McCain's choice of Gov. Palin to be his running mate struck me as pretty foolish on his part at first--she's younger and less experienced than Obama, she's hardly the kind of woman that Clinton supporters will vote for, etc. But Nate Millman is fairly persuasive. It's going to be interesting.
At any rate, it's now certain that, one way or the other, January's Inauguration Day will mark a historic first. I'm in no way suggesting that this makes the two tickets equally desirable. But still.
I respectfully dissent; I think the following by Robert Elisberg is a more persuasive analysis of this catastrophe-in-waiting:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/the-worst-vice-presidenti_b_122491.html
Additionally, I'd like to convey my mother's reaction; she is a 62-year old pro-life evangelical originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, now in Houston, who has never voted for a Democrat but plans to vote for Obama. One of her comments:
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I have a question about whether a mother of 5 (one of whom is a Down Syndrome infant) can do both jobs well. It's not just a corporate lawyer position, or a college professor position...
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As a man, I wouldn't dare inquire about such things; but I feel free to pass the query along. My mother was never mayor of anything, though. But she was senior class president at Delaware County Christian School back in the day.
I don't mean to suggest that Palin will want for fierce defenders (there are still lots of people who believe in Robert Bork's fitness for the Supreme Court) -- but really, who would they have voted for anyway? And ultimately this is fodder for a central message of the Obama campaign: the GOP is banking on an ignorant body politic.
Bottom line: McCain has badly hurt his chances with this pick. I know, I know, if I feel this strongly, I should get my own dang blog. Look forward to your coverage of the RNC. Cheers.
Seriously, the blowback from certain elements of the right is well underway:
ReplyDeletehttp://townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2008/08/29/palin_candidacy_raises_eyebrows_in_alaska
It's reminiscent of Harriet Miers' nomination to the SCt.
Wow, Elisberg is so patronizing. Spoken like a true coastal type who not only has never spent time in Alaska but who actually thinks that a town of 9,000 constitutes "extremely small" in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteWhich is not to say that I think Palin's qualified to be VP/step in as president; I certainly do not. But I think Elisberg, while persuasive in many places, overlooks two important points:
- The religious right is thrilled. (Ralph Reed said he couldn't possibly imagine a better choice, others said similar things.) They've been waiting for an excuse to start actively, enthusiastically working to get McCain elected, and now they have it.
- Being a feminist isn't a yes-or-not question; the feminist movement(s) has, to varying degrees, infused the entire culture. There are plenty of conservatives, moderates, and independents out there who might be unlikely to vote for Hillary Clinton because she's too liberal or because SHE'S HILLARY CLINTON (I didn't say they were GOOD/consistent feminists) but who are a lot less comfortable than they might have been a generation or two ago seeing a powerful man attack a less powerful, less accomplished, but ostensibly likable woman. Obama and Biden have to be very careful w/ their approach here. (And the VP debate is going to be excruciating.)
Ouch. Already I am a purveyor of patronism. In head-first, then:
ReplyDelete-It's nigh on impossible to imagine that the religious right wasn't thrilled about going after Obama anyway. But one of the reasons McCain was able to clinch the nomination so easily, it seems, is that the rr have lost a great deal of their clout even within their own party. Obama has already made significant inroads here; last Barna poll has him beating McCain among Christians generally and losing only among the fundamentalists -- er, evangelicals. www.barna.org
-Ralph Reed couldn't even win election as Lt. Gov of Georgia. He's fast becoming irrelevant within the GOP (and long loathed outside of it), largely because of his past work with Abramoff.
-Feminism appears to have little to do with it -- women have reacted more negatively to the choice than men have: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/women-more-skeptical-of-palin-than-men.html
-If the goal was to draw in independent women, the preceding would suggest that it's already failed to that end.
-My Harriet Miers comparison is infelicitous to the extent that a) the religious right helped sink her, b) her nomination was pulled before she was voted down. Obviously I don't think these things will happen here. Also, I do expect that a honeymoon period will last through the convention. Still doesn't mean this will be a plus for McCain, and I think that the choice is every bit as controversial in the sense of the nominee being distinctly unqualified for the position.
Aside re: 'small town': 9000 is extremely small relative to our nation's population of over 300,000,000. That's not a commentary on the value of Wasilla or other small towns. But bear in mind that 9000 (or rather, ~8700) is an estimated population; last census in Wasilla (2000, during Palin's tenure as mayor) counted 5470. (I guess for full disclosure I should admit to living in a city larger than Alaska, although in fairness I am quite far from the coast, and it's only the 5th-biggest city in my state).
- Rumors of the religious right's demise are premature; they're largely being pushed by interested activists and an overly credulous press. Also: Barna's not to be trusted on this stuff. Their methodology is far different from other pollsters, because one of their core values is that evangelicals are far different (read better) than other (so-called) Christians.
ReplyDelete- Ralph Reed's just an example chosen for the level of his enthusiasm. See also Dobson, others.
- I'm not talking about capital-F movement Feminism so much as the influence of the same on the culture more broadly... It isn't as acceptable as it was a couple generations ago to see an older man dominating a debate w/ a younger woman. This is generally a good thing...but it hurts us here.
- McCain's people can make hay out of the experience vs. outsider thing. McCain's so experienced that he knows that he needs a true outsider to advise him as to what it's like out in the provinces! While neither Obama nor Palin has a long history in politics, she was raising a bunch of great kids--the youngest has Downs!--while he was editing his fancy-pants law review and "community organizing," whatever that means! Anyway, he's at the top of the ticket, and she's not. McCain's years as a POW instilled a strong sense of the importance of family, mothers, women, and Alaska! The sad reality is that the Republicans are just way better at successfully spinning nonsense arguments than the Democrats are.
- I've been an urbanite now for the last seven years or so, but I grew up in a town of 9,000 that was the biggest town in the area--in any direction you drove, you passed through only smaller towns for at least 20 miles or so. We had the only major hospital, published most of the region's newspapers, hosted the big summer festival. I'm not saying my mayor should run for governor and then vice-president 20 months later. Just saying that Elisberg hurts his argument by revealing how little he knows about what rural America actually looks like (and by mocking Alaskans).
You do make fine points... certainly it has rallied that part of the base. But look for coastal-type Republicans like Krauthammer, as well as highly-educated foreign policy realists like Dick Lugar, and more elite members of the chattering class such as Heather MacDonald (nobody's liberal) to continue to raise flags like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0830hm.html
I think that what these Republicans particularly don't care for is the angle that McCain is playing craps with the country here... Gambling is not exactly a conservative virtue (and the Houston Chronicle is not exactly friendly to Democrats):
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5975896.html
And then there's the energy lobby:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/side/5683745.html
Palin will come under fire for her subsequent appointment of a TransCanada lobbyist to a state board -- from American energy producers who sniff a bad deal here for US business and government transparency.
http://iht.com/articles/2008/08/31/america/palin.php?page=2
(see deal about Rutherford in middle)
Now the Dobson endorsement causes a great deal of incredulity on my part. It is well-known that in 2000 these cats ran their own man for P in the form of Gary Bauer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWUaN2HagRo
And we saw how well that worked out. But listen to Dobson talk about it to Dennis Prager:
You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.
http://townhall.com/Columnists/DennisPrager/2008/08/29/dobson_%E2%80%9Ci_would_pull_that_lever%E2%80%9D_for_mccain-palin
Except he's just lying; he endorsed Huck back in Feb, without any of the result predicted below:
http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2008/02/dr-james-dobson-endorses-mike-huckabee.html
Plus, Robertson had endorsed Giuliani... what Republican wouldn't _he_ have gotten behind?
And they've been spending the summer praying for rain. My take on this: support for McCain started to take off late in the summer as the negative attacks increased and folks like Dobson were saying stuff like:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/21/1211545.aspx
My assumption is that support from that wing has reached a plateau (how many metaphors can I mix in here?) But -- you are absolutely right -- we shall see. That's the fun of predicting, I suppose...
(Re: Barna: the fact that they narrow - and don't permit self-selection of - the label 'evangelical' is precisely what makes this compelling to me. It ends up being a small portion of the American population, much less the electorate).
At the risk of clogging the blogging, I wanted to copy and paste what I thought the relevant portion of the Barna Group report was (bear in mind this was Aug 11; and I agree that their definition of evangelical is wanting, but telling):
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Understanding Evangelicals
One of the most frequently reported on groups of voters is evangelicals. Most media polls use a simplistic approach to defining evangelicals, asking survey respondents if they consider themselves to be evangelical. Barna Group surveys, on the other hand, ask a series of nine questions about a person’s religious beliefs in order to determine if they are an evangelical. The differences between the two approaches are staggering.
Using the common approach of allowing people to self-identify as evangelicals, 40% of adults classify themselves as such. Among them, 83% are likely to vote in November. Among the self-reported evangelicals who are likely to vote, John McCain holds a narrow 39% to 37% lead over Sen. Obama. Nearly one-quarter of this segment (23%) is still undecided about who they will vote for.
Using the Barna approach of studying people’s core religious beliefs produces a very different outcome. Just 8% of the adult population qualifies as evangelical based on their answers to the nine belief questions. Among that segment, a significantly higher proportion (90%) is likely to vote in November, and Sen. McCain holds a huge lead (61%-17%) over the Democratic nominee. Overall, just 14% of this group remains undecided regarding their candidate of choice.
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The Faith-Driven Vote
For the most part, the various faith communities of the U.S. currently support Sen. Obama for the presidency. Among the 19 faith segments that The Barna Group tracks, evangelicals were the only segment to throw its support to Sen. McCain.
While some Christian voters seem to be questioning their early support for Obama, the McCain candidacy does not seem to be gaining momentum among evangelicals. Since June, the current level of support Sen. McCain has among evangelical voters has declined significantly (dropping from 78% to 61%).
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Barna's conclusions are radically different than mine (they likely think the choice of Palin was a boon for McCain). The key population here, I think, is that 8% of the electorate which is already 61-17 for McCain, and 90% likely to vote. They are the ones who are most likely, it seems, to be most satisfied with the Palin pick. So he returns to 78% or whatever. Big deal.
Again, we shall see...