I’ve been sort of intentionally staying away from a bunch of this stuff this weekend — both feeling a bit fatigued (one can only note Palin/McCain lying so many times before the fingers get tired, though some seem indefatigable) and a bit overwhelmed by the whole deepening financial institution implosion.
Still, a few tidbits from the weekend …
As always, we start with Gov. Palin. Folks are noting the parallels between the GOP stonewalling of the Troopergate investigation and the post-2000 election recount in Floridy: law suits, shifting of venues to favorable locations / judges / evaluators. I have to wonder whether their actions in doing so this time are going to backfire. In 2000, it was the only way they could win. Since everything we’ve heard to date on this matter indicates it’s a relatively petty (telling, but petty) abuse of power case, the more the GOP stalls, delays, and makes headlines over the case, the bigger it grows in the popular imagination. If the whole thing had blown over by now, Palin would have been slightly tarnished but the campaign would have moved on. Instad, they have a running sore in their northwest flank, and one that keeps drawing them into further lies.
The GOP may be learning (as they’ve had to learn multiple times before) that it’s not the crime that gets you, but the cover-up.
Regardless, if the Palin choice has “energized the base” (at least for a while), it has hurt GOP chances in the center. It’s a classic choice that they made, and it may hurt them. Meantime, the Palin candidacy has been vacillating between grabbing the headlines from McCain to having her appearances abruptly cancelled. Is she in for reprogramming? Regardless, the campaign has decided she can’t go toe-to-toe with Biden, so they’ve arranged to make the VP debates softer and less confrontational. But remember: she’s absolutely ready to go toe-to-toe with Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and, of course, Zapatero … just not Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, the party faithful keep bleating that, after months of the conservatives questioning whether Obama is Christian enough (or at all), questioning Palin’s faith is, of course, utterly off-limits. Unless you’re interested, of course, in how it will inform her governance and policy on trivial matters like education, science, church-state separation, climate change, the imminence of the Second Coming and what has to be done to bring it about, etc.
Doubtless the Russians (you know, the ones she can see from up there) are chortling over the the latest Palin Scandal.
Palin’s running mate, John McCain, continues to call himself a maverick, though I think some folks are beginning to see that as meaning “a smooth-talker willing to take daring and dubious gambles with others’ money.” Certainly some of the local newspaper folks back in his home state of Arizona are less than enchanted with him. Recall how Molly Ivins’ reviews of Bush were ignored …
Most of the McCain news over the weekend was related to the big financial implosion going on, and the plans and schemes to get it fixed. The information on this tended to be lengthy, complicated, and rambling — and, in a lot of cases, covers McCain’s role in the whole sorry affair (directly as a party-line deregulator, indirectly through his cohorts like Phil “60-to-1” Gramm, and directly again in terms of how he’s long been in favor of partial privatizing of Social Security (i.e., private SSI accounts invested in the stock market), following the same deregulation path for national health insurance … and, oh, by the way, noting the chutzpah of laying the blame for all of this mess on Obama and his supporters.
Oh, and even without the economic crisis, there’s all those other McCain ads …
Over on the Obama side of things, the polls and electoral count continue to look up, though there are concerns over what role racism — conscious or unconscious — may play in the final vote. I wonder if early voting around the country will mitigate that some — folks being less driven by fears if they’re filling out a ballot at their kitchen table than if they’re in that booth on Election Day.
Regardless, if there are fears to be drummed up, you can count on Fox News to offer them, with an eerie resemblance to their Election 2004 coverage.
A few other bits of election news:
- Is Marilyn Musgrave going to down to defeat? As a Coloardoan, that would be just too faboo for words.
- Why is the Mormon Church throwing so much money to get California’s Prop 8 passed (taking away gay marriage rights)? They’re not alone in the effort, but they sure seem to be some of the deepest pockets behind it.
- Hey, I recognize some of the names of these Young Adult authors for Obama. Coolness.