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McCain Sticks To The Base
September 5, 2008
It was not the best speech John McCain's ever given. And it wasn't the worst. In fact, it was pretty similar to a lot of speeches McCain has given throughout this campaign.
Which to me was the most surprising thing about the night. The so-called maverick had a chance to get "back to basics," as he put it, but he unearthed very little new ground. Both he and Sarah Palin--although her speech captivated audiences inside and outside St. Paul to a much greater degrees--spent their convention tending to the base rather than reaching out to the broader electorate.
The speech was long on biography and short on specifics--the type of speech John McCain would likely attack Barack Obama for delivering. McCain spent a lot of time talking about his time in Vietnam as a prisoner of war. A lot of media pundits thought this was the best part of the speech, but I'm guessing most Americans already know that McCain was a POW. They've heard it over and over and over. Watching last night, they were looking for something more.
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Obama Defends Community Organizing
September 4, 2008
ST. PAUL -- Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin ridiculed Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer twice in her address to her party's national convention. "Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown," the former local official sneered. "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involved. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani piled on with his own mockery of the Democratic presidential candidate's work with laid-off steelworkers on the south side of Chicago. "You have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer," Giuliani joked. "Okay. Maybe this is the first problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer."
What does the senator say?
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The X-Box Vote
September 4, 2008
The Couch Potato Vote
Those of us who didn't make it to the conventions are following the action online and on TV--and, on our XBoxes?
On the first day of the Democratic Convention, Rock the Vote and XBox started a partnership that allows people to register to vote from their XBox Live (an online gaming system), as well as participate in political discussions and polls.
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The Word From Wasilla
September 4, 2008
Everyone is trying to get the measure of Sarah Palin, the woman who was rocketed from small-state obscurity to the national stage when John McCain selected her as his running-mate on the 2008 Republican ticket.
Republican senators and governors are admitting interviews, as former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, did with me a few minutes ago that: "Most of us don't really know her personally."
Well, Anne Kilkenny does know Sarah Palin.
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The Bushwomen Are Back
September 4, 2008
In selecting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain is dusting off an old GOP tool: the estrogen guard. Slap a friendly, female face on a hard core-conservative political platform, and pray that the pundits will only take pot-shots and talk about gender. It worked for George W. Bush and it just may work for Palin.
Watching Palin address the RNC from here in St. Paul, Wednesday, I could have sworn I heard Katherine Harris cheer. Remember Harris, Florida's Secretary of State in 2001, and co-chair of her state's Bush/Cheney Committee? No one did more to snag the White House for her man -- and no one was laughed and scoffed at more heartily by the media. While the press poo-poo'ed her make-up ("she seems to have applied her makeup with a trowel" wrote the Washington Post) and introduced her to the public as caricature ("Cruella de Ville",) as Florida's top election-cop, Harris purged enough voter rolls, understaffed enough voting places and ill-equipping the voting system sufficiently to guarantee election day chaos. Parodied in the press, she rose to stardom in the GOP. Come Inauguration Day 2001, Florida Republicans threw an enormous bash for the woman they dubbed "our Joan of Arc." Soon after she was elected to Congress.
So it is with Palin. While her record stinks, so does the media coverage. In place of serious discussion of her policies on the environment, on human rights, on taxes, free speech and governance, we've had five days of "Veep Pregnant Teen Shock" and there's more than enough misogyny in the mix to give the McCain camp a stick to beat any truly investigative members of press-corps with.
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Nader on Palin: My Running-Mate is More Qualified
September 4, 2008
ST. PAUL -- Ralph Nader would like it to be noted that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, is not merely less qualified than Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, who has served 35 years in the Senate and currently chairs the chamber's foreign relations committee.
"Matt Gonzalez has more experience than Sarah Palin," Nader, who is running this year for the presidency as an independent, says of his running-mate, former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez. "San Francisco is a lot bigger than Wasilla."
The veteran consumer activist, who will counter the last night of the Republican National Convention with a "Open the Debates" super-rally in the Twin Cities, is on to something.
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The Sarah Palin Show
September 4, 2008
As the much-anticipated debut of The Sarah Palin Show crept closer in the Xcel Center last night, the overwhelmingly white and well-heeled Republicans rose to their feet, cheering, to dance and sing along to the infectious strains of Sly Stone's Everyday People--demonstrating not only a giddy lack of self-awareness (or irony), but also showing that the folks in the hall had gotten the alerts from GOP Message Central: Palin, the woman they'd come tonight to celebrate and cheer, is above all else Everyday People.
I'd been hearing it all week from the delegates. "She's relatable," a Florida fellow said. "I think what Gov. Palin's able to offer is the perspective of any everyday American," a Mississippi delegate told me. "She's real--real people. Wow!" a Texas delegate chimed in. Her family troubles, which have fueled a feeding frenzy among the dimwits who blog on the Huffington Post, only testified all the more powerfully to her everydayness. "If anything, it just kind of shows what a normal American she is. Family crises and situations like this arise in families all across the country, and I think she's doing the best with the situation. I think it will make Gov. Palin all the more strong," said another Texan.
You might not think that averageness would qualify a person for the second-highest office in the land. But if you might not think that, you haven't been paying attention to the way Republicans have won presidential elections for the last forty years. Palin is the logical extension of the cultural populism that has warped our politics--and for which the Democrats have, as yet, found no good answer.
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Obama Counters McCain With Fox Appearance
September 3, 2008
ST. PAUL -- Talk about counter-programming.
On the night that John McCain will accept the Republican presidential nomination in this city, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will enter the "no-spin zone" on Fox.
Obama has agreed to appear Thursday on Bill O'Reilly's evening program, The O'Reilly Factor, for an exclusive question-and-answer session with the host.
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Setting Expectations
September 3, 2008
I predict that Sarah Palin will give one hell of a speech tonight. The McCain campaign is betting on it and the Obama campaign is prepared for it.
The media will swoon and Republicans will rejoice, hoping that Americans will forget everything we've learned about Palin in the past week; her family drama, multiplying scandals and scant foreign policy experience.
I also predict that virtually all of the media coverage following the speech will miss the point. One good speech shouldn't cloud the central question: should McCain have picked Palin and is she up for the job?
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Palin's Secessionist Friends
September 3, 2008
Can you imagine the reaction if Barack Obama courted or belonged to a political party that advocated secession from the United States?
Conservatives and political commentators would go apoplectic. So why isn't Sarah Palin's affiliation with the far right Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) a bigger deal?
Todd Palin was a member of the party from 1995 to 2002. Sarah attended the group's convention in 1994 and 2000 and sent a videotaped greeting for the AIP in 2008.
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