Oct 02 2008
Pre Debate Thoughts
I think it was Bill Sammon on Special Report last night who had the best summary of what is at stake. Palin can recover from the media bashing of the last two weeks by being her combative self. If a question about inside the beltway minutiae comes up she should chide Ifill for wasting time on irrelevant trivia and use the opportunity to pull the discussion back to general themes. Who cares what USSC decisions she agrees with or not (they are on the books and out of the administration’s hands) you parry the matter to discuss how McCain would select constructionist judges for what will be 1-2 open positions on the court.
On the flip side Biden can only hope to pull to a draw as long as he is NOT Joe Biden. Therefore he will be forced and have a bit of a facade if he succeeds. The authentic Biden would help Palin immensely.
The far left’s trash talking and interviews have put the bar so low that if Palin simply talked without passing out she will be in a tie. If she debates like she has before, or comes across like she did in the Hugh Hewitt and Hannity interviews, Biden and the liberal media are toast.
If I am right there will be a lot of screaming from the liberals on how they were duped and set up by some kind of deliberately bad performances leading up to the VP debate. If Palin gave them the rope to hang themselves on, and they took up that rope by the mile, it is not going to be Palin’s fault in the eyes of the public.
AJ,
The media story line of Gov. Palin as a “complete disaster” have already been written.
Only Biden having a primal scream melt down on camera followed by shooting himself in the head will change those story lines.
And even then, they would blame Palin as the cause of Biden’s rage.
Trent,
The media line is not a hook-line-sinker-bait for the American people. In fact, there is a backlash to the media built in many times. If they say (a) America says the answer must be (b).
I am not worried about a media in the tank because it is an impotent force most times.
In fact, I have a tough time believing the GOP is sinking while raking in record money (see here).
Let’s see how this plays out, but if Palin reconnects with Main Street, the pitch forks will come out and the peasants will march on the liberal-Frankenstein Castle to destroy the cancer of the media.
It doesn’t matter what the media think, only what the thousands who have come out to see her think. If she takes charge of each question she will be ok, I pray.
AJ: From your typing fingers to God’s blog-reading eyes…
Trent: Enough people will watch the debate itself that the post-debate spin can’t stray too far from the truth. Witness the first McCain-Obama debate. They were all ready to talk about Obama’s big win — but McCain exceeded expectations considerably. So the story was instead that Obama managed to do “well enough” given that he was expected to do poorly, and that made it a draw, and since he’s ahead in the polls and foreign policy isn’t his subject, that’s kind of like a win, right?
Ordinary folks can see through that, mostly. If Palin tanks, they’ll see clip after clip of her really, really tanking from now until Election Day. If she doesn’t… the shift in the tenor of the relentless mockery will be apparent.
AJ:
I need some help, my morale is taking a big hit with the polls that are coming out. McCain is bailing out out of Michigan, not that is a bad thing from my perspective, the ads are getting old. But I was having a very bad thought come to mind today. I am having flashback to 1996, this feels like Bob Cole part II, there is a reason why Senators never get elected and I see the same thing happening with John McCain as I did with Bob Dole. Tell me that I am wrong.