You saw it, I saw it. Palin was a total cartoon. Scripted lines at any point she could get away with it. No answers to Joe Biden’s questions on McCain’s health care plan, or anything else. Not even a defense of it. Not even an attempt at a defense. No, I don’t want to answer the question, I want to get back to my crib notes.
Perhaps the most notable quote for me came near the end of the debate, just after Joe Biden talked about almost losing his sons, and knowing what it’s like to be a single father. Rather than acknowledge anything about what Biden had just said, she vamped off his ending note of “people don’t want more of the same,” and then something strange happened. If she had been at the end of her time, she could’ve just stopped, and she probably should’ve stopped anyway. Instead, she looked at her notes for something else to say, and then offered this little tidbit, which was delivered as awkwardly as it reads:
Also, John McCain’s maverick position that he’s in, that’s really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has. Look at Lieberman, and Giuliani, and Romney, and Lingle, and all of us who come from such a diverse background of — of policy and of partisanship, all coming together at this time, recognizing he is the man that we need to leave — lead in these next four years, because these are tumultuous times.
We have got to win the wars. We have got to get our economy back on track. We have got to not allow the greed and corruption on Wall Street anymore.
And we have not got to allow the partisanship that has really been entrenched in Washington, D.C., no matter who’s been in charge. When the Republicans were in charge, I didn’t see a lot of progress there, either. When the Democrats, either, though, this last go- around for the last two years.
What?
This “maverick position that he’s in which is prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has?” Diverse background of partisanship? Damned straight. She got that one right. And yes, Governor Palin, McCain is the man we have to leave.
The talking heads were calling this a tie, while undecided voters cast their vote for Biden almost two-to-one. I used to feel quite hostile to the undecided voters, who always said they couldn’t tell the difference between Gore and Bush, who said they questioned Kerry’s military service, who didn’t feel the Democrat in any race distinguished himself enough from his Republican counterpart. This time, though, it seems as if they have their ears open and realized during this debate that Joe Biden was the only one who offered any hint of a solution to the current crises in which we find ourselves. They saw the caricature that stood to his right and dismissed it almost entirely as a puppet reading talking points. I’m encouraged.
Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson and particularly Katie Couric caused some real damage. I was in New Hampshire for the past few days and I saw it personally. Everyone was talking about the Palin interviews. Not only does it seem people have decided that McCain’s first “executive” decision was a horrible disaster, but they might also have decided we can’t afford to have another person with no intellectual curiosity in the White House. It’s obvious what the past eight years have brought. It’s unfortunate that it took an almost perfect economic storm to wake people up to the damage of Republican ideals and change the electoral map, but that’s exactly what’s happening.
If Obama doesn’t win this election, if the Democrats don’t pick up significant seats in the House and Senate this election, there is something seriously screwy with the election system. It would appear, though, that Democratic operatives are in key states ready for anything. At least they say they are. Also, more and more areas of the country have gone back to straight paper ballots, while unreliable electronic voting machines sit in storage lockers gathering dust.
It’s horrible that America has to go through all that it has endured for the past eight years, but if Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Blackwell’s Ohio in 2004 resulted in America seeing clearly that so-called “conservative” policies just mean certain chaos and disaster for the middle class, hopefully the result will be at least a temporary embrace of liberal policies. The right is fond of pointing out that Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. Of course, he supported the bill that included telecom immunity, and he’s now for offshore drilling, but his liberal ideals are intact for the most part. In 31 days, the country could largely elect a slate of liberal politicians to shape foreign and domestic policy. It would be a significant overhaul of everything that has gone on for the last eight years, and it would be a big sign to the rest of the world that we’re done with the isolation game, done with the inequality game, and ready to join the rest of the world.
Due to eight years of Republican mismanagement (or outright dismantling) of government, we could see an entire generation or more willing to give liberal policies a chance. The Supreme Court could be a liberal Court. America could once again stand for all it has promised all men and women. My child could grow up in a world where the middle class can once again believe in the American Dream.
It’s just unfortunate it will have cost so many people so much to get there.