Debate #2 - Biden Palin
I didn't see the debate live, although I have since watched most of it in reruns, and I just perused the transcript. As I expected, Palin's handlers did not try to stuff her full of facts. That would have made her answers boring, her performance stilted, and she likely would have been trounced by Biden on the facts anyway. Instead, Palin was given a few memes and a general demeanor to convey, and she pulled them off well enough. We all know the general Palin shtick by now: the aw-shucks, darn-it-all phraseology, the endless drumbeat of maverick, maverick, maverick, the small-town outsider motif, and the general refusal to acknowledge that McCain and Palin actually belong to the same party as the sitting two-term President.
All in all, watching the tapes, I though Palin held her own. She made no major gaffes. Although fact-checking has uncovered several stretches and outright mistakes, regular folks are not inclined to hold that against her. The general debate format is good for her, much better than the free-flowing interviews that force her to answer unpredictable follow up questions. Biden was solid, with an excellent command of the facts. He perhaps came off as a bit too professorial, but his performance was still imbued with a good amount of passion. He tried to knock McCain's maverick image down a few pegs, but it likely won't have much impact.
All in all, probably a draw. Which is what most of the pundits were saying as well, at least out of the gate. But strangely, the post-debate polling didn't reflect a draw. Almost all polls had Biden winning by substantial margins, with even larger spreads in follow up questions on which candidate is qualified and intelligent enough to be President. So regular people were not seeing what the pundits were seeing. That leads me to the following observations:
- The Palin honeymoon is over. While pundits were looking at the horse race only (Can she recapture the GOP momentum? Will she stumble like the Couric interview?), viewers had moved on to a slightly more important interpretive framework: "Can this woman help stop the entire economy from imploding?" Winks and twinkly smiles are nice enough when general conditions are fairly normal. But as the American economy sinks deeper into the murk of recession, people want seriousness and substance, and the small-town hockey mom with a view of Putin's threatening head from her window is just not cutting it any more.
- The McCain candidacy itself is now just about cooked. With the foreign policy debate and the Biden-Palin scuffle now in the rear view mirror, neither of which has been able to stem the vote seepage away from McCain, there's really nothing left for him. He's done his best, but the general message just doesn't make sense. The Establishment Maverick? Most people aren't buying it. He says he's been fighting government waste for years? Fine. But overall, has his crusade stopped the general growth of government, under both Democratic and Republican regimes? Nope. He says he's been fighting special interests and bucking the Washington insider circle for years? Okay. But overall, have his supposedly bipartisan efforts brought any meaningful change to regular families? Has the relentless concentration of wealth and power been reversed or even slowed during his two and a half decades? Do we have universal health care? Have regular households seen their incomes rise along with general economic growth? Are people able to bank significant savings and retirement money, or are they crippled by debt and declining employment prospects? I think we all know the answers. Despite his decades of "maverick-ing," people are still f'ed. Our economy has grown umpteen-gajillion times, but regular households are still living paycheck-to-paycheck, and most would be decimated by one long-term illness or unforeseeable accident. McCain's campaign is basically saying that all of our systemic problems can be solved by staying in Iraq until we have victory, reducing government pork, and keeping taxes low for the wealthy. It just doesn't wash, and I expect Obama to hammer McCain and the GOP in the next couple debates, which will focus on domestic and economic issues.
- As many pundits are now predicting, McCain will go increasingly negative as his campaign unravels. Expect some rehashing of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and William Ayers. Expect the right-wing echo chamber to ring with more shouts of Obama the Muslim, Obama the Radical, and Obama the Socialist. And who knows what other October surprise lies out there? Maybe another Osama bin Laden video, indicating that he donated to Obama's campaign? I would not be shocked by anything any more.
But all in all, it's now over. McCain-Palin will continue to slide in the polls. As the economy continues its slow burn, the choice of Palin will look more and more irresponsible (how sweet is a McCain-Romney ticket now looking to the GOP?). The undeniable link between deteriorating conditions and the Republican party will solidify their reputation as "The Party that Wrecked America," as James Kunstler puts it, and McCain will not be able to distance himself from his own party's epic failures. I fully expect a sizable blowout, provided that there is no earth-shattering October Surprise.
So Barack Obama will be our first black President, and America can likely begin the long process of rebuilding our domestic conditions and international reputation. Unfortunately, Obama will be staring the Long Emergency right in the face, and he will be hampered by a collapsed American Algorithm, whereby the current relationship between work and physical living arrangements becomes completely untenable. There will be no "getting back to normal" in America, because the fundamental social form we have created over the last few decades has no future. I really hope that Obama is serious about change, because he's going to see more of it than he could possibly imagine.
I agreed with most of the article with the exception that the race is over. In Nick Saban's college football words, it's time to finish.
Palin came out today annoucing their new plan - stepping up the notch with the nastiness. Maybe they'll even be desperate enough to bring the Rev Wright skeleton out of the closet.
Of course, what Palin doesn't realize because she only reads the Anchorage Daily News (or was it that she read all periodicals ever published) - what she doesn't realize is that most voters have heard it all before. Too bad she's only been involved for 5 weeks, because it wasn't fun with the other female politician presenting this nastiness either.
And it's still not enough smeer to make voters turn to the Maverick.
I found the time to look up the definition of Maverick on Wikepedia and found the biography on the original Samuel Maverick, for whom the word is derived, quite humorous.
The article says that the origainl Samuel Maverick wasn't really a Maverick at all, but because he was not interested in his profession, (ironically he was a Texas rancher) people took some of his actions as independence - although a better explanation was likely indiference.
What an image for a presidential candidate.
Thanks for the insight!
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