The Atlantic - Latest Comments in She looks fine

Re: She looks fine

How Insane Is John McCain? — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:53:14 -0000

"That speech was written under two false pre-conceptions 1) nobody had seen Obama’s ads or speeches and 2) the viewer was a total moron. It was condescending and sarcastic in a time when they GOP doesn’t get to tell us how great they are and what they will do. People are tired of Bush’s condescending attitude, but it took the media a while to pick up on that. The entire night sounded like a party ready to take on Mondale in 84, with themes from the 80’s and issues of low salience today. The speech itself was self-contradictory. How can you claim change and experience at the same time? How can you run against DC when your party is in power and you’ve been in DC for years? How are you going to shrink the size of government when continuing the Iraq War and started brand new energy initiatives? How can you be for small government staying out of people’s lives yet against community organizing? The festishization of state power and the guise “responsibility” is authoritarian and creepy. What does victory in Iraq even mean anymore? Nobody bothered to define it."

- Reality Man

That is a seriously great comment.

I really don't think people are stupid. They're going to see through this act. The Republicans are running the 2004 election all over again at a time when they've been completely discredited. I don't think it's going to work.

Re: She looks fine

Deborah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:51:06 -0000

Give the analogy prize to James Fallows: It's as though Barack Obama chose Al Franken as his running mate, and Al then gave a riproaring redmeat speech at the convention. (Especially if this was a low year for Dems who were casting about for a sign they could turn their chances around.) The base would be thrilled to see those guys pounded hard; the rest of the country would not be impressed with the Dems' seriousness.

Re: She looks fine

Guest — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:43:30 -0000

Did you think she was going to fall off the stage? Were our expectations really set that low? Facts remain:

- She attacked Obama for never authoring a "major bill" despite his having authored over 150 in his time in the Senate alone. Maybe there weren't any to her liking....

- There is an inherent contradiction in running as the "small town" party when you are, in actuality, the party that thinks $250,000 is "middle class"

- It's AWKWARD that the first female Republican on a major ticket is sharing that ticket with a man who has voted against equal pay for women

- She has serious problems that have yet to be addressed on foreign policy. For those comparing her experience to Obama's, Obama is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That doesn't pass the smell test.

- "Drill Baby Drill" is not "taking on big oil". Cognitive dissonance will collectively catch up to us all.

I mean, that's not even the litany. AGAIN, once the spectacle dies down, people are going to realize this is the exact same campaign the Republicans ran in 2004. What's sad is that people are touting her as the "future of the Republican Party". That mean, for the foreseeable future, we have no chance of ridding ourselves of this ridiculous Red/Blue culture war divide. The term "East Coast Elite" and "Hollywood Liberal" are going to get trotted out and taken for another walk around the block. And they're talking about Todd Palin staying at home with the kids right now on MSNBC. Good god. We are lost.

Re: She looks fine

Hmmm... — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:37:58 -0000

Sarah Palin = Tom DeLay in a pantsuit. That's what I saw last night.

Re: She looks fine

Whitey — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:51:11 -0000

I dunno, she seemed to stumble a lot. I mean, she's clearly got charisma, and is a better speaker than John McCain, but she didn't seem entirely comfortable. Perhaps it was being in a venue that large, perhaps it was the one-size-fits-all speech, but considering she was in all-out attack mode, it didn't come out at smoothly as it ought to have.

Re: She looks fine

John (not McCain) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:47:18 -0000

"The Republicans are using her as the attack dog but I hope she can take punches as she likes to throw them."

Indeed. And, given that she came across as a thoroughly viscious thug, no matter what Biden or anybody else says about her she can't get away with the "oh, they're attacking poor widdle me" schtick conservatives pull when people tell the truth about them.

Re: She looks fine

Robert M — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:39:55 -0000

I watched Gov Palin speech for I think about 10 to 15 mins before I just crashed(I know I saw the "if you have a special needs child you have a friend in me" part and the family showcase-was or was it not a total creep out seeing Cindy McCain holding Trig and no members of her family in sight). The applause never seemed in sync w/ the talking points. As she wasn't attempting to win me over I felt ....

What is significant is that the Gov fell into the Candidate Palin vs Gov Palin trap. Best it is all on tape. Gov Palin gutted funds for Special Needs in Alaska(it would be fantastic to find out she did it in the last budget knowing while PREGNANT w/ Trig he had down syndrome). Gov Palin has been taking back leases from oil companies that are not drilling where they already have permits so why drill in ANWR). Gov Palin has been both for and against the Bridge to Nowhere and against earmarks(I saw this on CNBC this morning-I can't believe the pro's didn't cut this out of her speech).

Start the side by side Candidate vs Gov ads now. I am sure there is video and audio tape. You get to bury her on many non social issues. The situtation w/ Trig is just icing.

Re: She looks fine

DBL — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:34:53 -0000

Wel, from the comments above, it's apparent that the Palin speech was a great success. The Dems hated it and they are talking about how mean it was, blah, blah, rather than about how stupid and ineffective Palin is, which is the meme they had the previous couple of days. Of course, VP candidates are supposed to be mean, so that won't stick and the Dems will have to find some other tagline to stick on her. Good luck with that.

Re: She looks fine

Deborah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:27:23 -0000

Forgot to include something Sean at 538 said--she fires up both bases. And in a year when far more people identify as Dems or left-leaning indie, that will be a problem.

From the way her roll out went, I think the McCain camp was aiming for a double* with social conservatives and at least a triple with independents and Hillary voters. What they got was a home run with social conservatives and a strikeout with independents and Hillary voters.

Both of the Globe's pro-Hillary editorialists, women older than myself, have produced pro-Obama, anti-Palin editorials that seem to have a strong Carville subtext: "I'm insulted that you thought this would actually win me over, and I see positive things in Obama that weren't clear to me before." The Republicans have adapted to that, and she's done talking about how wonderful Hillary and Geraldine are. Time to move into the next phase. (Incidentally I'd love to see Hillary out there making the case against McCain's policies and for Obama's policies--THIS is what a woman in full command of all the issues sounds like. Let that silently contrast to Palin's refusal to do interviews. Those on the left who want Hillary v Palin are demoting Hillary and promoting Palin, a stupid tactic.)

*Sports analogies don't come naturally to me so I apologize if this actually makes no sense and I've suggested the Republicans play cricket or something.

Re: She looks fine

Deborah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:12:07 -0000

Up until this moment she has been hidden in a closet and they can't do that forever.

I'm starting to wonder--per Marc Ambinder's question about whether they want to go to war with the press and Al Giordano's response that that may be their precise plan and it could work--if this is exactly what they mean to try.

Re: She looks fine

Jim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:08:01 -0000

It's times like this that I really miss Tim Russert. God I'd love to see her on Meet The Press and have him go after her, forcing her to come up with off the cuff responses.

Last night was appalling. These guys seriously think they can win by repeating the 2004 formula. If it works this time I'll weep for my country and our future.

Re: She looks fine

carl — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:48:28 -0000

The good thing about Palin's speech is that the expectations for her have been raised. Days prior, there was concern about, essentially, how gentle the Obama campaign would have to be with her, not taking the chance that they could be charged with bullying a poor defenseless working mother. Now, since her base and others thing she nailed her first speech, she's "established" herself as a "force"; by my thinking, the Obama campaign can now swing away.

Final point: I do agree with the poster who said that she had 5 days to get ready to read a prepared speech. What she proved to me last night was that she could smile, talk, and read at the same time. How she stands up in debates or more rigorous interviews remains to be seen.

Re: She looks fine

Reality Man — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:46:41 -0000

That speech was written under two false pre-conceptions 1) nobody had seen Obama’s ads or speeches and 2) the viewer was a total moron. It was condescending and sarcastic in a time when they GOP doesn’t get to tell us how great they are and what they will do. People are tired of Bush’s condescending attitude, but it took the media a while to pick up on that. The entire night sounded like a party ready to take on Mondale in 84, with themes from the 80’s and issues of low salience today. The speech itself was self-contradictory. How can you claim change and experience at the same time? How can you run against DC when your party is in power and you’ve been in DC for years? How are you going to shrink the size of government when continuing the Iraq War and started brand new energy initiatives? How can you be for small government staying out of people’s lives yet against community organizing? The festishization of state power and the guise “responsibility” is authoritarian and creepy. What does victory in Iraq even mean anymore? Nobody bothered to define it.

She makes one speech on energy, yet Obama has had energy ads out for about a month that got seen all over the Olympics. Obama’s message was that McCain is a good man who loves America but is just wrong. He seemed like someone wanting to bring people together, get people organized to tackle big issues together and be able to converse with each other under good faith. The Palin speech was just “fuck you hippy” in response.

Also, at least 38 million people heard Obama’s line about the gates of hell and the mouth of bin Laden’s cave. Palin had no real rejoinder to that beyond Bush-style mocking. She had nothing to say about Afghanistan and seemed wanting to save face instead on Iraq.

It is also terribly cynical and sick to use your teenage daughter’s pregnancy, complete with her husband-to-be not looking like he wants to be there, as a campaign prop. You don’t get to use the fact your daughter did something stupid as a reason to tell us “elitists” how moral you are.

Re: She looks fine

Apsaras — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:29:06 -0000

Does anyone else think that her dig at Community Organizing is going to come back and haunt her? Considering the reaction of some of the reporters after the speech (especially that one guy on CNN who has parents who are Austin community organizers) and the pissed off email I just got from David Plouffe, I have a feeling her little slam on community organizers is going to show up in an ad before long.

Re: She looks fine

dewberry — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:13:02 -0000

More trying to control the news cycle stuff. Lots of one-liners, no real substance. That's not the way to introduce yourself to the people who haven't really heard that much about you.

I guess they've decided that the only way to win is an all-out culture war. It makes me look forward to the next 8 weeks even less.

Re: She looks fine

JonF — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:19:39 -0000

Re: This is the way religious believers react to anything that threatens their faith.

Who is threatening anyone's faith? And if Christianity is about kicking people for real or imagined slights then I must be reading the wrong Gospels.

Re: She looks fine

MikeCee — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:16:48 -0000

She's a politician, if she can't read a teleprompter with a well written speech on it she is in the wrong business. Of course she looked good and it went well. The content was typical and the talking heads are predictibly fauning.

What I am looking forward to is her first press availability, up until this moment she has been hidden in a closet and they can't do that forever no matter how much they wish they could. And we can hope they will ask her about troopergate, the bridge to nowhere, raising taxes, cutting funding for social programs, her own personal rev. wright and so on and so on.

Re: She looks fine

Deborah — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:10:10 -0000

I see what her conservative backers see in her. She could be effective.

Very true. Those who wanted to set expectations low for her didn't help--she's an unknown! Clearly she must be uber-qualified, a quality we look forward to seeing in numerous interviews.

Talking points:

She's qualified, per Biden. She's 44, natural born citizen, and a governor. Talking about which experience counts drags us into the Obama v Palin frame the right wants. This is Obama v McCain.

Is she prepared? She should have been all over the talk shows this past weekend. What are her positions on issues broader than firing the librarian who won't ban books for her in Wassila? She "took on the oil companies" by getting them to cut even larger checks for the citizens of Alaska than the ones they'd cut the year before--I don't see how this translates to the broader country as economic or energy policy.

The focus is John McCain's policies and record of flip-flopping whenever the right whistles in the past 3 years. Getting dragged into Palin minutia keeps the focus on biography and off issues--if it isn't clear to people that they're trying for an issue-free election that's all about John McCain Was a POW and Sarah Palin Was a Hockey Mom, they haven't been watching this past week.

What TNC said about bait still holds true. A lightning rod for left attacks, some of them offensive. (Evangelical social conservatives know families in which the mother works full time, in which the dad stays home with the kids, in which a teenager gets pregnant. Really. They do. These people are in their churches and families, and no one cares about the hypocrisy of attacking it in others and accepting it amongst your own because the left is just as guilty of this. It's a losing frame.) We've had a week all about Palin, in which I heard from both NPR and TNR about Jamie Lynn Spear's gift of pink buppies. Issues will work better.

Re: She looks fine

JK — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:02:22 -0000

The content of Palin's speech was garbage but her delivery was effective. She's going to be one nasty candidate. I can't wait to see her get beaten on election day. After her venomous personal attacks, I'm looking forward to seeing her shell-shocked reaction when it's made official that Obama and Biden are victorious.

Re: She looks fine

eric k — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:21:30 -0000

Standard culture war drivel, Pat Buchanan with a pretty face. Ok we get it they really don't like us coastal liberals and don't consider us part of their America.

Th eoBama campaign has a great lenghtly repsosne out that details all the outright lies she told, not that anyone will actualy call her on it, that would be sexist I guess. The Washington Monthly has a post linking to it.

Re: She looks fine

JC — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:15:06 -0000

Style and substance.

Right now, on the substance, they've got nothin' so they have to go all out on 'style' - in this case, style being the attacking, sneering us versus them type of politics.

She did a good job of it, and delivered her lines well.

I keep thinking back on what Josh Marshall calls the bitch-slap theory of politics. Tonight, Guiliani and Palin went HARD after Obama - lots of lies/distoritions for the "opponent", as well as the mocking. Some smash mouth.

But smashing mouth back, never seems to work well for democrats, and ignoring the attacks never work for Democrats either.

One possibility, Obama has to define McCain - basically, I think, as an incompetent, shiftless fool.

Incompetent in the economic sense. "would you trust your economy to the guy who can't count to 10 houses?"

Shiftless - in terms of his policy changes over the past 7 years - keep the thread started by Kerry.

Foolish - in stringing together his long uncomfortable pauses and bumbling responses that have been captured on Youtube.

This way, you define McCain - in his character, by using truth about the policies and the history.

Re: She looks fine

WJA — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:14:57 -0000

"her far right position on abortion is a problem"

On pure electability, why? According to this NYT poll (which is consistent with several other polls), 64% of all voters want abortion rights curbed somewhat or eliminated altogether, while 54% of DEMOCRATIC voters share that sentiment:

Re: She looks fine

Mary Owens — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:29:39 -0000

Speech sucked...Republicans just lost the middle and made Obama look like the total class act he is.

Re: She looks fine

pseudonymous in nc — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:54:07 -0000

'Community organizer' is apparently now the Republican euphemism for the N-word. The spirit of Lee Atwater is alive and well in St Paul, and I don't think that hour of Ace of Base will go down well beyond the base.

Re: She looks fine

carole — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:51:01 -0000

Why the ELITISM and CONTEMPT when it comes to community organizing??? Someone has to do this type of work. It should not be looked down upon. I volunteer in my community and less fortunate communities whenever I get a chance and it is hard work trying to get anything done.

Perhaps she will appreciate the merits of organizing if they come up short of votes on election day. You can see where Obama has carried thru into every state in the primaries.

I also dont know if she should be that dismissive of someone who received more than 18 M votes and actually won his nomination. She simply appeared one day and wants to start building pipelines and drilling in the ocean. I dont think so. Not just yet or ever. Must go register people to vote.