Don’t get me wrong — I expect Joe to win big-time by MY standards. I’ve always liked and respected Joe,
his tendency toward blarney notwithstanding, and he’s a veteran big-leaguer, while Sarah’s never been out of the sticks. Yes, I could be wrong, I could be shown up the way Max Mercy was when he bet on the Whammer against Roy Hobbs, but I know he’s capable of knocking it out of the park at a time of his choosing.
But it’s not about me, is it? It’s about Josephine Sixpack out there. And despite that dazzling grin of his, Joe’s charm is of a kind that I think is likely to wear thin with the folks in TV land if he shows just how smart he is. And Joe has trouble resisting the temptation to show how smart he is.
We all laugh at the Tina Fey skits about Sarah (those of us who have senses of humor), but only the crueler ones among us want to laugh at her, personally, struggling against a Hall of Famer in such a public and high-stakes ballpark (let me know when you’ve had enough of the baseball metaphors).
Mrs. Palin just needs to cram enough to give a few answers that make common sense. Sure, such a forum is loaded with hurdles that she’s likely to have trouble clearing (just changed sports on you there). But Joe doesn’t just have to get the answers right (which everyone expects him to do). He has to get the tone right, at every step of the way. Now that’s tough, especially for a guy so well known for letting himself get carried away.
Related Posts
The format for the debate is one that is well suited for Palin or any newcomer to the arena. By newcomer I mean anyone who has had weeks not month’s to prepare.
It’s 90 second answers with no direct follow-ups with lots of room for no specifics. This allows either candidate to ignore the exact wording of the question and instead answer in the typical broad political prose with key buzzwords but never really give a direct answer to the question. Nobody has to be specific which is well suited for someone who just had to cram for the exam due to no fault of her own.
This combined with the GOP & Fox laying every possible seed for every possible reason and excuse why she failed out there and to set expectations so low and so humiliating to Palin that as long as Palin speaks English during the debate, the debate will be viewed as a succcss on her part.
The only thing that might bring down Palin (or any candidate for that matter) is her ego and uncalled for arrogance. If she keeps it in check, and doesn’t try to take on more than she can handle, she’ll be fine.
what do you mean, Sarah’s never been out of the sticks? I understand that she went to college in Idaho.
We don’t have winners of debates; we have winners of bumper sticker-phrase and zinger contests. Sarah Palin’s coaches will have her loaded with both. If Biden is able to correct the misrepresentations of his and Obama’s positions, and quoting of his statements against Obama while campaigning against him, she will be held in check. I expect her to attack even more aggressively than McCain did. We will likely hear how patriotic Biden thinks paying taxes is, and frankly, it is a patriotic duty, but it takes statesmanship to say so.
Wait a minute, Harry. Do Biden and Obama actually have positions?
Since Affirmative Action for Mortgages is going to sop up all the tax revenues for the next 4 years, Obama’s grandiose vote-buying giveaway platform is no more.
Maybe Biden can come up with a new one tomorrow.
Just watched the Couric interview clip with Biden and Palin being asked the exact same questions about Roe V Wade and Supreme Court decisions.
If you can watch those two clips and still think Palin belongs on the ticket, you have to be brainwashed. Whether you agree with Biden’s position or not, he can at least speak with intelligence. Palin is a disaster without a teleprompter.
She can’t name books or newspapers she has read. She can’t name a single Supreme Court case she disagrees with aside from Roe V Wade. She can’t name a single instance of McCain doing something “maverick-like”. She thinks living next to Russia gives her foreign policy experience (which means I guess that makes me a baker since my neighbor had a bakery).
Dan Quayle must be smiling big time these days.
Senator “Bluster” Biden should be worried, Brad. He lied on his resume:
His claim of a full academic scholarship to Law School and an undergraduate 3.3 GPA are two of the many lies he told in 1988. He had no law school scholarship and his undergrad grades were mediocre.
He claimed that he had told his sons he had these academic credentials to inspire them to achieve in school. His defense was the parenting defense!!! And it’s Palin everyone is mocking!!!%$#
Way off topic Lee, but still wrong as always. Let me introduce you to a simple phrase that won’t make you look like a total wackjob. Fact-check.
First of all, this sub-prime crisis isn’t a crisis that can be blamed on any expectations of entitlement or on attempts at fairer lending to minorities. The Community Reinvestment Act, the one that Rush loves to bellie-ache over, requires banks to make loans in low-income communities that they serve, was enacted in 1977, some 31 years. So that’s 15 years under a Democratic President and 16 years under a GOP President with out any problems whatsoever….and this program started when interest rates for mortgages were double-digits for everybody, not just those with bad credit scores.
But since George W. Bush took office with a GOP Congress in 2000, CRA regulations have been substantially weakened….meaning that banks didn’t have follow the rules and extend loans to minorities…which they didn’t.
Given the fact that some 30 years have passed from the time a law was made to force banks to lend in low-income communities in their market areas to when this sub-prime meltdown began, and it defies common sense and basic intelligence to blame the CRA for all this.
You are blaming a breezy day in the 1970’s for a hurricane that is happening today. Not even close to being reasonable or correct.
What proves this point even further is the fact that the CRA doesn’t even cover most of the institutions that issued the sub-prime loans.
According to Michael Barr, a law professor who specializes in banking and finance at the University of Michigan, half of those loans that are in risk of of collapse were made by mortgage companies, which the CRA DOESN’T COVER and which are loosely regulated, and another 25 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which the CRA only partly covers.
So this crisis isn’t rooted in some “affirmative action” conspiracy to force banks to make more loans to minorities who can’t afford them. It is rooted in the greed of those who saw the sub-prime market as pay-day lenders and a means to exploit all kinds of people, poor and minorities included.
Out of greed, white-middle class got approved for mortgages to buy bigger and more expensive homes, McMansions, than they could afford…approved for auto-financing for car’s that they can’t afford and lines of credits for pruchases they couldn’t afford. So the middle-class of all races as well as the profiteering banks are at fault here.
Yes, Brad, god forbid Biden (or any politician) come off as “too smart.” What a turnoff.
Enforcement of The Community Reinvestment Act was dramatically changed by executive orders of Bill Clinton, and by a Congress controlled by Democrats. That is why subprime loans jumped from 2% of mortgages to 20% during the Clinton years. And that is what brought down the mortgage market.
Democratic appointees, like Harold Raines (Obama’s economic advisor), Louis Freeh and Jamie Gorelick of the Clinton DOJ, published false reports overstating profits of FNMA and FMAC by up to $6.9 BILLION each year, and paying themselves tens of millions each in bonuses.
WTF, even with the 90-second answer format, that still gives Gov. Palin plenty of time to veer off into “Twilight Zone” territory, e.g., “Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace” etc…
I’m guessing that she’ll sound OK for the first 45 to 60 seconds of her answers; I think the parts that might end up getting replayed as Daily Show classics will come in the final 20 seconds of each answer. I’d listen closely for the ends of the answers as she starts to run out of actual knowledge. If I were Biden, I would under NO circumstances try to cut Ms.Palin’s answers short; I would give her every possible chance to ramble on as long as possible.
The expectations for Palin are so low she’s already won the debate, unless she falls down on stage. Even then she might win on sympathy points.
This business of connecting with the “average Joe or Jane” is what brought us George W. Bush. Do we really want a repeat of that?
Bud, I take back everything I’ve ever said about Bush not being the brightest bulb in the universe and that Cheney and the neocons have been really running everything…
Stealing a line from somebody, I forget who: Next to Palin, Bush is Metternich.
No truth to the rumor, however, that should Palin become President, that former Miss Teen South Carolina will become the new Secretary of Education.
One question I hope comes up tonight from Gwen Ifill: Since Palin took such a demagogic swipe at Obama in her acceptance speech about “reading terrorists their rights,” it would be great if Ifill asked both candidates about the SCOTUS decision in Boumediene v. Bush, and habeas corpus issues in general. Since Palin used that line in her opening address to the nation, it’s certainly fair game—and given her “deep” knowledge of Supreme Court issues, her answers could be, shall we say, entertaining.
Yeah, bud, connecting with the average Joe is what brought us Harvard MBA-holding George W. Bush, son of a president.
Here’s a question for you: What do the 10 American cities with the highest poverty rates have in common?
Detroit (1st on poverty list) hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1961; Buffalo (2nd) since 1954; Cincinnati (3rd) since 1984; Cleveland (4th) since 1989; Miami (5th) NEVER, St. Louis (4th) since 1949; El Paso (7th) NEVER; Milwaukee (8th) since 1908; Philadelphia (9th) since 1952; and Newark (10th) since 1907.
Democrats and economy don’t mix, bud. And they don’t bring their constituents out of poverty, either.
Clinton and Gore, both college flunk outs, are held up by Democrats as brilliant. No wonder they keep electing mayors who keep their cities as slums.
p.m., let’s get up another list of cities with the worst crime, worst arson, etc – all Democrat, mostly black mayors, who only leave office in handcuffs.
Palin should go right after Biden for his larding up the bailout bill with tax breaks for his Amtrak projects. Palin needs to compare her cleaning up the oil fee corruption in Alaska with Biden and Obama’s dirty hands on this mortgage scandal.
Yes, the Biden guy is brilliant. Voted against the 1991 Gulf War. Nice one. Was against the surge. Another good one. Foreign policy expert is he.
Told a paralyzed guy in a wheelchair to “stand up.” What brilliance!
Said his chopper was forced down in Afghanistan by enemy fire. Right – enemy fire disguised as snowflakes.
We rubes in “TV land” sure are dumb.
And then his complicity in the bailout bill makes him look really smart to me. A bill loaded with more crap sandwiches, giveaways, handouts, socialism, etc than ever seen before in Washington.
Career bureaucrats like Biden can cover for Fannie and Freddie while they continue to pressure banks to loan money to people who CANNOT pay these loans and morgages and presto – instant crisis! And guess who gets stuck bailing them out of their own mess?
BINGO! Now that I think about it, he’s MUCH smarter than us.
Aside from the obvious reversed logic of PM’s post above, following his logic all the way can tell another story, the flip side of the equation:
, San Jose, also hasn’t elected a Republican mayor in at least 50 years; the third wealthiest, San Francisco, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since the 1960’s. Virginia Beach, the fourth wealthiest, has had the same Democratic mayor since 1988. Sounds like Democratic mayors can be a recipe for economic success! Of the top four, only Anchorage has had Democrats and Republicans in fairly steady alternation. But then, we knew that Alaska is a little different.
Oops, html accident there. The second paragraph should begin, “The wealthiest city in the US, San Jose…” etc.
Having visited and done business in San Jose for 35 years, I have never seen anything the mayor has done to make it prosperous. It was built by the computer industry boom. It would take a really evil dunce to mess that up. But give the Democrats time.
Of course. If Democrats run city hall for years in a prosperous city, then that city’s prosperity has nothing to do with that city’s Democratic leadership. But if a city suffers from great poverty, that must be because of the city’s Democratic leadership.
The partisan “logic” is impeccable.
Remarkably similar to the logic that told us on Sunday that John McCain’s “leadership” was to credit for the agreement that seemed to exist that day, but then did not fault that same “leadership” of John McCain when the House failed to pass the agreement.
Must drive you guys nuts to see America actually waking up from and coming collectively to its senses.
If you can actually list or describe what the mayor of San Jose did to turn it from bushy hills into the center of computer development, please tell us. But tell us HOW you claim to have this knowledge, especially those of us who were just there on business, and especially if you have never been there.
I can tell you a lot of the things Democrats did to destroy the once great cities like Detroit.
I didn’t expect you to have an answer.