A Different Take on the Expectations for Palin

Many of the most seasoned pundits are of the opinion that each time Sarah Palin commits another gaffe, she makes her job easier in the Vice Presidential Debate by lowering the public expectations. Certainly there are many examples in history of a less-than-stellar orator winning a debate by split-decision, for no better reason than because he or she exceeded the lower threshold that had been set for him or her. And anyone who hesitates to agree need look no further than the 2000 debate performance of the White House’s current occupant. When the public expects one candidate to dominate the other, so sayeth the conventional wisdom, these expectations leave that apparently superior candidate with the narrower window in which to perform well without dog-piling on his hapless opponent across the stage.

All of this worked in 2000 precisely because the general public had little basis for doubting Mr. Bush’s core competency to hold down the job. True, he had performed dreadfully in a series of now infamous Sunday-morning news interviews. (”I know how hard it is to put food on your family.” “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?” “I understand the challenges of small business: I was one.”) But the general public–or at the very least, that segment of the general public that is still undecided at the end of Setpember–doesn’t watch Sunday-morning news interviews. To them Mr. Bush was a self-confident, likable guy who was true to his word, essentially untarnished by scandal (as far as they knew), and ready to take the Lewinsky-weary country in a new direction that included big, ripe checks in the mail for everybody. Indeed in hindsight it is a small miracle that Mr. Gore fared as well as he did under the circumstances.

Governor Palin, by contrast, has burned her honeymoon capital with the media and the larger body politic–first by repeatedly lying with respect to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” even after the lie was documented, then by stonewalling an investigation started by state legislators of her own party, and finally by spectacularly and very visibly mangling her should-have-been-rehearsed answers to the interview questions being posed by the unimpeachably non-partisan Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. By the time of the second installment of her Couric interview she was already the least-favorably viewed of the four major candidates, and shortly thereafter she was called upon to remove herself from the ticket, both by CNN’s self-appointed national conscience, Jack Cafferty, and by National Review columnist Kathleen Parker. The latter is the far more devastating blow, since Ms. Parker may not be summarily dismissed as either an Obama supporter or as a sexist in the McCain campaign’s now daily conference calls to blast the treatment they’re getting.

In the meantime Palin has continued to dig herself an even deeper hole, first by refusing to directly answer questions about her acceptance of over $25,000 in gifts, and then by seeming to contradict her boss on the subject of surgical strikes on terrorist bases in Pakistan. She’s been mocked by Tina Fey and David Letterman, and her very image alone is generally enough to start Jon Stewart’s audiences at the Daily Show into a fit of merciless cackling. If nothing else, it sure does seem like a long time ago that anyone was worried too much about what might tumble unexpectedly from the lips of Joe Biden!

To put it bluntly, the public has seen what it needs to see in order to have grave doubts about Governor Palin’s basic intellectual competency to stand a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. And those are not the sorts of low expectations upon which a candidate may capitalize. Indeed the true state of the situation is probably closer to the opposite. Barring a major surprise victory against Joe Biden, one which shows her both thoroughly in command of the the discussion and thoroughly proficient on issues that she has not thus far demonstrated any aptitude whatsoever, the persuadable voters watching the contest will undoubtedly resolve that the Alaska Governor has just officially run herself out of chances.

McCain Admits He Hasn’t Read Bailout Bill

John McCain, campaigning in Cleveland, Ohio today, admits that he hasn’t read the bailout bill

What!?!? I thought he suspended his campaign? If this financial crisis is apparently all of a sudden so important to him, then why hasn’t he even bothered to read the bill that would allocate 700 billion dollars to address it?

Although fear not, he’s apparently swooping into Washington tonight to rescue everyone from a bill that he hasn’t even read. Republican are apparently even delaying the compromise long enough so McCain can be present and take credit. Word on the street is that apparently McCain may even “rediscover” his hidden populist side in the next 12 hours and vote No!

Power to the people, John McCain!

Letterman Suspends McCain by the Balls

Forget about suspending your campaign, just don’t suspend your campaign AND cancel an appearance on David Letterman on the same day!

David Letterman quotes from earlier today:

You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves. I think someone’s putting something in his metamucil.

He can’t run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?

What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!

And now, the long awaited video from tonight:

McCain: I Have No Regrets Over Deregulation

John McCain on 60 minutes Sunday night told us all that he has no regrets over being a major player in many of the 1990s deregulation that have led to the current financial crisis. Here is he is in his own words:

Maybe he’d like to sell a few of his homes or one of his 13 cars to help pay off the 700 billion dollar debt that Joe and Jill taxpayer are now most likely stuck with in order to bail out his buddies on Wall Street.

Was Palin a Good Gamble?

The other day, we outlined four theories of why John McCain has been sliding in recent days. Of the three theories that I found plausible, Sarah Palin’s declining popularity was right near the top of the list. Palin was always seen as a high risk-high reward pick. At first, it looked crazy, then it looked ingenious, and now it looks like a good gamble that probably won’t pay off. I still believe that if McCain thought he was bound to lose the election without Palin, it was choice he had to make. What is the difference between losing by 1 or 2 and losing by 6 or 7 anyway? A loss is still a loss, and politics, my friends, is not horseshoes.

Research 2000 has done a good job of tracking the favorability of both tickets in their daily tracking poll. Let’s take a look:

What’s most interesting here, I think, is that not only has Palin’s exposure brought her numbers down, but McCain’s numbers have crashed at the same time. Granted, this is partially the result of the other two effects outlined previously. However, it’s hard to dispute that the exposure of Palin as a corrupt extremist didn’t exactly help the perception of McCain’s decision-making abilities. Some of McCain’s biggest arguments against Obama have been somewhat neutralized by picking someone with less experience than Obama.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and the trends of this week could easily reverse themselves. However, if I were McCain, would I still have picked Palin knowing what I know now? I’d probably have to say yes, because I believe that he would have lost anyway without her. It was a gamble he had to make.

McCain’s Health Plan: DOA

John McCain is fond of repeating the patently false assertion that Barack Obama would “raise taxes on the middle class.” FactCheck.org has had to re-iterate that Obama’s tax plan would absolutely not “raise taxes on the middle class,” unless people in the “middle class” make over $250,000 a year. Even though the ads have been thoroughly debunked, McCain continues to repeat this claim, which is not just an opinion, and not just “spin,” but an outright lie. In no way will an Obama tax plan raise taxes on the “middle class.” McCain knows this, and yet he continues to say that Obama’s tax plan will raise taxes on the middle class.

Ironically, McCain is himself preparing a tax on the middle class — in the form of his health care proposal. McCain, of course, wants to work within the broken confines of the broken health care system. This is his plan for “reform,” but to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, McCain’s health care plan is still a pig wearing lipstick. There is no real reform: no attempt to bring costs — which have doubled (doubled!) since 2000 — down; no attempt to utilize the government’s bargaining power to get deals for patients; no attempt to get health insurance for people who are denied due to “pre-existing conditions.” McCain’s plan is this: throw a $2500 tax exemption ($5000 for families) at consumers and tell them to go get their own health care.

That’s it. Here’s some money, let The Market work things out.

The problem — as I’ve often said in the past — is that health care does not operate according to the Invisible Hand, since the respective interests of the health care provider and the health care customer are mutually exclusive. The insurer (provider) wants to provide the least amount of health care for the most amount of money. The customer wants to obtain the most amount of health care for the least amount of money. People who get health insurance through their companies get a break, since they get group rates. Because there are so many people in the insurance pool, the average cost of health care per person can stay low, and the pool can absorb the hit if any member of the group needs to cash in on that health care.

McCain isn’t even proposing that. Literally, he wants you to get your cash, go down to the UnitedHealthCare office, and sign up for a plan all on your own. No group discounts. No nothing. Regular retail price. Health care premiums in Ohio start at $300 per month. Even The Wall Street Journal agreed that John McCain’s health care plan was outrageous.

At the same time, McCain wants to tax the money that employers contribute to their employees’ health insurance:

The value of the typical plan provided by an employer to a family is $12,106, of which the employer pays $8,824, and the worker pays the remaining $3,282. The median household income is $44,389, which places most American families in the 15 percent income tax bracket.

McCain wants to add the employer’s cost — an additional $8,824 — to that middle class family’s income, then tax it. The hit to the average family is 15 percent of the McCain-added income — $1,323 more in income taxes.

This new tax would affect the 158 million Americans who are insured through their employer.

Now there’s a tax on the middle class! The Hill Blog goes into a little bit of conspiracy theory, though:

So if you choose to remain with your employer-based insurance, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever see any benefit from that $5,000 payment. In addition, giving young healthy workers $2,500 to buy insurance on their own, where it won’t be taxed, will encourage them to leave employer-based plans, quickly raising the costs for everyone remaining and thus eliminating benefits of the tax credits. 

Republicans love to complain about how ineffective a particular agency or program is, intentionally staff that agency with idiots, and then, when the idiot-staffed agency messes up, point to that agency and exclaim (loudly enough for the cameras to hear), “See?! I told you that the government doesn’t work! Now, the private sector, that would have done things better!” Then, they outsource the previously government-provided benefit or service to a private company, most likely run by the personal friend of someone high up in the government.

The end result of the situation described in the blockquote above is that private health insurance companies would find their coffers pregnant with the cash generated by individuals buying insurance at the retail price rather than the discounted group rate. Why settle for getting income from group discounts when you could goad your consumers into paying full price?! That’s what I call reform.

McCain Camp Throws Fiorina Under the Bus

McCain “Victory Chairman” and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina was officially thrown under the Straight Talk Express Bus today by the McCain campaign.  McCain and Palin were both apparently “furious” by her comments yesterday and have made the campaign cancel all of Fiorina’s previously scheduled TV appearances.  Although what she said is partially true, apparently the truth doesn’t matter when the economy is going into the crapper:

The fact that McCain at one point considered Fiorina to be his VP is laughable. Besides being CEO of a company that makes shitty computers, what else would qualify her? But then again, apparently McCain isn’t qualified to be in her sector either.

So much for supporting the straight talk express.  Carly Fiorina was made a sacrificial lamb today for simply telling the truth.

McCain: The Fundamentals of the Economy Are Strong

No, this is not a flashback from earlier this year. John McCain today repeated the same line again that the fundamentals of the economy our strong. Granted, he’s partially correct and partially incorrect. However, saying something like this today probably was not the smartest move considering the Dow is down 600 points, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy,  Merill Lynch was sold on the cheap to Back of America, and AIG is deep financial difficulties.

Here is McCain in his own words:

My Conditions for Voting Republican

I’ve been stewing over the last several days about this election season. Who can blame me? Political feelings are at their height with the two conventions so close together, and so people from all sides of the political continuum find this to be a very convenient time to throw their opinions into the public forum. I’ve wanted to do it in a more complete manner than by simply typing in heated status updates on Facebook, but haven’t entirely known what to say until now. I suppose this bit of writing is a first attempt at expressing my political expectations and reactions so far for this season.

In the end I decided on a sort of list of ‘demands,’ things that the Republican Party would have to do or work towards if they wanted to gain the vote of a slightly left-of-center independent voter such as myself. Here they are, in no particular order:

-Ditch the Rove: There is no one, and I mean no one, in the Republican machine whom I despise more (even including Cheney and Bush) than Karl Rove. The man must be absolutely soulless to have come up with the Republican election scheme of divide and conquer, watering down a complex world of issues and concerns, and slandering your political opponents through a mix of 3rd party “swift boaters” and sleazy push-polling tactics. Seriously, I see the man or hear his voice and I feel a mix of nausea and rage all wrapped up together. I understand that there are other masterminds and think-tanks involved in Bush’s otherwise unexplainable hold on power over the last eight years, but Rove is the most vocal and the most visible. If McCain had told Rove ‘thanks, but no thanks’ from the very beginning of his campaign, I would have had a great deal more respect for him, but as it happens, McCain has involved Rove in his campaign, I don’t know in what exact capacity, but he’s behind the scenes somewhere. I will not vote for a Republican, even at the state level, until that jerk-off is publicly shunned by the party leadership.

- Drop the “I’m-so-white-it-hurts” smack talk: Did Palin say anything about the issues in her VP acceptance speech? Or did she just walk up to the podium, give a shout out to her sisters in the AK, form gang symbols with her hands and challenge Harry Reid to an all-out rumble with John McCain? This is another tactic widely used by Republicans in recent years: when you realize that you either have no new platform or your platform is so extreme that it will scare off the majority of American moderates, just talk trash about the other party and hope that no one notices that you said nothing about the actual issues. Sarah Palin did just that at the convention. I know that there have been accusations from the Republican side (and even from people like Jon Stewart) that people are only following Obama because he is promising change and hope and a place on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that is not at all why I have supported him from the beginning. I supported him because he was more concerned with talking about the issues as if we were in this together. Imagine that. Americans of all creeds and races sharing many of the same problems. Could it be because, despite our ideological differences, we might share a common humanity and country? Why don’t we drop the smack talk, Obama says, and focus on our approaches and solutions to the issues? What a fresh idea!

- Rupture with the Rapturists: I understand that religion, faith and morals will always have a place in the public forum. There are ideals that many of us hold very close to our hearts and consider the foundations of our lives. I have a problem, though, when religious leaders realize how much power they can potentially exercise from the political podium rather than from the pulpit. I strongly disagree with the recent practice of Republicans going before religious leaders (and only conservative religious leaders at that) to accept their blessing from that leader. It reminds me just a wee-bit too much of the Holy Roman emperors going before the Pope to have him bless their kingship. Let me reintroduce a neglected idea: a person can be a very capable leader and public administrator without holding to religiously orthodox views, or any religious view for that matter. Even John Paul II was not fond of the Republican Party’s policies, a mood shared by the current pontiff, facts that many conservative American Catholics tend to conveniently ignore. It’s one thing when religious leaders and institutions try to voice their concerns in the public forum of American politics. They have every right to do so, so long as they frame their arguments as the concerns of their particular group. When I’m told by those leaders that I’ll rot in Hell for voting for a candidate who happens to be pro-choice with an otherwise amazing platform, I tend to shy away from them. I’m an adult, and I have the right and the ability to form moral judgments for myself. Don’t try to guilt me into voting for your Republican candidate by threatening my soul with eternal damnation.

- Stop Rudy from talking about 9/11: Seriously, Rudy, shut your mouth. You were rightfully popular for your immediate response to said national tragedy in the days and weeks following, not to mention for your record against crime in New York City, but quit framing the entire political discussion in terms of “I’m the hero of 9/11, so if you vote for the other guys, you’ll find a 737 barreling into your city’s office buildings.” Your party does not hold a monopoly on the willingness and ability to exercise military resources to protect this country. I believe that Joe Biden and his years of foreign affairs experience is just one of many other potential examples to demonstrate that Democrats know a thing or two about national security. What fear mongering and baiting we’re hearing when Bush implies that the other party will leave you for dead to the terrorists, or will let the terrorists win! For those of you who argue that the Republicans have a stronger record on national security and the use of military force, and that they were simply arguing that they would be the more experienced party for handling security issues, I have just one question. Why didn’t the Republicans just say that, rather that insinuating that a vote for the other guys was a vote for defeat? The first involves cool and calm dialogue, the second fear and powerlessness. It’s obvious that they were trying to scare people into the GOP camp.

- Stop parading minorities and women around on the platform to get votes: From the moment I saw that McCain selected a woman to be his vice presidential pick, I suspected that it was raw, political pandering for the votes of former Hillary supporters. It reminds me of how Bush selected people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice for his administration, two highly-qualified public servants to be sure, but also people who were conservative enough to have very little in common with most of the African-Americans whom they were breaking ground for. I know that some critics wondered if Bush had selected them mostly to make his administration and party look more progressive and diverse. Palin strikes me as more of the same. It’s like they thought that the progressive women who had sincerely hoped that Hillary would shatter the glass ceiling would vote for McCain to get back at the “patriarchal” Obama-Biden ticket. Does McCain expect those same, progressive women to review Palin’s beliefs on contraceptives and gun control and not be paralyzed with fear? Yes, Palin has experience as a governor and mayor. She’s not, admittedly, completely green. But I really believe that her selection by McCain was more about her reproductive organs and hard-hitting hockey mom rhetoric rather than anything that she has previously accomplished. Yet another Republican minority member or member of the historically-excluded gender using their power to go against what most of their confederates believe in. Nice going.

Last, but certainly not the least:

- Kick the Neo-cons to the curb, baby: These people, the neo-conservatives, are not in the mold of Reagan. They are not like Ike was, and they are not your traditional, fiscal conservatives. They are frightening, frightening people whose political motivation lies in the apparent humiliation of the American military during the Vietnam War, and they would love nothing more than to pay the world back (except for Britain, of course) for that loss of power that we experienced. And how do they plan to do this? One, by turning the world into an American commercial and quasi-military empire. In this way, they are no better than Vladimir Putin and his recent nationalistic expeditions into Georgia, and Putin has wasted no time in pointing out the hypocrisy of us chastising Russia for invading a sovereign nation when we did the same with Iraq. Two, they believe that stronger executive power will absolve the office of the Presidency of the embarrassment it suffered during Watergate. If only the judicial and legislative branches of government would bow down obediently before the president and his cabinet, they argue, the loss of faith in the office of the Presidency that happened when Bill Clinton was gettin’ his piece would never have happened. This means, of course, that the two branches which are designed to introduce our ideas for legislation and to protect and define our rights by law are being subordinated by the branch which can, according to neo-conservative theory, do whatever the hell it wants, so long as there are signing statements and war powers to fall back on. They’re not interested in your well-being. In fact, they have a distaste for your intelligence and your criticism of the executive office. In their model, as well, only the biggest businesses are vital to the success and well-being of the American dynamo. Without big money and investments to trickle down to the middle and working classes, America is hopeless and worthless (and that includes you, the average, middle-class American voter who was too stupid not to invest money in the stock market to make yourself independently wealthy). They are not Christian in practice, even if they sometimes promote that image for their policies. They are cold-hearted, aggressive and extremely ambitious. We should be terribly afraid of them and angry with them. They tend to destroy everything grass-roots and diverse about this nation. And they were behind the scenes of most of the Republicans in the primary, including McCain. If you think that McCain will bring change, think again. The cancer that made Bush’s presidency such a disaster has spread to the McCain camp. Don’t think that he won’t be influenced by them.

So there you have it, my demands, my manifesto, so to speak. These days, I feel as if I am defining myself by what I hate in the Republican Party rather than what I admire in the Democratic one. Many people reading this would probably think that I am a die-hard Democrat. That’s not true. They don’t fully speak for me. I am an anti-Republican by virtue of the things listed above, and in this two party system of ours, what other alternative do I have when I turn away from the current stench of the GOP? You tell me.

Joe Klein: McCain Has Lost His Honor

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein believes that McCain has lost his honor with his new ad that tries to link Obama with pedophilia. This ad reminds me of the kind of thing Ken Blackwell ran against Ted Strickland in the 2006 Ohio Governor’s race. In that race, Blackwell ran an ad trying to link Ted Strickland to the man-boy-love-association.

By the way, Klein’s take is especially interesting since Klein is hardly a partisan–he usually does not deviate much from the center.

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