Off-Pundit Consensus: Biden Routed Palin; Get Ready For The Personal Attacks

There might have been a time in the past eight years -- perhaps all of it -- when a Republican politician could get away with evading substantive questions by mixing platitudes with talking points and then quickly changing the subject. In a political culture that shows literal disdain for intelligence, facts and the truth, the less we speak of these things the better. Republicans have become so comfortable with lying to their constituents and the country that it has long since moved beyond second nature to them.

The serial lying nature of the Palin-McCain campaign has raised deception to an art form.

Palin's unwillingness to answer a straight question in a debate and her obvious inability to do so when cornered by a journalist like the resurgent Katie Couric, results directly from her naiveté. It's not really her fault I suppose, she simply wasn't interested in national politics or governance for her most of her life. Arguably, George W. Bush wasn't any better educated or interested, he was simply a better bull@!$%#ter than she is. Evidence of such is easy to find if you just look around a little. Bush made his opposition to interventionism and nation building and his support for the imaginary/fantasy "fiscal conservatism" a trio sent piece of his first campaign, and we all know how well that worked out.

I watched the VP debate on Friday hoping for a train wreck purely for its entertainment value, I never held any expectation that Palin would do a good job and neither did anyone else, and she didn't. When your own campaign sets the bar so low that spelling your own name correctly is considered a victory, the only emotional investment sane people will have in you is pity. To that end, I was less concerned with her disgrace and the embarrassment she represents to the GOP than I was with the disgrace and embarrassment that the press represents to the rest of us. They were fed a child's narrative and repeated it on demand, just as they've been trained to do like good little stenographers over the past ten years.

McCain's campaign said the bar she had to meet was so low to the ground that their only concern was whether or not she would trip over it, and the press happily accepted that, reported on it, got their pat on the head and waited patiently for a treat. The real story here was how pathetic the GOP's VP candidate was that she wasn't being held to the same standards as Joe Biden, and arguably that Biden wasn't being held to even higher standards than he was. The story shouldn't have been who would have the most gaffes that we can show on TV over and over again for the next three weeks, it should have been that we have two people asking us to put them a heart beat away from the most important job in the world and that's the standard they have to meet.

That bar shouldn't be adjusted downward based on how stupid the VP candidates are, it should be so high than only the best and brightest could ever think about reaching it from the bottom up. If Biden didn't measure up but was closer than Palin, so be it, nobody's perfect. In Palin was so far away from that standard as she clearly is, then that's the reality we should be hearing about. Luckily for us and unfortunately for the pundits, polling means you can't bull@!$%# a bull@!$%#ter.

Snap polling by CNN/Opinion Research which was available immediately after the debate ended showed a rout for Joe Biden, 51% to 36%. Pundits fawned over Palin's amazing ability to not answer a single question in over an hour and a half, applauded her hubris in announcing before the debate began that she wasn't going to answer any questions if she didn't want to and that the press can, essentially, kiss her ass.

Apparently the definition of a maverick is never having to answer to the people, a philosphy which ought to disqualify anyone from being in such a position of power more so than any amount of inexperience. All too often as was the case with Bush, and is the case with McCain and Palin, they believe that they are elected to rule rather than lead, and that we work for them, rather than them working for us.

Voters on the other hand found her evasiveness concerning, and as it should have been, it was less about Biden's moderate-to-good performance as it was about Palin not even bothering to show up.

And, by the way, if you've ever wondered what would happen if Karl Rove and Harriet Myers would stop breaking the law and show up for their congressional subpoenas, that VP debate is probably a pretty good demonstration of what it would look like.

If you're skeptical of a single poll result -- as you should be -- then take it from the media arm of the RNC, Fox News' post-debate poll was even worse: Biden 61%, Palin 39%. Survey USA polled a handful of states for more localized reactions and with the exception of battleground Ohio, the result was always the same. In California Biden won 51-32, in Florida he won 44-35. Ohio was a close 38-37 while a MediaCurves poll amongst independents had Biden crushing Palin 67-33.

Regardless of what the individual partisan (you and I) think, the group has shown a clear victory for Obama over an "angry" and "surly" McCain, and a Biden rout of an "evasive", "incoherent" Palin.

National polling which is only useful for determining trends has shown a widening lead for Obama and Biden once McCain and Palin's convention bump began to fade. Polls on October 4th among likely voters showed a 12 point (DKos/Research 2000), 3 point (Battleground), 7 point (Rasmussen), 6 point (Diageo/Hotline), and 7 point (Gallup) lead for Obama -- with Obama reaching the magical 50% point in more than one poll.

Despite what common sense may tell you, it is exceptionally rare for anyone to reach 50% in national polling.

Recent state polling suggests that if the general election were held today, Obama would win with 329 electoral votes to 194. McCain lead in the EV math for the first time ever after selecting Palin as his VP, but that lead didn't last very long once the public got to know the real Sarah Palin.

As if that weren't bad enough for the GOP, current projections would result in Democrats being just two seats away from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate while increasing their majority in the House by another 20 seats. If Obama wins the general, this fall is shaping up to be a historical repeat of the 2006 rout and would feature a complete reversal of the GOP all-government dominance and a wholesale rejection of the Bush administration that, whether he likes it or not, John McCain is tied to at the ass.

After Palin lost her debate with Joe Biden, it was immediately suggested that the McCain campaign would alter their strategy by moving away from issues they can no longer win and return to petty, character-based personality smears and gutter-scum politics. It wasn't even two days before anonymous campaign operatives confirmed their shift in tactics to the press, and it was less than 24 hours before their desperation reared its ugly head in public.

According to the Associated Press, Palin attempted to link University of Illinois professor William Ayers to Obama at a campaign rally in Colorado, a state that hasn't voted to elect a Democrat for president in 12 years, but has been flipping between Obama and McCain for much of the past several months. McCain recently pulled out of Michigan as part of his effort to refocus his time and money on states that might go either way, and this was one of them, and now it's clear what his new strategy is in those states: smear and fear.

It's not immediately apparent how the tenuous linking of Professor Ayers to Obama addresses the mortgage crisis on Wall Street, or how it will get us out of Iraq. Nor does anyone seem to know what Reverend Wright -- a non-story that the McCain campaign has promised to push back into the spotlight even though it will open an old wound of McCain's with his own significant links to right-wing religious extremists, most of whom McCain actually courted and appeared with at campaign events -- has to do with Supreme Court nominations, tax cuts, or same-sex civil rights.

It is immediately obvious that these substanceless distractions are used by Republicans in virtually every national campaign to avoid having to talk about real issues.

At least for the time being, McCain and Palin are going to simply refuse to talk about the mortgage melt down, McCain's support for deregulation, his lobbyist problem, his health problems, her inability to form a complete sentence or speak coherent English, or McCain's continuing steadfast support for staying in Iraq even as the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration wants us to leave.

This is to say nothing of overwhelming public support for Obama's intent to meet with foreign leaders for direct talks, even with countries we don't like, which was for a time a constant source of jokes for McCain even though public -- and the Bush administration -- have clearly sided with Obama.

Instead we'll talk about a Reverend that Obama has denounced and a University of Illinois professor that did a lot of dumb and deplorable things three decades ago that, at best, knows Obama's first name and little else. Meanwhile the bailout plan that hundreds of expert economists have denounced will only make the mess that is our financial system worse, while McCain, who has already admitted that he doesn't know anything about the economy, skims the gutter for more dirt on flag lapel pins -- McCain wasn't wearing one during the debate, Obama was, why does John McCain hate America? -- and bowling prowess.

This is a wakeup call for conservative voters, you may still like your party and you may not want to vote for a liberal, but at this point the real question has to be are you serious when you say you don't want someone in the White House that doesn't belong there and isn't capable of doing the job. I can think of no one less qualified than McCain -- other than Palin -- to tackle our problems when all he seems to do is lose debates on serious issues and then his response is to resort to childish personal attacks to prop up weak polls.

The Grand Oil Party is beyond irrational and incompetent, now they are simply embarrassing and depressing.

For Democrats however, there is a bright spot to all of this. McCain's incompetent staff leaked news of his change in tactics before any television ads were ready. The Obama campaign has already cut a new ad to head off the personal smears that will go on the air tomorrow (Oct 6th) pointing out that McCain will talk about Reverends and Ayers but won't tell you how they are going to help you keep your home or afford to put gas in your car.

With McCain's smears coming after, they'll be revealed for what the truly are: the dead stink of desperation.

The text of this article is Copyright © 2008 Paul William Tenny. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Attribution by: full name and original URL. :: Follow me on Twitter.

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