Heresy on the VP debate
Alot of the pundits are saying that Palin's poor performances in interviews have substantially lowered her expectations bar for the debate, but, I'm prone towards something of an opposite view.
Because of the disastrous interviews, I think she has to overperform to convince people that she's not the person they saw in the CBS interview or parodied on SNL.
Ambinder has a bit longer (and better written) post on Palin, her slipping image, lack of defenders, etc.
(One more thought. Palin doesn't have to "fail" for this debate to be bad news for the McCain campaign. A "sigh of relief" doesn't move the polls, and the passage of this debate will mark another three days gone and another lost opportunity for the the McCain campaign to catch up. 36 days left, they're down 4.5 in the polls.)
Because of the disastrous interviews, I think she has to overperform to convince people that she's not the person they saw in the CBS interview or parodied on SNL.
Ambinder has a bit longer (and better written) post on Palin, her slipping image, lack of defenders, etc.
Gov. Sarah Palin has lost control of her public image, several top-level McCain advisers said this weekend, and even a baseline performance in Thursday's debate with Joe Biden may be too late to recover it....
(One more thought. Palin doesn't have to "fail" for this debate to be bad news for the McCain campaign. A "sigh of relief" doesn't move the polls, and the passage of this debate will mark another three days gone and another lost opportunity for the the McCain campaign to catch up. 36 days left, they're down 4.5 in the polls.)
posted by mikevotes at
2:00 PM
6 Comments:
I think for some time now the political import of the VP debate has rested on Biden to not screw it up, rather than Palin to surprise with competence. There will be zero tolerance in the polling for any faux pas on the part of Biden. Whereas, Palin has plenty of running room before anything she says will affect fav/unfav from where it is today.
So you can look at that as a very low bar, where Palin can perform "poorly" and still not affect the polls negatively. Or you can say it's a high bar, where Palin has to do remarkably well to affect the polls positively.
In the end I think only Biden can make this a game-changer in favor of McCain/Palin. With the election still 5 weeks out, I don't think Palin's performance on Thursday will have any affect on the 4 Nov returns.
By
-epm, at 4:08 PM
Not likely any positive effect.
Biden's challenge in this thing is to appear competent and knowlegable, and then stand out of the way.
Dodge the already written GOP backlash by acknowledging his opponent politely, but primarily talking to the moderator.
Can't appear to ignore her, but he sould not engage.
By
mikevotes, at 4:14 PM
"...and then stand out of the way."
Here's where I get worried... :)
I'd also suggest that he never use the pronouns "she" and "her." Stick to gender neutral terms: "the governor", "my opponent".
By
-epm, at 4:31 PM
Yeah. It's a little tricky, but he really doesn't have to do much.
By
mikevotes, at 4:40 PM
McCain down 4.5 in the polls? Which polls are you watching?
Gallup -8
Diageo -5
Rasmussen -5
R2K -9
If you are looking at RCP, then you should be aware that they exclude R2K and include the loony Battleground tracker which uses 70% of their sample as 40+ age, no cells, no party ID weighting, and a rather large over-sampling of rural areas.
Battleground shows McCain +2(!), which lowers Obama's average gain considerably.
But as for the main point, Palin really can't pull off anything more than a failure. She does well with receptive audiences, much like McCain does, where recitation of familiar talking points is all that is needed to establish the speaker as "one of their own" and thus beyond critical analysis.
This is what bothers me about those who contend that McCain does so well in town hall forums. Those forums are controlled and staged, complete with receptive audiences. And if a hostile questioner should sneak through by deceitful means, McCain can simply call an end to the entire affair.
Republicans do not perform well outside of their artificial bubble world. Within that bubble, they are allowed and encouraged to make broadly unfounded assertions to uncritical listeners. The more vitriolic, the better. The less grounded in facts, the better. Palin is a creature of that bubble world, and she fully expects everyone to nod in agreement and cheer every silly thing she says. Failing that, she will wilt and pout.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 8:12 PM
Let's start off by sayingI always discount the trackers. I tend to use them for trends, but am always very cautious about using them for absolute numbers (even though they've kind of stabilized over the last few days.)
It's my own bias that I trust the more formal polls. (And I have a hunch that they'll probably show more movement to Obama as well.)
I pretty much pulled that4.5 out of my ass. Just kind of a sense of it all, and I didn't want to get into an argument bidding too high. (But here we are.)
As for your bubble point, not absolute, but, yeah. Also, within their group they can fall back on the signpost talking points and get applause. Lower taxes, less spending, Dems evil, etc.
(All that, though, doesn't sound as good without the audience cheering, in interviews or in a debate.)
By
mikevotes, at 9:22 PM
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