I saw the results of an MSNBC text message poll this morning that asked what they thought of Palin after he speech. There were three options and they were something like:
1. Think better of Palin
2. Speech raised doubts about Palin
3. Speech raised doubts about Obama

About 70% responded with #2.

It was somewhat easy to dismiss that with the thought that MSNBC seems to be succeeding in drawing in liberals via the audience of Olbermann and soon Rachel Maddow. But in a story at the Huffington Post, two focus groups of former Clinton voters from Nevada finished the speech with a lower opinion of Palin after the speech than they had of her before.

I haven’t seen anything like this in the mainstream media reporting on her speech. By and large, she is reported to have received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

I don’t agree with Republicans on anything, but I am not prone to casting them as the devil. Rudy Giuliani, however, is a first class fascist. That man is a lying, strutting, demagogue. Frankly, it speaks quite ill of New Yorkers that they ever elected the man, let alone re-elected him.

My money on the top GOP contender for 2012 is Mike Huckabee.

More on all of this later, maybe tomorrow. Gotta watch Palin’s speech.

Over the last few days, the best source of info I’ve had on the Palin selection has been via Unbossed. They have largely stayed away from the tabloid stuff and focused on actual reasons why this selection and the process that produced it is really problematic for McCain.

I think my previous thought that Palin was a desperate move, a roll of the dice, is proving to have been correct.

September 2, 2008
Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ST. PAUL — A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge. Read the rest of this entry »

In this presidential election year, I have found that I’m doing most of my writing elsewhere. I think that I need a level of interactivity that a solo blog doesn’t seem to provide. In the event that there’s anyone reading this who isn’t interacting with me elsewhere on the internet, I’ll paste in what I wrote Friday morning, about an hour after McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin for the veepslot.

I think the pick looks desperate.

Here’s some of what I think McCain was thinking with her pick.

1. Woman! We’ll siphon off some of those Hillary supporters. We’ll steal some of Obama’s thunder as the first African American presidential candidate.

2. “Average Jane”. Not a Washington insider or long time pol, mother of 5, etc.

3. An unexpected pick that will really make news. Reinforces “maverick” image. Palin has some maverick cred of her own on top of that.

5. Husband is blue collar, union member guy. She’s a former union member. Oldest son is in the army. I’m assuming this will be some help in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Why I think it looks desperate:

1. The woman thing is too obvious. The fact that she’s way out of step with where most women fall on most issues should become apparent quickly. It looks a bit hamfisted. It also means the McCain camp has bought into their own spin about how upset women are over Hillary.

2. This pick makes it look like the McCain camp didn’t think they could win with Romney or the other top contenders. It’s a roll of the dice, a supposed game changer that looks kind of desperate.

3. She’s dreadfully inexperienced. That’s the other side of “outsider”. She makes Obama look like Teddy Kennedy. Two years ago, she was the mayor of a small town in Alaska. She’s been governor of Alaska for about 18 months. McCain’s an old man who has recently fought cancer. Look at Sarah Palin and tell me you think she’s really qualified to be on the top of the ticket.

4. Even though she has a record of ethics reform, she’s currently under investigation for a potential abuse of her power as governor. Even if nothing comes of that, it gives the media lots of stories to tell about the wildly corrupt world of Alaska politics these days and her place in it.

5. She has four minor children, the youngest of whom is an infant with down’s syndrome. I think there is a traditionalist segment to the Republican base who may think she should be focused on those kids, especially the special needs infant rather than being vice president. You add to it McCain’s age and health and the possibility that she could actually be president. I think it turns off some of their own base.

6. Who is going to get more media attention on the campaign trail: Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin? You put Hillary out there doing events on the same days as Palin’s big events and she’s an after thought. Hillary could actually relish the role of Palin attack dog.

I’m watching Barack Obama give a pretty good speech on patriotism right now. He’s doing a really good job of hitting all the high minded rhetoric of americanism here, including most of the liberal ideas and some recent liberal causes. He also took a shot at moveon.org for their “general betray us” ad.

I don’t like this idea of national service as a requirement for college aid. College aid should come because it’s the right thing to do, both for the citizens who receive it and the country as a whole.

He was speaking from Independence, Mo, so the Truman shout out was inevitable.

I guess you can’t talk about patriotism without bringing up Lincoln and Washington.

Now they cut to a news conference from John McCain. He’s all “I love free trade and Obama doesn’t” in regard to Columbia and the free trade deal, CAFTA, NAFTA, etc. The questioners so far are throwing McCain total softballs a la “Do you think Senator Obama is being hypocritical here” on something in the campaign.

McCain can’t seem to make a statement without saying “we have differences and I look forward to discussing those”.

McCain laughs like a muppet when he’s being a politician. He doesn’t actually laugh, he makes this goofy grin and then rapidly bobs his head up and down.

And now MSNBC appears to be cutting away. End of live blog.

Exit polling out of West Virginia looks really bad for Barack Obama. That’s five electoral votes he’s got no chance of winning without putting Hillary on the ticket. Less than 1/3rd of Hillary’s voters in the state say they would vote for Obama in the general. She’s going to be in the neighborhood of a 2 to 1 victory when the total count comes in. That’s about the same margin by which West Virginia voters say they don’t believe Obama shares their basic values. Which red state does Obama pick up to offset those votes?

It may be cliche after the last week, but there’s something very real and very important about the fact that no Democrat has won the presidency without winning West Virginia since 1916.

As soon as “change” became such a big deal around Obama, Hillary should have focused her entire rhetorical response around the idea that what could be bigger change from George W. Bush than Hillary and then enumerate every single thing where she has disagreed with Bush and the Republicans not only for the last 8 years, but the last 30 years. Nothing else she attempted had anything close to the potency of that argument.

Here’s a way for Barack Obama to get to the presidency. A way, not the only way.

Hillary has kind of, perhaps inadvertently, backed herself into a corner with some public statements she made before the Texas and Ohio primaries. If Obama gets the nomination and offers her the VP slot, she pretty much has to take it. Obama’s case to Hillary and the superdelegates should be:

A. What he’s already saying–he won more delegates by vote than her, super delegates shouldn’t overturn that.*

B. He will make Hillary his VP and give her real power. He’ll start by putting her in charge of something major–health care, perhaps. She needs a guarantee of real influence a la Gore and Cheney. I realize this takes a carrot away that he could dangle in front of others, but he won’t need it. An Obama-Clinton ticket is unbeatable. It’s hard for me believe I’m saying that a ticket with a black man and a polarizing white woman on it is unbeatable, but I really think it is.

C. Enlist Gore and Edwards. You don’t necessarily have to announce what position they’ll hold in the administration, but get them out there campaigning and saying they would be honored to serve in any capacity. There are so many ways to use Gore that it nearly makes my head hurt.

D. Find a way to secure one or two high profile GOP endorsements. They’ve got a lot of legislators who are retiring this year. That’s your best bet.

E. Forget about public financing. Obama declared earlier that he would use public financing if the GOP nominee agreed to do so also. John McCain is already knocking him about that. The public financing limit is something like $85 million this year. Considering that Obama raised $40 million in March alone, it’s insane for him to limit himself that way. The extra money he can raise will far outstrip any harm that comes from this bit of hypocrisy.

Mitt Romney is running one of the dumbest commercials on TV right now. It’s an attack on Hillary Clinton. Mr. Romney, Hillary is the least of your problems right now. You can’t even pretend to maybe be the front runner and, hence, above the fray. It’s such a hamfisted attempt at pushing the “we hate Hillary button” that sits blinking on the forehead of most conservatives that I doubt even they will fall for it. The “substance” of the ad is that she’s never run anything–not a city, a business, or any organization of any kind and is, therefore, not qualified to be president. Does anyone buy that? Can anyone look at her biography and not see a smart, capable (perhaps even ruthlessly so) person? Conservatives must see her in that light to be so afraid of her. Does anyone believe she wasn’t intimately involved in the decision making of the first Clinton whitehouse? Worse, though, is a clip of Romney reacting with disbelief to the (never made) claim that Hillary can learn the job on the fly as if she’s on an “internship”. Oh, snap! He said “intern”. heh heh heh heh.

Nearly every damn word and image in the commercial is just wrong.