Posts by Russell Brown
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Samantha Bee was very funny on the Palin choice on Friday's Daily Show.
I'd link to just that part of the show, but the sucky Comedy Central website doesn't like my browser.
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@Deborah:
What Danielle said
It seems like you and Danielle aren't the only women saying that:
NEW YORK The first national polls on John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin yesterday came out today from Rasmussen and Gallup -- and contrary to what the GOP probably hoped, she scored less well with women than men.
Here's a finding from Gallup: Among Democratic women -- including those who may be disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination -- 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.
From Rasmussen: Some 38% of men said they were more likely to vote for McCain now, but only 32% of women. By a narrow 41% to 35% margin, men said she was not ready to be president -- but women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25%.
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James' freshly-acquired enthusiasm for Palin makes me smile, but it's an utter hail mary pass. It makes me wonder what kind of deep research the McCain camp had that made them go this way.
The woman who'd be sitting in on national security briefings in the president's stead got her US passport last year, at the age of 43, in order to go on an organised visit to Alaskan National Guard troops in Kuwait.
And HuffPo is noting her quote from her second day ever in McCain's company, in exotic Pittsburgh: ''It's great to see another part of the country."
Wow.
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A TPM reader digs out Josh Marshall's post about Obama's 2004 convention keynote. Back then, Marshall pulled out this passage:
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Both the similarities to and differences from today's model are interesting.
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For what it's worth, an email release from a Democrat-aligned polling firm:
**Obama's Convention Speech Research Shows Dramatic Movement**
Denver, CO. August 29, 2008. On this historic evening, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner/Democracy Corps conducted qualitative research in the swing state of Nevada among 39 undecided voters or weak supporters of either candidate who watched Obama's speech.
Participants answered a series of questions about the election, the candidates, and the major issues in this campaign. They then watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech live, followed by another series of questions on many of the same topics. Two follow-up focus group discussions with 21 of the participants allowed for significant exploration of reactions to the speech. While this was clearly a qualitative exercise and not a representative survey, the movement we saw in attitudes toward the election and Barack Obama was dramatic:
After viewing the speech, more than 1-in-4 of these swing voters moved from undecided to supporting Barack Obama or from supporting John McCain to undecided.
On a thermometer scale of 0 to 100, Obama’s mean score rose 9 degrees (from 57 to 66 degrees) after voters saw his speech.
Obama achieved gains on every personal attribute tested in this exercise, with the most dramatic movement coming on some of the most important measures in our polling – ‘on your side,’ ‘has what it takes to be President,’ and ‘will keep America strong.’
In a head-to-head match-up with John McCain on which candidate would better handle a series of issues, Obama again gained ground on every measure, with the most significant movement coming on ‘national security,’ ‘strengthening America’s relationships with other countries,’ and ‘sharing my values.’
In the focus group conversation after the speech – one group with those who shifted toward Obama and another among solidly undecided voters – it was clear that the introductory video and speech made a deep impression.
Voters spoke emotionally about the importance of family to Obama and the central role that family plays in his life and his beliefs. They applauded his emphasis on personal and mutual responsibility, his commitment to veterans, and his refusal to engage in negative personal attacks on McCain. They came away with a firm belief that Obama understands the challenges facing our country, and particularly middle class and working families. Perhaps most importantly, from his plan to cut taxes for small businesses and the middle class to his commitment to alternative energy and victory in Afghanistan, they believe he has the right ideas to produce the change these voters desperately seek.
Voters in both groups cited the unique atmosphere at Invesco Field as one of the most memorable aspects of tonight’s speech. They found the sheer size and scope of the event very impressive, but they were most impacted by the audience and the fact that it didn’t look like a typical convention audience. Looking at the crowd tonight, they saw real people who reminded them of themselves and their neighbors, reinforcing the focus on the middle class that so many of them saw running through both Obama’s personal story and his policies.
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OMG.
Pat Buchanan called it the greatest convention speech ever.
Check out the slack-jawed expressions of the other pundits, and Olbermann's line at the end.
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First, rather spooky that she remembered who I was after six years ...
You probably underrate your memorability.
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The info must have been stored at the organisation's subsidiary in Wellington, I told myself, because it couldn't possibly have come all the way from America in that time. It was some weeks before a colleague could convince me otherwise.
And that was when the whole country was on a 256k pipe.
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
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Andrew Sullivan kinda liked it:
It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety. It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism - in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy.
What he didn't do was give an airy, abstract, dreamy confection of rhetoric. The McCain campaign set Obama up as a celebrity airhead, a Paris Hilton of wealth and elitism. And he let them portray him that way, and let them over-reach, and let them punch him again and again ... and then he turned around and destroyed them. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check.|
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