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Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Palin-palooza debate thread…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
in which Joe Biden will play a supporting role no matter what he does … almost.
UPDATE: The bailout question and the economy, and McCain’s claim that the fundamentals were strong. The McCain explanation — that he meant the American worker was strong — was a weak argument, and it’s not Palin’s fault she had to repeat it.
UPDATE II: Biden scores on deregulation, and Palin goes off the track, says she’s not going to answer the questions that are asked, she’s going to say what she wants. Interesting tactic.
UPDATE III: I think Biden’s winning on content, and Palin is reciting well. But if she can continue to do that, she’ll escape unscathed.
UPDATE IV: So an evangelical conservative Republican supports equal benefits for same-sex couples? Great. But then maybe not, she ducks the question when asked to clarify.
UPDATE V: Iraq. I don’t think this is a good issue for the Republicans, and Palin isn’t their best spokesman for it. She says victory is within sight, so she must have very good eyesight.
UPDATE VI: Biden hits the Pakistan/Iran question out of the park. His experience shows. Palin accuses Obama of naivete. That’s rich. Biden really showing his stuff on the foreign policy issues. The story of the night may not be Palin failing but Biden succeeding.
UPDATE VII: I’m sorry — there is no comparison between these two. One is ready to step into the Oval Office today if necessary. The other ain’t even close. And the American people are more than smart enough to figure that out.
UPDATE VIII: Biden on raising a family as a single parent — very real, and trumps Palin in the process. He is handling the whole thing perfectly. Very impressive.
Conclusion: Biden’s night. Maybe the American people will disagree, but I very much doubt it. And it was Biden’s night because of how well HE did, not because of how poorly Palin did. She did OK, under the circumstances. But there was simply no comparison between the two.
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Your pre-debate thought for the day…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
… is from Quin Hilyer, senior editor at the conservative American Spectator, writing on the Spectator blog:
“I’m on a lonely island here. Conservative activists refuse to acknowledge any fault with the choice of Palin for Veep. Those of us who express doubts are barely tolerated. But, dammit, the reason she has sounded so godawful in some of these interviews is because she did a godawful job in those interviews. And until shown otherwise, it is fair to surmise that she did a godawful job because she doesn’t know what she is talking about. And THAT should worry all of us, even as we heartily wish for this woman of high character and principle to rise to the challenge.”
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Because it’s been a tough week for our conservative friends….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Every trend looking good for Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You get the sense in watching the polls that the presidential race may be on the brink of breaking toward Barack Obama. The independents and undecideds are beginning to make up their minds, and they’re going in Obama’s direction.
So are the swing states where many of those voters live. To cite just one example, Politico’s latest swing-state map gives Obama 353 electoral votes, compared to 185 for McCain. Of the 13 swing states they list, McCain is ahead in only two, Indiana and Missouri. And when Indiana is a swing state, the Republican candidate is already facing an uphill fight.
At Pollster.com they’re reaching a similar conclusion. In the site’s “Online 100,” which it calls “the most authoritative daily tracking poll of leading online voices in the United States … weighted evenly between right-leaning, left-leaning and non-aligned bloggers,” opinion is coalescing behind the conclusion that Obama will win.
The “Online 100” includes people such as Karl Rove, Arianna Huffington, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund.
As recently as Sept. 16, the site reports, the panel was almost evenly split, with 49 percent believing Obama would win and 48 percent predicting McCain. Today, 87 percent on the panel are predicting an Obama victory, with only 8 percent predicting McCain will win.
“Most notably, 75% of right-leaning panellists concede that Obama is most likely to win. 89% of center-aligned panelists said that Obama will win; but none said that McCain would win.”
Sarah Palin’s performance tonight could erase any remaining doubt. Both she and Joe Biden have the potential to commit gaffes, and it won’t be hard to judge the outcome. If one of them is a YouTube star come Friday morning, that’s your loser.
If that person is Biden, it could stop but not reverse the slide toward Obama. If it’s Palin, the race is all but over.
So far, her public appearances have greatly lowered expectations, which is to her benefit. But they have also created a narrative that questions whether she can handle the basic requirements of the job. With another blunder or two, she will cement the notion that by bagging the veep nomination, she shot more moose than she could carry home.
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American people alarmed by Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin’s readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.
The 60 percent who now see Palin as insufficiently experienced to step into the presidency is steeply higher than in a Post-ABC poll after her nomination early last month. Democrats and Republicans alike are now more apt to doubt her qualifications, but the biggest shift has come among independents.
In early September, independents offered a divided verdict on Palin’s experience; now they take the negative view by about 2 to 1. Nearly two-thirds of both independent men and women in the new poll said Palin has insufficient experience to run the White House.”
We’ll have a thread up for tonight’s debate. There’s a lot riding on it.
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