Top Ten Excuses for Sarah Palin's Turkey Slaughter Photo Op

Letterman last night...

The Noble Campaign

This morning on Meet the Press, Jon Meacham, Editor of Newsweek, said that John McCain had run "a noble campaign."

I was - how shall I say? - a little surprised by the comment.

"And we should mark that," he continued. "It could've been a lot worse."

Meacham's got a point. The McCain campaign tried to portray Obama as Un-American, Un-Patriotic, an Appeaser, a Marxist, a Socialist, a Muslim, a Terrorist, etc.

They didn't quite get to Pedophile, Serial Killer, or Drug Lord. (Though several surrogates, including Rudy Giuliani, did hint at Obama as a possible drug dealer.)

And it wasn't outside groups making the accusations this time, as with the Swift Boaters in 2004. It was the McCain campaign itself.

But Meacham's not the only normally reasonable person pushing the "McCain ran a noble campaign" meme. I've seen two other Liberal or centrist pundits jump on the bandwagon this week. And, sadly, in all three cases, neither the host nor any of the other guests ever bothered to question this assertion or ask for more explanantion.

Just before the election, Mark Shields, the "Liberal" commentator on the The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, said, "The most admirable thing John McCain did was not to play the race card in this campaign. And for that, he should be -- he deserves some credit."

So, Mr. Shields, was it just some good-natured joshing of Barack Obama and his policies that led to the toxic atmosphere at those Sarah Palin rallies?

This week, the U.S. Secret Service revealed that Palin's rallies "provoked a spike in death threats against the future president."

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

Congressman John Lewis, who was almost beaten to death by racists when he was a Freedom Rider in 1961, said that McCain and Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" and "hostility in our political discourse," and mentioned the hateful tone of George Wallace back in the 1960s.

And Stratfor, private intelligence analysts, issued a report this week on security threats against Obama by white supremacists: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. . . . We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."

"Muslim," for one, was always the race card. I still don't believe that 23% of the people in Texas really thought Obama was a Muslim. That's just the terminology they used in public instead of calling him a Dirty N-$#$%&%$.

And there were numerous openly racist remarks and brochures sent out by McCain campaigners at the local level.

My guess is that Meacham and Shields and other commentators are praising McCain for not bringing up Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the campaign. Somehow, this made McCain "noble" and proved he didn't play the race card. What else could it be?

Ironically, I think Rev. Wright would've been more of a legitimate issue to bring up than William Ayers, or Obama being a Marxist. The latter two issues simply didn't have any substance behind them. There were still a few pockets of doubt about Wright, however, despite Obama's powerful and moving speech on racism in Philadelphia when the issue came up during the primaries. Did Barack ever fully explain why he stayed in the church as long as he did, or which part of Wright's belief system he shared? I don't think Wright would have been a very effective or worthwhile topic for the McCain campaign to raise, but I don't think it would've been racist to ask some questions.

So, did McCain run a "noble campaign" in the end?

I offer a story. . .

My aunt, an Obama supporter, lives in Odessa, Texas, heart of George W. Bush country, and a place where I'm sure that more than 23% of the people said they thought Obama was a "Muslim." A nurse comes to my aunt's house every few days to check on her. During the campaign, she showed up wearing a McCain button. Nothing surprising about that in Odessa, Texas.

When the nurse came to visit a couple of days after the election, my aunt asked her if she had voted. "Yes," she said, "Mother and I went down and waited for a long time and we finally got in. We voted for all the local races, but we didn't vote for president."

Surprised, my aunt asked her why.

"Well, we were getting all those emails about Obama, saying he was a Muslim and a Marxist and everything. . . . But I just didn't think he was.

Mother and I would see those people on TV . . . and we just didn't think we were like them. We don't want to be like them."

Mystery in Alaska

Strange things brewing up in Alaska. . .

Though the popular Governor of the state is on the Republican ticket, and though turnout during the primary in August was up by 12% over 2004, and though turnout nationwide on Tuesday was the highest in 100 years, Alaskans appear not to have voted very much.

In fact, as things stand now, the turnout percentage would be the lowest in Alaska's history.

And it gets more interesting.

Convicted felon and Republican senator Ted Stevens was trailing Democrat Mark Begich by 12.9 points in the final poll before the election on Tuesday. And that was a poll done by Nate Silver at 538.com, who wound up with the most accurate pre-election polling results this year. With 98% of the results in, Stevens is currently leading Begich by 1.5%, a positive switch for the Republican of 14.4%.

Well, perhaps the polls were simply wrong. To give you some context, however, think back to Hillary Clinton's upset in New Hampshire. In that case, Hillary was behind 9 points and won by 2, a turnaround of 11%, which was considered one of the greatest comebacks of all time. So convicted felon Ted Stevens surpassed that incredible accomplishment.

But that's not the end of it! Criminal Ted Stevens wasn't the only one to show a 14% turnaround. Republican Rep. Don Young, currently under Federal investigation for taking bribes, illegal gratuities and unreported gifts, was trailing Democrat Ethan Berkowitz by 6.4% in Nate Silver's final poll and is currently winning by 7.7%, a 14.2% turnaround! So Nate Silver, Mr. Accurate, totally screw up two polls in Alaska?

But that's not the end of it! The McCain-Palin ticket also wound up getting 12.4% more than expected in the final poll. So Silver and all of the other pollsters, though they did very well in the rest of the country, missed three races by historic margins. Make sense to you?

Silver posits three "possible explanations" for the results:
1) Democrats became complacent because the election was basically over by 4 pm local time.
2) The 49,000 outstanding absentee and early voting ballots yet to be counted will be heavily Democratic.
3) There are an undisclosed number of "questionable" ballots yet to be counted, and those may be heavily Democratic.

Convicted Felon and Republican Senator Ted Stevens

But looking at Alaskan presidential results since 1960 seems to disprove explanation #1. In Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide, when he won every state but one (Mondale's home state), and everyone knew the election was over the moment the first results came out that evening, Alaskans still turned out in record numbers. 200,384 voters cast their ballots that year, compared to only 127,954 in 1980. Turnout in Alaska also increased to an historic number in 1964, despite Lyndon Johnson's Democratic landslide. Obama's success this year, though impressive, was nowhere near those overwhelming victories, so why would the good people of Alaska show up for two landslides but not this time?

Also, the Senate and House races were highly publicized affairs, thanks to Stevens' seven felony convictions and Young's own legal troubles. Energized Democrats in the state had a great chance to capture a vitally important Senate seat and another seat in the House. Why would they stay home for those races?

As far as explanations #2 and #3: Though the outstanding ballots may be heavily Democratic and swing at least the Senate race back to Begich, the total numbers still don't add up. It would mean that in this historic election, with their own governor on the ticket, turnout in Alaska would still be 14% less this year than in 2004.

According to Shannyn Moore, that means "54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush [in 2004], but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008. In turn, I have to ignore the 30,520 Alaskans who felt progressive enough in 2004 to vote for John Kerry, but weren't inspired to vote for Barack Obama."

And that despite 20,991 newly registered voters.

While it is possible that turnout simply fell off for various reasons this year, I certainly hope that Democratic officials in Alaska are looking into this.

The Washington Post is: "Alaska Turnout, Results Raise Questions."

UPDATE: I did a little digging in Lexis-Nexis and found an article on Reagan's 1984 landslide: "TV NETWORKS CALL THE RACE EARLY, RENEWING DEBATE ON USE OF PROJECTIONS." Sally Bedell Smith. New York Times. November 7, 1984. Section A; Page 21, Column 1.

As I suspected, the TV Networks called the election very early that year. CBS News at 8:01 PM EST, which would've been 4:01 PM in Alaska. ABC and NBC called it a few minutes later. And that doesn't take into consideration the fact that an hour earlier, at 7 PM EST, when the first results came in, Reagan won every single state and was obviously on his way to a landslide victory.

So people in Alaska knew three or four hours earlier in 1984 than they did this year that the election was already decided. Yet they shattered the turnout record for the state in 1984. Why, then, would turnout fall so dramatically this time?

The Danger of Sarah Palin

I'm going to try this again.

The latest issue of The New Yorker features a good article by Connie Bruck, "Odd Man Out," about Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska.

While Democrats may know Hagel for his opposition to the war in Iraq, and for accompanying Barack Obama on a trip to Baghdad in July, they may not realize that he's still very close friends with John McCain and served as Co-Chair of McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. It must be especially galling, then, for McCain to read what his friend has to say about the woman he chose as his running mate.

Hagel may be the only senior Republican elected official who has publicly criticized McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. “I don’t believe she’s qualified to be President of the United States,” Hagel told me. “The first judgment a potential President makes is who their running mate is—and I don’t think John made a very good selection.”

For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin’s lack of experience is her willingness—in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden’s long Senate career, for example—to belittle the notion that experience is important. “There’s no question, she knows her market,” Hagel said. “She knows her audience, and she’s going right after them. And I’ll tell you why that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because you don’t want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life. You want to always strive to define standards up. If you start defining standards down—‘Well, I don’t have a big education, I don’t have experience’—yes, there’s a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard. But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don’t count in a complicated, dangerous world—that’s dangerous in itself.

The Result of the McCain-Palin Negative Attack Campaign

From today's New York Times article, "Obama Appeal Rises in Poll; No Gains for McCain Ticket."

In the last month, Obama's Favorable rating among Independents has gone from 34% to 51%, +17 points. Biden went from 31% to 47%, +16.

In the same time period, McCain's Favorable rating among Independents went from 42% to 39%, -3 points. Palin's rating went from 42% to 38%, -4 points.

McCain's Unfavorable rating went up an astounding 20 points, from 24% to 44%. Palin's Unfavorable rating jumped 14 points, from 19% to 33%.



Click on the image for a closer view.

Across the board, Obama and Biden made significant gains, whereas McCain and, especially Palin, went down, down, down.

The nasty attacks by McCain and Palin may have pleased the right-wing extremist Republican base, but there aren't enough of them to win an election without moderate Republicans and Independents.

What a bizarre campaign McCain has run. In a year when he absolutely had to court Independents, he seems only to have pandered to a dwindling extremist base.

Palin as President

Go to the website, move your cursor around, and click on things. Enjoy.

PalinasPresident.com

Of course, if McCain manages to win, it won't seem very funny anymore.

The Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart

From Aden Nak, via Andrew Sullivan.

Biden Wins the VP Debate (and More)

It seems boring and obvious to say that Joe Biden won the VP debate, but the vast majority of the media and political pundits have been so focused on the Sarah Palin Sideshow ("Wow, she can string together nouns and verbs!") that the real story from last night needs to be repeated so that it can escape the NoiseDome: Joe Biden easily won last night's debate, especially in the eyes of the only people who really matter at this point: Independents and Undecided Voters.

Media Research did real-time polling of Independents on issues that matter most to them. Here are some of the results from Biden Won Independents in VP Debate:

Who won the debate?
Biden 69%
Palin 31%

Washington Bailout Reaction
Biden 62%
Palin 38%

VP Responsibilities
Biden 72%
Palin 28%

Taxes
Biden 72%
Palin 28%

An instant CBS poll of Undecided voters on who won the debate:

Biden 46%
Palin 21%
Tie 33%

The over-emphasis on Ms. Governor Sideshow not freaking out on stage neglects the fact that Biden had to walk a tightrope last night in how he dealt with his opponent, and he handled the situation very, very well.

Some comments from Joe Klein (certainly not a raging liberal) at Time:

The fact that Palin made it through the debate without running off the stage shouting, "I can't do this!" should not obscure the fact that there was only one person tonight whom anyone with any sense—even John McCain, I imagine—would trust as President. Biden's performance was strong and, happily, gimmick free. He used no gotcha soundbites, no consultant-driven silliness—a fact driven home by the lameness of Palin's snark lines like, "Say it ain't so, Joe" and—pace, Gipper—"There you go again, talking about the past."

She had that folksy thing down—although I did notice, watching the squiggly lines down at the bottom of the CNN screen, that when she tried to get cutesy with her folksiness, it didn't work.

What she did show was some folksy charm and some energy—qualities that might get her selected for Dancing With the Stars, if not Jeopardy.

Joe Biden, by contrast, demonstrated a real knowledge of the issues in question. . . . He was genuinely moving when he talked about being a single parent after the death of his wife (he almost began to weep, but held it together); in fact, that moment was more real than anything Palin said all night. He also closed with a devastating point: McCain was, sure enough, a maverick on some things, but not on any of the issues that really mattered in this election—and he listed those issues, and where McCain stood on them, to great effect.

Drama Queen John McCain's poll numbers have been steadily slipping, both nationally and in several key swing states. His campaign, and many pundits, think that Gov. Sideshow's performance last night will stop the bleeding.

Because she didn't totally screw up.

But she still looked completely outmatched - and unprepared to be Vice President of the United States of America.

Republicans were so happy last night that Gov. Sideshow had done okay. And I'm sure the "base" was pleased.

But I'd bet money that at least a few undecided and Independent voters woke up this morning and - in the cold, sober light of day - realized that Sideshow actually didn't do that well last night. And when they think about a future that could be one of the most challenging and insecure times in the history of our country, the idea of McCain and Palin running the country could and should scare them to death.

The bottom line: John "Drama Queen" McCain and Sarah "Sideshow" Palin simply aren't presidential.

It's rather stunning, really. In one of the shakiest times since most of us have been alive, the Republican Party has chosen TWO people for the ticket who fail the simplest test of all - at least seeming like they have what it takes to be president of the country. Over the last two weeks, in the midst of an economic crisis, McCain has behaved like a fading prima donna gone off her meds. Or some boozer trying to hijack a school bus full of kids so he gets on the evening news. "Erratic" doesn't even begin to cover it. For God's sake, take the keys away from this guy before he gets behind the wheel.

And no matter how much Palin exceeded expectations last night, she seemed absolutely vacuous and immature next to her Democratic opponent.

Biden, on the other hand, seemed as presidential as Obama. It's a solid ticket in a time of crisis.

Joe Biden won the debate. And much more.