Veepstakes

With the results I've seen so far I'm confidently declaring McCain the winner of the VP and convention bounce events. On August 24th, on the eve of the Lieberman selection, Obama was holding a narrow but steady 2 point lead in the race according to RealClearPolitics. First came Obama's underwhelming choice of Joe Biden as his VP, and then we had the DNC convention which was clearly a success and resulted in a 5 point bounce for Obama by late last week.

Obama's time in the news was extremely short lived as on Friday morning John McCain upended the contest as we thought we knew it and it hasn't been the same since. The polls tell the story that although Republicans immediately moved to support McCain and Palin, the general public was much slower and in fact no bounce started showing until Friday morning which would be the first polls to show since the Palin speech. But since then, it's been nothing but positive movement for McCain. It's likely that we aren't done yet moving in the McCain direction.

Currently Gallup has McCain at +3 and Rasmussen at even. (Zogby interactive also has McCain up by 4, but I don't trust that poll farther than I can throw it). Here's Gallup.



The very least we can say is that Obama's momentum coming out of his convention has been completely erased. Worse than that, no one is talking about him. He may take scant comfort in the fact that no one is really talking about McCain either. It's Sarah Palin's world and we are all just living in it.

Also my initial feeling that Biden was a horrible pick is confirmed. Biden is arguably a drain on the ticket, and is not a useful proxy for Obama in making his case to the target demographics that he needs (i.e. Women).

Republican supporters shouldn't get too comfortable as convention bounces fade as they inevitably do and this one will be no different. But the fact remains that we moved into these two weeks with an Obama clear advantage in enthusiasm, in a gender gap, and on the issues. We come out of this week with both essentially tied and the enthusiasm and gender gaps narrowed severely.

On to the debates!

After seeing VP pick Sarah Palin's speech last night, one thing became abundantly clear to me at once. McCain and company made either the best choice in the history of Republican politics or they will crash and burn in November.

McCain desperately needed something to energize the base of the party and carve out a good chunk of independents and working class fence-sitters. One thing for certain after seeing the reaction in the hall and the commentary afterwords - he has the base now. Evangelicals and values voters have warmly embraced her. While Palin's speech was mostly ghost-written months ago, the delivery was all her own. If you like the Reaganesque "aw shucks", homey appeal approach to politics - this speech was for you...

A McCain/Palin win would be the major political coup of this century and a large part of the last. One thing is for certain - Obama, Biden and company had better have a major plan of attack coming out of convention cycle as the Republican ticket should have a good bounce and tons of momentum. It was nearly unanimous among the AOL crew here in St. Paul that the Democratic ticket now suddenly may have something to worry about. I, along with millions of others, will not be thrilled with another example of snatching defeat from the mouth of victory. Biden's post-speech reaction was weak-kneed.

The first rule of being on television is even when the mics are supposedly off, never say anything you wouldn't say on camera. Because only the engineers know when the mics are really off. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and Time columnist Mike Murphy forgot that rule after appearing with NBC's Chuck Todd and were caught on tape disparaging John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for VP. Murphy -- a former McCain adviser -- says the choice is "cynical" and "gimmicky." Noonan's opinion is even stronger.

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullsh*t about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Watch it yourself but be warned that Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter, uses some harsh language (though since she's a lady, she does apologize for it). The fun begins about 40 seconds in.



UPDATE: In her latest column, Peggy Noonan addresses the controversy and explains her candid comments, with what seems to me to be no small amount of backpeddling to protect her standing within the GOP. Read it here and judge for yourself.

What happened to Christie Whitman?

As one of those who doesn't "get" the selection of Palin (and apparently I'm not alone), I think Whitman would have been a great choice for McCain if he felt the need to go after Hillary Democrats.

A relatively moderate and popular two-term governor of a large state and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Whitman has much more experience than Palin. She smart, a great speaker and would have (im my opinion) been a good draw for Clinton disaffecteds. She also carries the "Maverick" title in her refusal to bend to the Bush administration's will during her term at the EPA. Rather than carry out a lie like so many ex-Bushies who crawl out of the woodwork and write a book, Whitman up and quit rather than go against her guiding principles.

As an Obama supporter, I'm bemused by the choice of Alaska's Sarah Palin and feel she'll be a drag on McCain and therefore I'm happy. As a citizen of a country that has a lot going on the world, I'm scared spitless that if McCain wins and God forbid something were to happen, that Palin would be in charge.

I wondered how Republicans were thinking about McCain's choice and now we're finding out with surveys and overheard whispers in the hallway that not everyone is as thrilled with the choice as they let on in public.

Hey, it's America. You can bet on anything, including whether the economy is going into recession, if the New York Giants will repeat or whether the U.S. will host the 2016 summer Olympics. If the odds are good enough, the prediction market will take it on. And now you can buy the chance that Sarah Palin will be removed from the McCain ticket before the November election. Early Tuesday the market began selling the prediction at 18. By late afternoon the price was at 14.1, meaning about 14 percent of traders think there is a chance that Palin will be dropped.

You can follow the market fluctuations at Intrade.com. No word on whether Mitt Romney has bought yet.

The freshly-minted women's group "The New Agenda" has come out swinging against sexist attacks on Sarah Palin. From a press release:

"We cannot and will not sit idly by while another qualified candidate goes through what Senator Hillary Clinton had to endure. Issues are fair game. Sexist treatment is no longer fair game," said Amy Siskind, a co-founder of The New Agenda.

..."Our members were outraged that within 24 hours of Governor Palin's historic candidacy she was dismissed as "tokenism," she was referred to as a "MILF" (mother I'd like to f*uck), and chuckling male commentators said:" The only thing she didn't say was who needs some pie I baked this morning?" added Siskind.

I am privileged to count several New Agenda founders as friends, including Amy, but an equal number of my friends are New Agenda skeptics. More on New Agenda later.

I reached out to New Agenda for a specific MILF reference, and I'm waiting to hear back. If you google Sarah Palin and MILF, you get a lot of bloggy lad-mag chatter, a reference in a UK Times opinion piece, and the T-shirts pictured above. The vendor has not returned my request for comment.

While I applaud New Agenda for coming to Sarah's defense, the skeptic in me wonders about 3 things: If the MILF remark is restricted to under-the-radar blogs and flea-market T-shirts, why are they amplifying it in a press release? And why have none of my friends at New Agenda said "Boo!" about John McCain's identification for women of AILFs (Apes I'd Like to F*ck), or how Chelsea Clinton is not a TILF (Teen...etc.)? Finally, when will New Agenda come to Michelle Obama's defense?

Update: The T-shirt vendor responds at the end of the story.

Since posting originally on John McCain's brilliant selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, we have seen the left side of the blogsphere become unglued.

It's understandable.

They're mad, petulant and throwing a fit.

America's Left feels like it owns the narrative of being pro-woman.

Now, confronted with such a powerful non-liberal example as Governor Palin, they are reacting in a torrid wave of vicious rumors, petty personal attacks and what would be regarded, had Palin been a Democrat, as anti-woman attacks.

Democrats and other Leftists are also angry they have lost authenticity on change.

Barack Obama's background in Chicago machine politics coupled with the longest serving U.S. Senator to be tapped for Vice President, should make every America rethink the risks involved in electing Obama/Biden.

Obama, Democrats and Liberals realize the power of adding Palin to the McCain ticket, but that's no justification for the politics of personal destruction.

Palin's addition to the ticket killed any Obama convention bounce. Typically, nominees exited their convention with an average 6+ point bounce (over the past 50 years). John Kerry left his convention up 17%. The most recent surveys show the race deadlocked - 48-47.

Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal reports that according to his sources, John McCain selected running mate Sarah Palin after Karl Rove pressured McCain to select Mitt Romney instead of Senator Joe Lieberman, McCain's favored candidate.

Blumenthal also argues that the selection of Palin will allow McCain to court social conservatives before the convention. After the convention, when he is officially the nominee McCain will be "freer to move to the center."

Jonathan Martin of The Politico reported last week that Rove asked Lieberman, who ran for Vice President in 2000, to withdraw his name from consideration and was turned down.

According to ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg, it wasn't until the Sunday before the Democratic National Convention that the McCain campaign finally ruled out Joe Lieberman because, "it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt."

I was at breakfast with some other journalists when I heard about the Sarah Palin pick Friday morning, and the conversations we had quickly encompassed the media narratives that we will soon be seeing, and already are. You can read my from-a-distance take here.

Even though I didn't do a story on PUMAs, they were on the lips of every journalist I ran into, as news of my surreal experiences with them, and their antics, spread by word of mouth.

The first thing I said, though, was that this pick would separate the true Hillary PUMAs from the GOP shills and pure, unadulterated Obama-haters.

It wasn't long before I got several text messages from people telling me that Darragh Murphy was on Hardball talking Palin up. You can see the video here.

I called Will Bower yesterday to get his take, and to ask him about reports from well-placed sources within PUMAPAC that they had paid for his travel to Denver. Here's the audio from that call, followed by my commentary and a great summation by one of our readers.

Update: I finally got the video to upload correctly.

We have some early polls now from Rasmussen and others. Rasmussen gives us some good detail:

...a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 53% now have a favorable opinion of Palin while just 26% offer a less flattering assessment.

...By way of comparison, on the day he was selected as Barack Obama's running mate, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden was viewed favorably by 43% of voters.

Sounds like she's getting off to a right start.

As for voters not affiliated with either major party, 37% are more likely to vote for McCain and 28% less likely to do so. Those numbers are a bit more positive than initial reaction to Biden.

That sounds even better.

When Biden was selected, just over half (52%) of Democrats believed he was the right choice. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Republicans say McCain picked the right running mate in Palin, and 40% of unaffiliated voters agree. A week ago, 31% of unaffiliateds said the same about Obama's selection.

Now this is a little surprising, but it appears that McCain has really unified his party around Palin. Rasmussen goes on to say that the Democrats vehemently disagree.

Now the bad news:

Just 29% of voters say Palin is ready to be president if necessary, ten points below the 39% who said the same a week ago about Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a 36-year member of the Senate. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Republican voters say she is ready along with 32% of unaffiliated voters and 11% of Democrats.

So the task at hand in the upcoming week is to fix the experience issue and introduce Sarah Palin and her record to the American public. As they did with Joe Biden, her numbers will rise.

One thing that is clear from this, even allowing for argument is that this pick is certainly no worse, apart from experience, than Obama's pick of Joe Biden, and could be significantly better.

Equally clear is that Palin will make very little headway with Disaffected Clinton supporters. Although Rasmussen disagrees, I don't think that's the strategy here. My prediction is that this pick signals a significant shift from arguing on experience to reform. Palin was a reform candidate in Alaska, and McCain has run his entire career on being the reformer. I think they are out to wrest the change and outsider label away from Obama's hands and go at his strongest point, that of being a Washington outsider. Palin very much reinforces that attack.

I could be wrong, but we'll know soon.

Gallup is out and have somewhat similar numbers but worse for Palin especially on the experience numbers. Unlike Rasmussen, they used registered and not likely voters. Zogby is also out but uses their infamous online system. Which is why I stuck with Rasmussen, but checkout the Gallup and Zogby numbers if you are interested.