Friday, September 05, 2008
Sarah Palin: a genius game changer…
Okay, last of the US posts for a bit. Over at Brassneck I’ve just done a short analysis using a tag cloud of the two main speeches. Top word for Obama: Promise. Top word for McCain: Fight. Oh, and for those of you who thought Sarah Palin was going to be a disaster for the Republicans:
Palin’s favorable ratings are now a point higher than either man at the top of the Presidential tickets this year. As of Friday morning, Obama and McCain are each viewed favorably by 57% of voters. Biden is viewed favorably by 48%.
Adds: To help the discussion keep on track, Slate have kindly researched the more misleading stories about her just so that no one gets lost…
And it’s having an effect on perceptions of her party too:
A week ago, just before he introduced his running mate, just 42% of Republicans had a Very Favorable opinion of their party’s nominee. That figure jumped to 54% by this Friday morning. Among unaffiliated voters, favorable opinions of McCain have increased by eleven percentage points in a week—from 54% before the Palin announcement to 65% today.
And the Rasmussen daily tracker poll is showing an almost immediate bounce effect for McCain. An effect that’s not expected to fully develop until next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Mr Obama has a fight on his hand, and one that few of his advisors were expecting at this stage of the game. He need to offer something more that nebulous promises of hope to sustain momentum and his lead in a contest that punters have long since assumed would be a one man race.
Mick Fealty @ 04:36 PM
I think she’s the bees knees
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 05:10 PMSarah Palin is sexy and sex sells. Even in politics. I really don’t think anyone else that we have seen is sexy! Obama? Biden? Hilary? Don’t think so! Although maybe women would view the men in a different way than I do!!
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 05:22 PMPresident Palin.
Now there is a thought..............
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:02 PMSarah Palin’s popularity will last only as long as she refuses to talk to the press.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:02 PMAmericans are deeply patriotic and right so - they have the second greatest country on earth. They’re not going to vote for an unpatriotic creep like Obama to be president. That guy, essentially left-leaning and post-nationalist, is really a displaced Europhile, so of course the liberal left media adore him - he’s of their teary-eyed ilk.
I particularly liked McCain’s villain-esque warning to others of that ilk that “change is coming.” Nice reversal, since the change that is coming will be based on values that have made America great (loyalty to one’s country, free enterprise, and success built on merit and hard work) rather than the ‘values’ that the left ascribe to: creating a culture wherein it is acceptable (and even a ‘right’) for the feckless to live as parasites on the hard work and enterprise of others, shifting the burden of the welfare from those individuals and groups from their own shoulders (where it properly belongs) onto those who live by traditional American values.
Americans, however, do sense that the interests of ordinary people have been overlooked in favour of special interests, and a lot of the ‘support’ of the shaman Obama is merely just an inarticulate articulation of that. How could it be anything else when he doesn’t have the courage to stand for anything in public except the meaningless concept of change (which will occur by default when the presidency changes), and what he does actually stand for (socialism) he is too afraid and too sneaky to publically articulate?
As Palin pointed out, Obama is a fraud: he pretends to care about ordinary Americans when it serves his purpose in public but then he derides them in private as craven simpletons who “cling to their guns and their religion.”
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:16 PMPerhaps Obama should ask Gerry Adams for some advice on how not to run a campaign (you mention hubris in your Brassneck comments), as his recent experience in the south where SF widely believed their own hype and based a lot of their expectations on the great hope of their personality cult, which was also buoyed by a supportive/compliant media, only to get a massive wake up call when the results came in. What would Gerry tell Barry to do different?
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:21 PMHow the fuck do you get Gerry Adams into this?
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:24 PMI got Europhiles into it. (*Buffs nails*)
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:32 PM“Americans are deeply patriotic and right so - they have the second greatest country on earth.”
Dave,
I am interested to know which country you consider to be the first greatest!
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:35 PMThis election is going on forever and its now dominating Slugger. I’m soooooooooo bored with it already.
Keyword: ‘poor’ - feckin’ tell me about it
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:44 PMDave ,
‘Americans, however, do sense that the interests of ordinary people have been overlooked in favour of special interests’
Finally took off the blinkers eh ! Guess who has been padding the special interests for the past two administrations . That’s right - Mr McCain’s buddies -Bush , Cheney , Rumsfeld, Bremner , Abramoff etc etc . Those who are’nt yet in jail soon will be . Candidate Palin right now is trying to have all enquiries into her abuse of power ‘quashed ‘ . Can’t afford to be seen joining Abramoff & co in jail eh ?
18 of 22 the most corrupt members of Congress to date were Republicans. This doesn’t include David Vitter and the sex pervert Larry Craig (R-Idaho) who told us all he is not gay or guilty then told his lawyer he was entrapped and wants to rescind his guilt.
‘Bug eyes’ McConnell, Ted Stevens, and Duncan Hunter made the list. J. Dennis Hastert should also be on this list. He had his good buddy Jack Abramoff stuffed in his closet and Abramoff has just yesterday been sent down down for another 4 years jail to add to the 2 he has already served for fraud and corruption.
Dave’s ‘moral ‘ Republcians are a figment of an overactive imagination .
Sorry mate -too many of them are serving time for corruption and fraud along with their big corporation buddies from Enron , Wordl com etc etc etc .
America needs to put these shysters were they belong -behind bars for those they can convict and out of office for those who have not yet been caught !
They have been a vile cancer on American society for the past 8 years . November 2006 was just foretaste for what’s to come .
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:48 PMKen,
Where do you get off on using that kind of language? Let people make their points and then challenge, as civilly as you can.
Yes Dave. Well done. And you did it without resorting to any gross lapse in taste. I’d like to say I completely disagree, but I haven’t got the time to pull your argument into tiny little pieces. ;-)
Manch,
Well, I’d guess it has to be one of two. And from Dave’s record, it’s only going to be one of those.
Mark,
I did say it would be last for a while. I have plans for covering the race later in the campaign.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:52 PMMark McGregor ,
‘This election is going on forever’
Only seems like that :) It’s been on since the morning after the 2004 presidential election when Americans woke and realised -holy shit-we’ve done it again :(
I have to admit the short snappy 3 weeks or so of a British or Irish election saves a lot of money on political marketing :)
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 06:54 PMKen, surely the parallels between are plain to see. Is Obama in danger of misreading the hype and not addressing the failings of the personality cult in the same manner SF did?
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 07:16 PMGimme a break. She’ll unite conservatives, but there part of the electorate has decreased greatly and whenever McCain is seen as being too far to the right and not a “maverick”, he loses points. He’ll get a convention bounce in the polls, but the more that comes out about Palin (and it’s coming-her hubby’s business partner is now trying to legally hide his divorce info-affair with Sarah?).
As Peggy Noonan says: “It’s over”.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 07:23 PMIRIA,
I do think it is too far out to interpret even a a very large bounce in Republican’s fortunes as indicating any kind of an inevitable outcome. But according to Lloyd Shepherd, the Intertrade figures are showing ominous signs of shifting rather rapidly toward McCain: http://tinyurl.com/5uhyre.
Plans for a glorious procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and into the White House may have been a little premature. All the signs are that up to now the Dems rather than the Reps have been victims of the worse strain of ‘political psychosis’.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 07:37 PMPalin is a disaster waiting to happen, as suggested upthread, her lustre will last as long as she stays silent.
Expect her to make some serious fundy gaffs when under pressure. Also expect skeletons from closets. Latest reports are that her husband’s former business partner has just filed to have his divorce records sealed, in the wake of rumours he and Palin had an affair.Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 07:51 PMJust added the Slate FAQs: http://tinyurl.com/5v2fqf. There’s been a plethora of rumours in the last week some of the true, some of them sheer rubbish. And some we still don’t know about.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 08:00 PMWho says blogs are powerless and just full of hot air? Just look at how effective kos and huff, and all the hate-blogs in the msm were in creating a new blood-thirsty, conservative monster!
I’m sure they now wish they had kept their slander, wild accusations and innuendo to themselves. Slap it up them, I say. Give ‘m hell, Sarah!
‘expect skeletons from closets‘ cuts both ways, Tafkabo. How many are the msm worryingly hiding for BO?
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 08:09 PMAlthough McCain commended Obama on his convention speech many liberal commentators disparaged Palin by saying that her convention speech was all down to McCain’s speech writers. But I thought they hardly knew her, so how could they write a such a suitable sppech for her to deliver so powerfully?
The proverbial has hit the fan.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 08:10 PMmsm?
Sorry excuse my ignorance, what’s that?
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 08:53 PMGreenflag @ 07:54 PM is, as often, quite correct. This election started on the 3rd November 2004, just as the next kicks off on 5th November 2008 (nice date, that).
I’m getting the daily Rasmussen feeds, where the:
daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows the beginning of John McCain’s convention bounce and the race is essentially back where it was before Barack Obama’s bounce. Obama now attracts 46% of the vote while McCain earns 45%. When “leaners” are included, it’s Obama 48%, McCain 46%.
It’s free for anyone to sign up at http://www.rasmussenreports.com
For an overview of all the US polling, go to http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/national-polls.html
Note that most of the returns quoted there pre-date the Conventions.Chris Cillizza, doing the essential “The Fix” political blog for the Washington Post, rates Palin’s speech the pick of either Convention:
Maybe it was the low expectations that greeted the Alaska governor when she took the stage on Wednesday night. Maybe it was the newness and fresh faced appeal she exhibited in the biggest moment of her short career as McCain’s vice presidential pick. Maybe it was her ad lib that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was lipstick. But, whatever it was, Palin’s speech managed to do two things that many thought were impossible: energize the conservative base and make believers out of her doubters in the Republican political professional class and the media. It ensured that for the next week—and likely longer—she would be THE story in the presidential race, the hottest thing on the campaign circuit since a fast rising Illinois senator named Barack Obama. It also cemented the fact that Palin is no Dan Quayle or Tom Eagleton—an important milestone given the struggles involved in introducing her to the general public earlier this week. Palin established herself as a serious politician and America’s sweetheart all in the space of a 35-minute speech. That’s an impressive feat.
Notice that’s coming from a cool, committed and jaded journo, writing for a newspaper with confirmed liberal traditions.
On the other hand, there is today’s Economist (which, remember, has a bigger circulation in the Us than in the UK), where the Lexington column is wholly devoted to “The woman from nowhere”. It takes the other tack: the Palin nomination should make us question McCain’s judgement:
Mr McCain’s appointment also raises more general worries about the Republican Party’s fitness for government. Up until the middle of last week Mr McCain was still considering two other candidates whom he has known for decades: Joe Lieberman, a veteran senator, independent Democrat and Iraq war hawk, and Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania (a swing state with 21 Electoral College votes) and the first secretary of homeland security. Mr McCain reluctantly rejected both men because their pro-choice views are anathema to the Christian right.
The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics. This is as true on the left as on the right. But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.
What I read so far, especially the last couple of weeks, suggest the Economist is still with Obama. It will interest me, at least, to see if the usual rule works: what the Economist fluently and directly says on Friday will be the stuff-and-substance of those turgid opinion pieces in the heavy Sundays.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:04 PM“Okay, last of the US posts for a bit.”
I wish you luck Mick.
I know the plan is for SP to slip back to Alaska for a while, get a few foreign policy tips and be good and ready for Biden. Dunno though.
I did think that the coolness with which Obama has dealt with this shows great promise for the election, also the speed with which he got a retraction of the stupid accusations.
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:19 PMIn elections if you can keep it close until the last week and hope some misfortune hits the opposition then you always have a chance
Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:19 PMToo close to call Mick. And I wouldn’t crow (or eat crow) just yet about disasters.
Of course there will be a bounce (it was a cute move, literally) but if there is anything the media loves more than a star it’s to have feeding frenzy and destroy a star so we’ll see. AK brought their investigation forward today to make it happen before the election. Here’s a newsflash too McCain/Palin are Republicans, so is George Bush, aint any way round that after eight years of disaster and still rising prices (unemployment up 6% today). Can anybody remember who is on the ticket with her? That’s right, nope. Same old unleashed a monster/main chancer on himself. She upstaged him last night even on his big night out.Posted by on Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:19 PM
