Webloggin » VP Debate Analysis – Great Job by Palin

Palin Underworld 1. I’m glad she brought up the nasty things Biden said about Obama before he was considered as part of the ticket. I wonder why she just whacked that nail once and then left it alone. Doesn’t seem to me Sen. Biden holds any cards there. He looks, on this topic, like exactly what he is: A lifetime beltway fixture who befriends whoever and whatever is good for him at any given moment.

2. The McCain campaign has been listening to us, I think. Gov. Palin was liberated from her talking points. She wasn’t excellent, but she was much better than people thought she would have been.

3. I was right when I said this was a rehash of the Galloway/Hitchens debate. Biden possesses a lot of momentum Palin doesn’t have. She stutters, she stammers, she barely manages to eek a few syllables out, without ever quite hitting her stride. But — what she says, makes a lot more sense. Yin and Yang. People who looked for a reason to support Obama/Biden, found it, and people who looked for a reason to support Palin/McCain, found that. I mean…wait…which one comes first, again?

4. She should’ve used the word “populist.” This is the true weakness of Obama/Biden. The ticket seems to be bound by a consistent philosophical underpinning that if something has a certain effect on nine out of ten of us, then it might as well have that same effect on us all. This talking point about the tax cut for 95% of us, for example. It’s a dinosaur. It’s lumbered on long past the asteroid already. It isn’t even true.

5. Assuming science is all about voting — which it isn’t — when did we lose this vote on cutting carbon emissions? Obama/Biden is for it, McCain/Palin is for it. Doesn’t Sarah Palin understand how this undercuts all her other pro-capitalism positions?

6. I loved it when she made that comment about being for things before you’re against ‘em, and how hard it is for her to understand how things work in the beltway. That’s a true Mister Smith Goes To Washington moment right there. If it was some big ol’ Paul Bunyan lookin’ guy in a plaid shirt with a big blue ox and a giant axe in his hand saying that, he’d get voted in in a landslide. Well, that’s exactly what Sarah Palin is. In a skirt.

7. I have to criticize Gov. Palin here. I don’t think she understands how it sounds when she mispronounces “nuclear.” She’d fix that, toot-sweet, if she did.

8. I don’t think Sen. Biden understands how it sounds when he repeatedly uses the name “Bush.” He’d stop.

9. Four years ago John Kerry lost the election by asking us to believe in a dichotomy. He said, I’m brilliant so I can think in nuanced terms, unlike that dolt George Bush who sees the whole world in black-and-white. But I have a serious case of confirmation-bias because George Bush is my perfect reverse-barometer about what to do. If he did something — it must be wrong. Biden left himself wide open by subscribing to this same confirmation-bias: If George Bush did something, it must have been the wrong thing to do. Palin should have struck right there. Stick a javelin right where the armor leaves that gaping hole, and shove it in to the hilt. It would have been a fatal blow to the Obama/Biden campaign, I think. Most Americans understand: If you strive to oppose something at every turn, on some level, you are trying to emulate it. Obama/Biden is failing to deliver something, here, in the very moment it is promising it.

10. Palin was at her best when she quoted Reagan. Americans are glorious and wonderful and deserve everything good that any other country deserves. Credit for being decent, when we are — and we are, quite often — the right and privilege to defend ourselves, to conduct ourselves as a civilized nation as we see fit, and to emit the hell out of everything with our pollution. Okay, that last one I’m just kind of pulling out of my butt. But the point is…fer God’s sake quit apologizing for existing! If you sympathize with that, your choice on Nov. 4 is quite clear, and the An Idea Bomb guys don’t have a lot to do with it.