Where The Angry Women At?

Despite weeks of breathless pontification over the fate of the Democratic party as women rendered it asunder in the wake of their heroine's loss we come to learn that, in the end, most Democratic party members behaved like-well-Democratic party members.

PRINCETON, NJ -- The Democratic convention appears to have helped solidify support for Barack Obama among former Hillary Clinton supporters, with the percent saying they will vote for Obama in November moving from 70% pre-convention to 81% after the convention, and the percent certain to vote for Obama jumping from 47% to 65%

As for those who are still claiming they are planing to vote for McCain, its possible they may have, in the end, pulled the lever for McCain anyhow....despite their self-avowed support for Clinton. 

Another thing to keep in mind when the cable news choir begins to roll out a new tune about the Clinton backlash; folks inclined to so radically switch from one political point-of-view to another simply based on their attachment to a single personality might not lend themselves as reliable poll respondents.

- Murphy

News Wrap-up From the Last Frontier

The Anchorage Daily News has a wrapup of how their Governor's new role is being digested by news outlets around the world. 

For Example:

Why the Palin baby story matters (National Review) In the Colorado section, I ran into Sue Sharkey from Windsor. When I asked what she thought, her reaction was not about Palin but herself.

Did any Alaskans get a call? (The New York Times) "They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn't speak to anyone in the business community,"said Lyda Green, the state Senate president who lives in Wasilla, where Palin served as mayor.

Hillary's gone, but the gender issue isn't (Globe and Mail) The Republicans are clearly trying to attract disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters. But what kind of twisty mindset would basically substitute one female candidate for another regardless of political beliefs, which, in this case, are miles apart? Palin, a social conservative, is ardently anti-abortion, doesn't believe climate change is manmade and is against "explicit" sex education in schools.

Three questions Republicans are asking themselves about Palin (ABC News)

• What else is out there about Palin?

• Was the vetting process complete and professional?

• What message will voters hear about McCain's judgment that he chose someone to be his running mate who has almost no national security experience and who is so much of an unknown quantity?

Despite the seemingly impenetrable echo that reverberates amongst the commentators on most of the cable news outlets, other news outlets seem to be examining the questions that many Americans are asking themselves, and that the McCain campaign never saw fit to ask.

- Murphy

As Republicans Begin Convention, Obama Increases Lead

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) edged open his lead a little further in the Presidential race. Pollster's aggregate tracking poll has the Democratic Senator ahead by just over 5% - 48.8% to 43.6%. 

Today's Gallup tracking poll shows Obama hitting 50% for the first time. The Gallup daily tracking poll only good in the aggregate, too much statistical noise clouds the 1 or 2 point shifts. However, Obama has been bumping up against the 50% mark for the past week, with McCain hovering just over 40.

Is this the convention bump? Or is it a reaction to the continuously forthcoming stories surrounding McCain's choice to pick Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate? That pick, so far, has seemed to please few besides the evangelical community. 

Dr. James Dobson, founder of the socially conservative group Focus on the Family, reversed his earlier vow to not vote for McCain following Palin's selection. To Dobson and other conservatives, Palin embodies their mission which includes: opposition to abortion, sex educaation, homosexuality, and supports the teaching of creationism in schools and expanding the influence of religion in both schools and government. 

- Murphy

Gramm: You're not a whiner...

....you're economically illiterate and a whiner.

Just when Sen. McCain must have felt he might be getting a bit of distance from the remarks of his economic advisor Sen. Phil Gramm (Gramm is no longer the campaign co-chair, but is still an unofficial advisor), Gramm reanimates his homage to the strength of the American public. 

``If you're sitting here today, you're not economically illiterate and you're not a whiner, so I'm not worried about who you're going to vote for,'' the former Texas senator told attendees at a Financial Services Roundtable event in Minneapolis on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

Gramm originally stepped down as the McCain campaign co-chair after telling the Washington Times in an interview that the current recession was "a mental recession" and that the country had become a nation of "whiners" in the wake of the slowdown.

On the bright side, for McCain, the slow-motion crash that is the Palin-for-VP pick is drawing most of the air in the room. But if it doesn't, since Gramm has already officially stepped into the shadows, where else can he go?

- Murphy

Eagleton?

A question that arose in the last day as I mulled over the Palin pick was, "Will she be another Eagleton?"

St. Louis native Sen. Thomas Eagleton was dropped as Sen. George McGovern's VP selection in 1972 after it was revealed that Eagleton had received treatment for "exhaustion", code for some form of mental health issue. Mental health issues-of all sorts and severities-are still relatively kept quiet today, but then they were even more taboo; especially amongst elected officials and others in powerful positions.

On August 1, less than two weeks after his selection, Eagleton was replaced on the ticket with Sagent Shriver-the Kennedy relative and father of the first lady of California, Maria Shriver. 

Yet, a Time Magazine poll at the time showed a majority of voters (77%) were not troubled by Eagleton's medical history.

Though not likely the killing blow, McGovern went on to loose the election in a massive defeat. The chaos created by the late-game switch, and voters apparent lack of concern over the issue, gave his Republican opponent, President Richard Nixon, an irresistable opportunity to attack McGovern's judgement.

The question now is, will we see Palin dropped from the ticket for a safer-if less "maverick"-choice following several weeks of the media's investigation into Palin and what is really going on with the investigations into her alleged abuse of power? 

What will a week of the national media trawling Alaska for every bit of information on Palin do to the McCain campaign? A campaign sapped by efforts to react to the stories they media is likely to uncover-the obscure or the eye-openers-is not an unlikely outcome.

The short-term politics of the decision may be regretted before long. Selecting a VP who is likely to be deposed as part of an investigation into a potential abuse of power (firing of an official for not buckling under the Governor's pressure), is not likely to strike many voters as a wise decision.

They may have blasted away at Sen. Barack Obama's expected post-convention bump, but they may limp away with a hole in their foot.

- Murphy

Noonan on Obama's Speech

Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, on her reaction to Sen. Barack Obama's speech.

In short: muted but powerful; defining his campaign as serious and worthy of examination; hefty. However, she believes it allows Republicans an opening; the opportunity to use wit and humor against him.

It would be interesting to see how likely that prediction holds up following the announcement of Gov. Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's VP pick. 

A week or two under the hot lights of a media that might think it had one pulled over on it are likely to drive the humor from their bodies, especially those unaccustomed to its ways.

(Via War and Piece)

- Murphy

Palin Fails First Judgement Call...

...By accepting McCain's offer. 

McCain has already displayed a shocking disrespect for the office of the President and the American people with his mind-boggling choice. Now Palin has compounded the decision by accepting. 

How many people of good judgment, knowing their qualifications to sit a heart-beat form the Presidency are as thin as Palin's, and respected the responsibility and seriousness of the job, would accept such an offer? 

It's like the plot from a bad teen movie where the main character wakes up one day to see they have been selected as the VP. 

Palin has earned her position as Governor of Alaska–though her track record there seriously undercuts the Republicans' defensive argument that she has executive experience–but the stakes are substantially higher when your job is to be the backup for the leader of the free world.

- Murphy

Kevin Drum laments the fact that Democrats seem to walk right up to the edge of explaining why Sen. John McCain has abandoned any appearance of principle or character in order to bash his way to the White House, but fail to juxtapose his current "by any means necessary" approach to what made him popular in the first place. 

Both McCain's "maverick" image and his current 24/7 pander-fest have been artifice. His current effort allowed him to squeak through the hole split by the spectacular self-immolation of the campaigns Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Gov. Mitt Romney, but at the cost of abandoning his previous, well-crafted, cantankerous "truth-teller" public persona.

The Republicans are currently dissing the DNC's convention with the line "A Mile High and an Inch Deep". Yet that back-of-the-rolling-papers commentary could effectively sum up the McCain campaign.

The McCain "campaign" exists only as long as no one looks directly at it. 

As an orchestrated effort to woo the voters, it ranks around the level of a portrait photographer's birdie gimmick.

Justify anything

"I am not sure if this means I am making things up to attack my opponents or not", but either way it demonstrates the vapidness of those who would see him lose.

- Murphy

Oops...

A demand Iraqi President Nuri alMaliki that Shiite militia members in Basra surrender their weapons seems to have backfired. (via Eschaton).

When nobody had turned up by Friday, Maliki gave members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia 10 more days to turn in their weapons and renounce violence.

Instead, about 40 members of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and National Police offered to surrender their AK-47s and other weapons this morning to Sadr's representatives in the cleric's east Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.

- Murphy