument against Palin’s claims of fiscal conservatism is bolstered by citing dramatic increases in Wasilla city government spending, with slightly-more-than-commensurate increases in taxes. Left out of that picture: Wasilla was (and I guess still is) growing ridiculously fast, and lots of city operating costs are commensurate with size. I would have left it with “Wasilla started with no debt, and ended up over $20m in debt by the end of Palin’s tenure as mayor.” Why wouldn’t that be enough to call Palin’s fiscal conservatism into question?
September 4th, 2008 at 2:51 am
MT - with all due respect, I first alluded to the concept of “poison pawn” in the last thread, around 9:56 am in an attempt to give more strategic coherence to your “it’s so crazy it just might work” hypothesis and suggested that we’d have to wait for some empirical evidence among the “undecideds” to see how much sense it made. “It’s so crazy it just might work” is a strategy of desperation. So, we’ll see. I haven’t changed my position at all, which is primarily to point out all of Palin’s weaknesses. If those weaknesses turn out to “work” it won’t be because their strengths but because the Obama camp screwed up their response. I doubt that they will - but don’t confuse the strategy that Obama and Axelrod impose on their campaign with the efforts of liberal bloggers to dig into Palin’s past and pronouncements as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. That’s not turning her weaknesses into strengths - it’ figuring out what they are. And I can guarantee you that the long-suppressed trailer trash vote you suggest might put Palin over the top isn’t going to be responding to the eagerness of Josh Marshall to paint Palin in negatives. It’ll be based more on what the National Enquirer team comes up with. Which could well be brutal.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:54 am
“Barnum wasn’t stupid or an anomaly, but I refuse to hand the political sphere over to his heirs.”
Look down, reg. I guess while you were pontificating, they swiped that ball from under your feet, and have gotten halfway to the endzone.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:23 am
“If those weaknesses turn out to “work” it won’t be because their strengths but because the Obama camp screwed up their response.”
Reg, please note a hidden assumption there: that Obama’s people can control how the media play the weaknesses. The media are ultimately a bunch of businesses, grabbing at millions of eyeballs, and ever more desperately now because the slumping economy is driving ad revenues down. Obama can say that the Palin family is off-limits, which is strategically smart, but … he can’t put them off-limits, can he? He can’t tell ABC or NBC or NYT or WAPO what stories not to run, can he? And if there’s blowback from what others say, it hardly matters what Obama didn’t wasn’t involved — he can be hit by it, too. What matters is that the low-blow reputation gets associated with the Dems, and That Liberal Media, and People Who Hate America (TM). And that association will be particularly damaging if there are lots of inaccuracies in the exposures that can be attributed to partisan bias.
(This just in: The National Enquirer is changing its name to The Enquiring Nation. Ha ha, you believed me for a second there, admit it.)
Call me a concern troll, but I’m going to keep exposing the weaknesses — factual and strategic — in this full-court-press to expose weaknesses. It probably won’t make much difference. But what the hell.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:40 am
reg, look at it this way: which of the two talking-heads scenarios below works better for Obama?
SCENARIO 1:
Liberal Pundit: “Palin was for earmarks before she was against them. She supported that Bridge to Nowhere, which would have gone to an island with a population of 50!”
Conservative Pundit: “Oh, but wait — did you know that island of 50 people also had an international airport, and that hundreds of thousands of tourists annually cross the straits the bridge would have spanned, to see sights on the mainland. Have you ever been up there?”
LP: “Uh, no, but what does that —”
CP: “Do you even know what’s up there …”
LP: “Uh, no, but look the point is–
Moderator: “Sorry, we’re out of time.”
SCENARIO 2:
Liberal Pundit: “Let’s look at Palin on earmarks, which I’ll admit got kind of a bad rap, actually. That Bridges to Nowhere thing was a little overblown — that ‘island of 50 people’ they talked about actually has an international airport, and ferries run every every 15 minutes across the straits. People up there were pretty insulted to have their region called a ‘nowhere’, when it’s home to some of the best scenery in the nation. But … over $220 million dollars for a bridge across those waters? How do you justify that, especially when Katrina victims needed places to live?”
Conservative Pundit: “Uh …. well, look, I don’t want to sound heartless here, but—”
LP: “But if the bridge to Gravina Island would have been a case of relatively mild ‘earmark abuse’ of the kind Palin says she fought, what about Knik Arm Bridge? That’s a REAL “bridge to nowhere”, and I’ve seen estimates that it could have gone up to $1.5 billion! If she’s such a ‘reformer’, such a crusader against waste, why didn’t she speak out loudly against that one?”
CP: “Now, wait a minute, maybe–
LP: “1.5 BILLION DOLLARS to get NOWHERE–”
Moderator: “Sorry, gentlemen, but we’re out of time ….”
—–
Go ahead and work to find those Palin weaknesses. But work to get it right. And work to bend over backwards showing how you want to be fair to the GOP base constituency. Because those people are listening very carefully for anything that sounds like it’s looking down on them.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:39 am
MT,
Why so testy? Everyone on the right is raving about her daughter’s choice to marry this guy, but my comment is legitimate: a few months age-wise either way and it’s a case of statutory rape. Alaska has a relatively low age of consent law (16), which, depending on when they had sex, in my state might make her below the age of consent. Two-thirds of teeanage marriages end in divorce (check the NYT today).
With regard to the wolves and bears, again, I find it cruel. I’m sure some others will as well. Some may also decide to go to Alaska to see if they can do just that. I think it speaks to character.
What did she offer in her speech last night that was concrete? it as a red meat conservative fearfest.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
As I understand it, this how one teaches a child to swim in an Alaska pool. You have to have a quick method because there are only four days of swimming pool weather. You put little floaties on the child’s arms, push her out into the deep end, and then shoot the floaties off. Then the child swims to a guy with the can of Schlitz and a cigarrette to learn abstinence.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
>Because those people are listening
>very carefully for anything that sounds
>like it’s looking down on them.
Maybe we have to let that go, stop being such sensitive liberals, and say what we really think. I think Palin’s “God wants the oil companies to build the pipeline” is the kind of bullshit you say to someone you hold in complete contempt. If there are people who don’t see that, but who do think that “biology class is for science, not religion” is condescending, then we’re just going to have to do without those people.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
But, Obama’s Rev. Wright is on their side. - Islamic Jihadists Post 50K Bounty on McCain’s Spiritual Advisor Pastor Rod Parsley