A Second Hand Conjecture

Who would win in a head-to-head contest of the Veeps for the presidency? Palin, according to Rasmussen, by 47%-44%.

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Last week I noticed that Sarah Palin had exceeded Joe Biden slightly in Google returns. Understandably, that has now become an avalanche (Biden: 5.6 million | Palin: 22.4 million). Although it plainly doesn’t exceed John McCain or Barack Obama’s returns as Robert Legge strangely argues.

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The title is what Time Magazine labeled New Jersey’s Senator William Warren Barbour in 1940. The expression takes on a better curve for Sarah Palin, but it fits the occasion of a very partisan and frankly rather phenomenal speech tonight (transcript).

I suppose I’m surprised by the surprise in so many media reactions I’m seeing. Then again it’s a reminder that we on the pro-Palin political right have been following Sarah for over a year now, and this sort of thing is still very much an introduction for others.

Michael Crowley for instance calls Palin’s speech “alarmingly strong” and describes emails from liberal colleagues as “panicked.” I think that’s probably an ungenerous assessment. There is afterall a reason so many on the left have been trying to destroy her these past few days. You saw it this evening. Sarah does have a certain magic. Even when she fumbles in a long speech as she can, it tends to amplify her humanity. A characteristic interestingly shared with Barack Obama and almost totally alien to wizened veterans.

The amplitude of the attention and the stress of the experince is of course very new for Sarah, but you’d never know it from looking at her tonight. I realized I’d become a little emotionally invested in this candidate over the course of the week, with its grotesque slander and innuendo campaigns in the press. When the Republican party in assembly gave her a near endless welcoming ovation I kept saying “don’t cry, don’t cry,” which was slightly sexist for Sarah and slightly for my own sad benefit.

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When McCain named Sarah Palin his veep, she had about 500k mentions on the web according to Google, and Joe Biden mustered an impressive five million plus (I checked). A few short days later Palin has surpassed Biden with 5.8 million mentions, with Joe at 5.5 mil. Remarkable.

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Be honest, wouldn’t you rather see Barack Obama vs Sarah Palin and John McCain vs Joe Biden in the debates?

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Little Miss Attila picks up a good line from Jas at postpolitical. An amusing reversal for the ‘Cheney is the brains of the White House’ school of commentary.

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Everyone’s jumping on the Zogby poll, which alone seems to show McCain/Palin taking the lead over Obama/Biden. I personally find such a result hard to believe in the extreme. Rasmussen’s finding that Palin might have arrested the slide seems more plausible; a complete reversal of fortune is a bit much to expect. However, what would be genuinely remarkable about the Zog results isn’t the McCain/Obama break, but 5% of likely voters casting for Bob Barr. This too is hard to believe though.

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Rasmussen’s first Palin poll suggests that while many Americans still need more information to make a judgment, she’s already made a superior impression to Biden on the day of his selection by Obama.

Of enormous significance is the finding that she receives a 63% favorable rating from independents, and a 61% favorable rating from independent women.

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Paul Begala laments the fact that McCain didn’t select a vice presidential candidate who is more traditional, old, boring, uninspiring…in essence, an ossified agent of the establishment, like Joe Biden for instance.

Well, he doesn’t quite phrase it that way, but it’s the political implication of his complaint. Reviewing his catalog of allegedly superior selections, I feel slightly like shouting out as a teenager: boo-ring. Just as a great many Democratic partisans of Mr. Obama did, when surveying a field of establishmentarian dinosaurs in a year of change.

(more…)

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It’s rather amusing to see the ticket lacking in any executive experience, with a presidential nominee of extremely limited elected experience, attempting to attack McCain’s vice presidential nominee on grounds of inexperience. Reeling a bit perhaps. A more mature Democratic attack would go after the trooper scandal, the charge of reform hypocrisy and Sarah’s connection to energy company interests. Not that this would prove more successful mind you, but it’s a defter charge that takes account of the Obama campaign’s own manifest weakness in the more important area of the presidential nominee’s inexperience.

It’s also a more traditional process to select a presidential nominee with considerable experience, while taking on a younger apprentice for the vice presidential nominee. Obama, by selecting Biden, is only replicating the George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy departures from this predominant historical pattern. A departure that I think we’ve been arguably ill-served by in both cases.

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Michael Goodwin concludes that the Biden pick is identical in cause and format to Bush’s selection of Dick Cheney in 2000. I tend to agree, but then I’ve been convinced for a long time that Obama’s entire campaign is all but explicitly modeled on Bush’s 2000 strategy and approach. Democrats often have the bad habit of thinking Republican marketing is smarter than it is.

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It’ll be interesting to see if Jason at postpolitical posts a highly unusual encounter he had with Joe Biden when we were both kids in Delaware. So far, he’s held off. Too scandalous? Nah. Yet I’m pinging him to shame him into posting it.

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