A Second Hand Conjecture

The atrocious background colors displayed on the silly jumbotron during John McCain’s convention speech shouldn’t have been difficult to avoid. As BestWeekEver sadly illustrates, almost anything would have been an improvement. The solid pastel blue and green backgrounds made their Photoshopping easy at least.

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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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According to ThinkProgress’ count President Bush went completely unmentioned last night at the convention. Rather sad and rather weak. There are plenty of defensible polices of the administration (if there seem to be an equal number of indefensible ones). Avoiding the subject altogether without even a cursory acknowledgment is a sign of unnecessary fear, which can only supply further confidence to the opposition.

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A bit of a departure from the Bush/Cheney experience in 2000 and 2004.

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Well, here is an embarrassing prospect. It seems the Republican leadership may boycott the Republican convention in Minnesota, for fear of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

The top elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was already boycotting. But now we learn that President Bush is said to be unlikely to attend, whilst Senator McCain may deliver his acceptance speech via satellite.

One would hope someone could prevail on both the president and the senator that this would represent egregious folly after a flawless, unifying Democratic convention, with its leadership in attendance. Evidently that’s something of a fortuitous luxury when the wind blows these days.

It should be plain that only an appearance of fear and disarray could possibly be conveyed by the abstention of Arnold, Bush and McCain from their own convention. The Republicans wouldn’t have hesitated to level such charges, had such a similarly ridiculous plan been proposed by the Democrats for Denver.

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Positive Liberty
DA Ridgely on staged events.

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A majority of voters approve of Obama’s selection of Joe Biden in CNN’s first poll after the tap. Unfortunately for Obama and his new Veep, the choice appears to have further angered and alienated Hillary’s sad little village. Thus, Obama has dropped into a 47-47 tie with John McCain.

For her own political future, Hillary has a lot of work to do in her convention speech. If Obama loses a close election to McCain, Hill’s already been prepped, painted and polished to serve as the party’s new Ralph Nader scapegoat. If I were Hillary, I’d throw everything I had behind Obama starting now.

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Jason notices that a significant name is missing from the speaking lineup at the Republican convention. The libertarian South Carolina governor and longtime McCain backer would be an unexpected and welcome selection.

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Steven Taylor takes a look at Paul Kane’s conclusion that it is now mathematically impossible for either Obama or Clinton to win the nomination with pledged delegates, and notes that a super-delegate decided nominee represents an enormous political problem for the Democrats:

The party that has a legitimate gripe about the 2000 election and the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote cannot find themselves in a situation in which the nominee with less popularly-selected delegates is given the nomination by delegates who were not elected via the primary/caucus process.
(PoliBlog)

Not only is this a problem of political perception and party unity, it could conceivably jeopardize the unification of the two candidates on a single ticket. The candidate perceptions themselves of whether or not they’ve been swindled out of the top slot on the ticket could be significant. Given the nature of this race, it has become almost imperative that the loser is named the vice presidential nominee. But when we are dealing with two candidates who no longer seem particularly fond of each other to begin with, trouble may lie ahead by adding the dimension of a potential backroom convention deal.

Supplementally, Dr. Taylor also adds:

Also, at the end of the day, the DNC may very much come to regret taking the Michigan and Florida delegates out of the pool.
(PoliBlog)

Further evidence that the politics of exclusion always ends up punishing you in democracy.

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Because of his support/endorsement of McCain. The Dems made a rule (because of Zell Miller and his endorsement of Bush in 04) that any democrat crossing the lines to endorse a republican (or presumably 3rd party too) candidate would be stripped of their superdelegate status. So that will be one less superdelegate for CT. Can’t say I necessarily disagree with this. Would kinda be embarrassing for one of your delegates to vote for someone in another party at the convention.

(HT FDL)

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