The Biden-Palin Debate
I watched the Joe Biden-- Sarah Palin Vice-Presidential debate with fervent interest and have come to the following conclusions:
"Klondike Barbie" Palin exceeded the expectations of all, within her party and across the nation, with a strong comeback after a series of faltering interviews that made her somewhat resemble the bumbling Miss South Carolina who began her confused reply to
a geography question with the words: "I personally believe that most U.S. Americans cannot do so because they do not have maps ..." Yet, although she came across more confident and articulate than previously in exceeding those expectations, we have to acknowledge that the bar was set remarkably low. She often appeared as if she had hundreds of index cards stored in her brain that she sorted through quickly in order to regurgitate the memorized reply to the question she anticipated. Sometimes, she winked and got girlie, which brought me back to the Miss South Carolina metaphor. She also annoyed me with her Fargo-accented attempts to get folksy with the working class, peppering her frequently superficial commentary with references to "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Moms", while dropping irritating down-home slang like "you betcha" and "doggone it". It is interesting that as the whole political and economic structure erected by the neo-con Republicans going back to 1981 is imploding with a deafening roar that is too loud to ignore even by the most apathetic Americans, the Republican Party with its incongruous McCain-Palin ticket is desperately attempting to re-invent itself as a party of change and a party of compassion for the have-nots and the have-not-so-much's on Main Street. When Joe Biden -- who delivered a cautious, conservative, gaffe-free and solid performance last night -- mauled the disastrous policies of the Bush-Cheney regime, Palin countered by blaming nothing but Wall Street greed and reminding us that she and John McCain are mavericks who will deliver change. Really? Was anyone convinced? Palin distanced herself from Bush as if he was a figure from the distant past -- as if, according to one pundit, he was Millard Fillmore or someone else equally ancient in our political culture. By most scorecards, Biden won the debate hands down and convinced most who watched that he was presidential timber. I have long been a Biden fan and I supported him early in the Democratic primaries until it was clear he would never catch on. His weaknesses -- verbosity, arrogance and a tendency towards gaffes -- did not beset him last night. He had many strong cards he did not play, probably because of the fear that he would be accused of bullying poor, vulnerable, sheltered Sarah Palin. He held back and it worked for him, although it also denied him the kind of fiery knock-out performance he might have delivered had he been up again the morose Joe Lieberman or the “ken-doll” Mitt Romney that no audience would have pitied after the bell rang. Sarah Palin deserves credit however for ... well, for not failing, (or "cratering" as another pundit put it) which we all expected her to do. She showed she could hold her own on a national stage and deliver memorized lines and look convincing doing it, which is worth some points. She hasn't convinced many people, even in her own party, that she is presidential material, but less people think she's a complete idiot this morning. (I remember the first Bush-Kerry debate in '04, when the president actually looked like he was mentally retarded, but Americans seemed okay with that for some reason. . .) This may help stanch the vote hemorrhaging of the McCain-Palin ticket a bit, although it is unlikely to make a real difference. The gap in popular and electoral votes looks too wide for any dog-and-pony show to surmount, so the remaining two Obama-McCain debates may be beside the point.I have been convinced for weeks now that an Obama-Biden victory is assured and it is just a question of how big the margin will be. The looming financial catastrophe, McCain's uneven performance on the stump and Palin's lightweight resume have only doomed him further. I believe that whatever occurs, an Obama victory will be a victory for the country. And perhaps no Republican would anticipate this, but I have a firm conviction that the defeat of John McCain (a pitiful surrogate for the last gasp of the neo-cons) will be a huge win in the long term for the Republican Party. Republicans -- who used to be a solid moderate political party with roots that stretch back through Teddy Roosevelt to the great Abraham Lincoln -- can reinvent themselves for the 21st century after shedding the bankrupt neo-con ideology and the fringe loonies that have been such major players in the current administration, especially the extreme Christian right that hijacked the party and have used it as a platform for their anti-evolution, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, while waiting breathlessly for the rapture of Armageddon. We must not forget that the sometimes charming (wink-wink) beauty-pageant queen Klondike Barbie rises from that misguided milieu, and after an Obama victory I for one will breathe a huge sigh of relief that someone who thinks the earth is 6000 years old won't be 60 seconds from assuming the presidency of the United States.
"Klondike Barbie" Palin exceeded the expectations of all, within her party and across the nation, with a strong comeback after a series of faltering interviews that made her somewhat resemble the bumbling Miss South Carolina who began her confused reply to
a geography question with the words: "I personally believe that most U.S. Americans cannot do so because they do not have maps ..." Yet, although she came across more confident and articulate than previously in exceeding those expectations, we have to acknowledge that the bar was set remarkably low. She often appeared as if she had hundreds of index cards stored in her brain that she sorted through quickly in order to regurgitate the memorized reply to the question she anticipated. Sometimes, she winked and got girlie, which brought me back to the Miss South Carolina metaphor. She also annoyed me with her Fargo-accented attempts to get folksy with the working class, peppering her frequently superficial commentary with references to "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Moms", while dropping irritating down-home slang like "you betcha" and "doggone it". It is interesting that as the whole political and economic structure erected by the neo-con Republicans going back to 1981 is imploding with a deafening roar that is too loud to ignore even by the most apathetic Americans, the Republican Party with its incongruous McCain-Palin ticket is desperately attempting to re-invent itself as a party of change and a party of compassion for the have-nots and the have-not-so-much's on Main Street. When Joe Biden -- who delivered a cautious, conservative, gaffe-free and solid performance last night -- mauled the disastrous policies of the Bush-Cheney regime, Palin countered by blaming nothing but Wall Street greed and reminding us that she and John McCain are mavericks who will deliver change. Really? Was anyone convinced? Palin distanced herself from Bush as if he was a figure from the distant past -- as if, according to one pundit, he was Millard Fillmore or someone else equally ancient in our political culture. By most scorecards, Biden won the debate hands down and convinced most who watched that he was presidential timber. I have long been a Biden fan and I supported him early in the Democratic primaries until it was clear he would never catch on. His weaknesses -- verbosity, arrogance and a tendency towards gaffes -- did not beset him last night. He had many strong cards he did not play, probably because of the fear that he would be accused of bullying poor, vulnerable, sheltered Sarah Palin. He held back and it worked for him, although it also denied him the kind of fiery knock-out performance he might have delivered had he been up again the morose Joe Lieberman or the “ken-doll” Mitt Romney that no audience would have pitied after the bell rang. Sarah Palin deserves credit however for ... well, for not failing, (or "cratering" as another pundit put it) which we all expected her to do. She showed she could hold her own on a national stage and deliver memorized lines and look convincing doing it, which is worth some points. She hasn't convinced many people, even in her own party, that she is presidential material, but less people think she's a complete idiot this morning. (I remember the first Bush-Kerry debate in '04, when the president actually looked like he was mentally retarded, but Americans seemed okay with that for some reason. . .) This may help stanch the vote hemorrhaging of the McCain-Palin ticket a bit, although it is unlikely to make a real difference. The gap in popular and electoral votes looks too wide for any dog-and-pony show to surmount, so the remaining two Obama-McCain debates may be beside the point.I have been convinced for weeks now that an Obama-Biden victory is assured and it is just a question of how big the margin will be. The looming financial catastrophe, McCain's uneven performance on the stump and Palin's lightweight resume have only doomed him further. I believe that whatever occurs, an Obama victory will be a victory for the country. And perhaps no Republican would anticipate this, but I have a firm conviction that the defeat of John McCain (a pitiful surrogate for the last gasp of the neo-cons) will be a huge win in the long term for the Republican Party. Republicans -- who used to be a solid moderate political party with roots that stretch back through Teddy Roosevelt to the great Abraham Lincoln -- can reinvent themselves for the 21st century after shedding the bankrupt neo-con ideology and the fringe loonies that have been such major players in the current administration, especially the extreme Christian right that hijacked the party and have used it as a platform for their anti-evolution, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, while waiting breathlessly for the rapture of Armageddon. We must not forget that the sometimes charming (wink-wink) beauty-pageant queen Klondike Barbie rises from that misguided milieu, and after an Obama victory I for one will breathe a huge sigh of relief that someone who thinks the earth is 6000 years old won't be 60 seconds from assuming the presidency of the United States.
posted by Garp83 at 7:09 PM
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