I have been enjoying this whole discussion for the week or so that Palin has been the Republican nominee. The whole discussion has been very strange, and no one (in the MSM anyway) points out the contradictions of both candidacies. Barack Obama tries to contrast himself with John McCain by saying that he’s not a Washington outsider…and he’s running with Joe Biden, who of course is a long-term senator who by most measures is part of the problem. McCain campaigns against Obama by saying he’s inexperienced, and then picks a Governor who hasn’t been in office for two whole years, and before that was the mayor of a town of less than 9,000.
Actually, this last point becomes the main one, if you think about it for a minute. If the Democrats continue their attacks on her experience, deriding her mayoral duties in Wasilla, they’re going to merely reinforce Obama’s “clinging to their guns and bibles” condescension, which of course has already created a backlash for him. I’ve never lived in a small town, really (though my suburb sometimes feels like one), but I don’t think being the mayor of one is an easy or undemanding job, as the Obama campaign seems to be hinting. Further, for a 20-month governor, she’s gotten a lot done, some of it things her predecessors were unable to accomplish. You can belittle that, but really it sort of stands on its own, doesn’t it? Biden, meanwhile, merely looks a bit old and tired, having had hairplugs (it’s widely reported). He’s also got a poor record when it comes to speaking, having done everything from lying about his own academic record to plagiarizing someone else’s speech when it suited him. the latest poll has the McCain/Palin ticket up by 10 points over Obama/Biden. I have to say that this surprises me. We had been told that Obama’s magical internet cash machine was going to generate $500 million by election day, and that he was going to be unstoppable. Now, it appears that his money is slowing, and the Republicans are surging on the strength of Palin’s speech and Obama’s perceived weakening. Polls always skew in favor of the Democrats by at least a percentage point or two, which means that if the election were held today it would be a landslide for McCain. Frankly, I expected them to be considerably weaker than they are, at this point, and I feel that they’ve got a much better chance of getting elected than I did a few weeks ago. We’ll see, though.
