Palin Didn’t Know Africa Was a Continent

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

When piranhas run out of food, they start to devour themselves. That’s how the McCain and Palin staffs are acting lately. Their attacks on each other over which team F’ed the campaign have become vicious.

The latest assault came from the McCainers, which using Fox News’s Carl Cameron as proxy, ridiculed Gov. Palin for her geographical ignorance. Cameron reported on the O’Reilly Factor that “senior” sources told him Palin could not identify NAFTA’s members, she failed to prepare for national interviews, and at one point she was unaware Africa was a continent. The sources apparently said Palin thought Africa was a country—you mean it’s not a country?! (Kidding.)

All this doesn’t change my view of Palin. It has the opposite effect.

I am even more disappointed at the Maverick and his team (Steve Schmidt & co.) for being naïve. Why the heck would they pick a candidate who did not know NAFTA, had zero foreign policy experience and was unproven nationally?

Also, let’s remember, there are many Republican governors with more political readiness than Palin (ie, Connecticut’s M. Jodi Rell). I don’t think Palin cost the GOP the presidential election. President Bush did that.

Palin was a small town mayor, who came from humble beginnings, who loves the outdoors. Yes, we all recognized her acute ego, which blinded her from her political immaturity. But Palin was slowly building her GOP base to eventually make it inside the Beltway. The McCainers were the ones who brought her to us. And now they intend to destroy her (what are friends for).

After Tuesday, Maverick should be really aware that W. ruined his chances at the White House twice. In 2000, Karl Rove and his politicos destroyed his reputation in South Carolina. In 2008, Bush had destroyed the country’s confidence in a GOP White House, which made it impossible for a Republican to succeed him.

So while Palin spends the next four years studying Africa and cramming Wilsonian doctrine for a run in 2012, the Maverick should stop blaming the Hockey Mom for his demise.

Eugene Mulero may be reached at eugene.mulero@gmail.com.

Nonsensical Hitchens Has Become a Joke

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

I remember the first time I read Christopher Hitchens. I wasn’t that old, maybe 13 or 14, but even at that young age I recall being dazzled by his command of the English language, his razor-sharp mind and the courage he demonstrated in unashamedly taking on society’s sacred cows – those institutions or individuals elevated to sainthood by popular culture for reasons often divorced from reality. Hitchens has dispatched Henry Kissinger and Mother Theresa with righteous ferocity during his career.

I had been bought up on a self-inflicted diet of George Orwell, and, as a kid, I remember wondering what it might be like to have a mind of Orwell’s caliber when talking about current events. Hitchens was not Orwell, but I trusted him in the same way, believed that he had an independent mind; that he would not lie if he knew the truth.

As an ex-pat British journalist now living in the United States, just like Hitchens, I still follow his career and writings with keen interest. He is now a big, bright star in the American media firmament, talking on endless chat shows and lending his writings on politics and literature to a host of august journals.

Back when I first started reading him Hitchens was on the left, but that wasn’t what attracted me to him. He used his journalism to take on the powers that be, whether they were left, right or center. He had a disdain for platitudes, for lazy narratives and baseless hearsay. He had written expertly on the criminal Turkish occupation of Cyprus, the subject of his first book; he penned acerbic polemics on the criminal U.S. war in Indochina; he vented against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Hitchens was never a bien-pensant on the left, however: he supported the Falklands War, and intermittently came out with shock positions that would offend his comrades. But even if you disagreed with him, you had to concede he was thinking for himself, and his equations had some equilibrium.

Hitchens is a different man now. His facile word skills are still there, his fearless attacks on venerated institutions, his quick mind, but he’s not serious like he was. His pronouncements make no sense and have no inherent logic. Instead of expressing rational thinking in cute phrases, he now, in the words of Norman Finkelstein, dresses up flatulence in bouquets.

I’ve been watching him during the 2008 election and his illogical and strange pronouncements have really been embarrassing to watch. It’s telling that the point when his political bearings went off-kilter was the same point when the establishment started to accept him with open arms. Now he is everywhere; you literally can’t turn on the TV without his brash private-schoolboy schtick in your face.

His position in the 2008 election is that you have to support Obama because, (a) John McCain is senile, for which Hitchens provides no evidence, apart from a few linguistic lapses, which are inevitable as the factor of speeches goes up on the campaign trail. And (b) Sarah Palin is a religious fanatic hostile to reason and science.

On (b) he is undoubtedly correct and any right-thinking person couldn’t disagree (probably she doesn’t even). But, wait. Hitchens himself voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Yes, the same president who doesn’t believe in evolution, wants creationism taught in schools, is against stem-cell research and acted like a zealot in the Terry Schiavo case. Doesn’t that qualify as religious fanaticism? Why does he suddenly care now about religious fanaticism when Bush’s pea-in-a-pod Sarah Palin is the vice presidential candidate?

The only reason I can think of is after supporting the Iraq war, he just doesn’t want to be caught on another sinking ship.

Just think about it. McCain is Hitchens ideological bedfellow:

(1) Hitchens says he used to be a single-issue voter on the threat of Islamic fundamentalism to the Western world. Well, McCain is probably even more hawkish than Bush (if possible) and wants to bomb Iran. Surely that would get Hitchens on board, especially as Barack Obama wants to – shock, horror! – talk to the leaders of Iran before bombing them.

(2) McCain, like Hitchens, had a religious fervor when supporting the war in Iraq and the surge. But Obama was against both.

(3) And Hitch, if religion is your problem, McCain is much less fanatical than Bush. Even McCain’s foreign policy is closer to Hitchens than Bush. Bush recently took the slave state North Korea off the terrorist list, against McCain’s wishes, and I’m assuming Hitchens’. Obama has said he would talk to Kim Jong-Il.

So Hitchens’ ideas are nowhere; he is scrambling to patch together his disintegrating platform and it shows. He has used Palin’s fanaticism – nothing worse than his previous favorite for top office, Bush – as an excuse to go against a presidential candidate who is actually in agreement with all his ideas. It’s cheap and see-through, but hey, this is Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens nowadays is even too dense to have an opinion on domestic policy. Nowhere does he comment on taxes, or health care; he just doesn’t care. Why? Well, foreign policy gives his ego full license to wander off on macho rants about murdering scum fascists, but you don’t get any of those primal screams on domestic policy because it’s not some abstract fantasy about Good and Evil, about democracy and fascism or any other puerile oppositions.

The descent of Hitchens into some fat joke, the risible and edgy plaything of the American right wing, has really been solidified by his weird performance in the 2008 election. Conservatives in the U.S. have expressed surprise at his about-face, and this is a perfectly legitimate emotion. Hitchens disgraced himself by backing Bush in 2004, but perhaps, worse now, he has now shown himself to have no spine, his faculties of clear thought and logic have been jettisoned in clear daylight by not backing McCain.

It’s not tragic though. Hitchens is good for a laugh. Watch him on a show and he will be arrogant and rude, he will make funny one-liners, he will give you all the good branding he has worked on so assiduously. But that’s what he is: a stand-up comic, not a political thinker.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

How ’Bout a Juicy McMac?; Celebs, Ads Don’t Sway Voters

By JASON WALKER, Columnist

What have we become when a vice presidential nominee has to make an appearance on Saturday Night Live two weeks before an election and a presidential candidate has to do a makeup appearance for getting on David Letterman’s bad side?

Why does David Letterman’s or any celebrity’s opinion matter to us? He can’t even beat out Leno, but scathing remarks after being stood up by a candidate causes a dip in the polls?

Celebrities don’t care about us. There are a few who are genuinely nice and care about mankind, blah, blah, blah. But most have had to step on the faces of rivals to get where they are and the most important thing to them is staying on top.

Have you ever stopped to think that the endorsing celebrity could have concerns about taxes, education or any number of issues in direct opposition to your own?

Let’s not forget that it’s also an issue of ego as well. Liberal celebrities have had it handed to them by the Bush administration for the last eight years. Their egos have been bruised because no matter how hard they’ve campaigned for the opposition or pointed out his obvious flaws, Ol’ Dubyah has kept right on truckin’. These self-important asses want to feel like they can actually have an effect on the direction of the country as much as, if not more than, they actually care about the well-being of the country.

As I watched Palin bobbing her head to the beat I wondered if Gerald Ford ever had to yuck it up with a few talking heads on some cheesy network morning show. I don’t recall Big Bush dropping by SNL and surprising Dana Carvey.

Just as I began to feel queasy over the thought that an appearance on late-night television could be a deciding factor in an election I realized something … that really hasn’t happened yet. Despite all the pulling and prodding by the media we always seem to elect whoever we want. Advertisements and appearances just serve as supplements to keep us interested until Election Day. I can’t think of a time in history when we’ve let outside opinions change our minds about candidates. Whoever you wanted to vote for when the nominations were accepted is probably the same person you want to vote for now.

Which makes me wonder, does any amount of campaigning ever change a person’s mind? We’re only interested in the evidence that supports the decision we’ve already made. We form our opinions based on the sum of our experience and don’t usually change our minds no matter how compelling the argument. So for now I have found some peace by convincing myself that people aren’t directed by the media when they cast their ballots.

So why was Palin on SNL this week?

I prefer Coke over Pepsi. The difference between the two is negligible, but I’m always choosing Coke. In my mind no amount of advertising is ever going to change that. That’s the point. Whenever I made my cola decision advertising played a big part in it. Now that I’ve picked my side it’s up to them to remind me of what a great choice I made. I want to back a winner and be affirmed that I’m a winner for making that choice as much as possible. I even go as far as to root for Coke to have better commercials and higher sales.

Of course no one is going to decide who to vote for because of a boat, but somewhere someone felt good about seeing it and said to themselves, “I haven’t seen any Obama sailboats out today.” The candidates need to keep reminding their supporters that they’ve made a good decision.

It’s our nature. We want our candidates to be superhuman. We want them to be the most amusing when telling jokes, the most eloquent when debating and the most intelligent when discussing policies. They do whatever they can to sustain that image. Whether it is charming late-night appearances, well-scripted commercials or kissing babies in minimalls. We will always love them for doing it.

Politicians know something that we don’t. In the end they are all just people like you and I. That’s why Palin can laugh off Tina Fey’s impression of her and kick it with Lorne backstage at 30 Rock. That’s how Obama and McCain can have a heated debate one night and act like a couple of open-micers the next. Most of us have this thought stuck in our heads that Democrats and Republicans are these two competing factions in an all or nothing battle for supremacy.

In reality, they’re no more different from each other then McDonald’s is from Burger King. Either way you’re still going to go get that delicious, fatty garbage in you. All elected officials have the same goals ― try to accomplish something positive and not get booted before you’re ready to go. They respect and relate to each other the same way employees at Mickey D’s relate to their contemporaries at BK.

They know we are as influenced by the image created around a candidate as we are by their actual accomplishments. Obama’s the smart, young, contemplative diplomat we need to unite the country and turn things around. McCain is the strong-willed, experienced, maverick that will buck the system and lead us to a better tomorrow. Big Mac, Whopper.

Jason Walker may be reached at Jason_R_Walker@comcast.net.

Religion 101: McCain’s Problem

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

Newsweek reported this week that McCain has been telling advisors not to hit Obama with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright stuff because it would be reminiscent of what the Bushies did to him in 2000 – alleging that his adopted daughter was an illegitimate child he had with an African-American prostitute.

I don’t buy that McMaverick is not bringing up Wright in the campaign because it reeks of racism.

My theory is that McCain – once considered the Evangelical’s least favorite Republican – has jumped in the deep end of the religion pool. For this campaign he sought and received the support of über-religiosos: Pat Robertson & Co. Even before Jerry Falwell died, McCain went to his throne and kissed his ring.

I remember when the media pumped Rev. Wright’s memorable: “Not ‘God save America, but Goddamn America!’” At the time, some of my friends and colleagues were shocked – ‘how could Obama support this guy?’ they thought.

I, on the other hand, didn’t blink for a second. What Wright said was no more shocking than what some of the really masterful Evangelicals have been spewing for decades on their TV “sermons.” Robertson, for one, advocated nuclear force on Hugo Chavez – a nuclear attack on Venezuela?!

And the other Maverick, Gov. Palin, has attended services where religious leaders decried the “witchcraft” in society.

There have been a few reports that Maverick’s team, or the not-so-distant 527s, will shove Wright’s “Goddman” down our throats.

If they do, expect Team Obama to fight fire with fire by highlighting Maverick’s flip-flop on the Religious Right.

Eugene Mulero may be reached at Eugene.Mulero@gmail.com.

Polling Palin NOW and Forever

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

Here on the fringes of electoral engagement, a flurry of emails urges me to fight an organized right-wing effort. The battleground, a plainly designed poll with a dark blue background that was posted on a news Web site after the explosion of energy post-Republican National Convention. The question was straightforward: “Do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States?”

Turns out just fewer than 50 million people have also visited this unscientific poll since it has begun its extraordinary life as a September 5th complement to a PBS NOW broadcast, and then as an orphaned link on emails.

It all started with a regular weekly poll that many PBS programs broadcast as a trick to draw people deep into their site. Some shows count their daily poll page views in the hundreds. NOW polls ordinarily draw thousands, according the Director of New Media for NOW, Joel Schwartzberg. NOW is a weekly newsmagazine broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System, and has recently been counting daily page views for the poll in the millions.

“PBS is doing a poll which asks if Palin is qualified to be VP,” goes the email. “The
right wing has organized a yes campaign–and the ‘yes’ is, at the moment,
winning. Take literally two minutes, go to:
http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html and vote!”

Oh the fear, THE FEAR! I received three messages in a two-hour span on Tuesday and one on Monday, all urging me to help to push the vote to the other side in frantic tones. Many right-wing comments cite the existence of the question on PBS as an evidence of bias.

I voted all four times, and each time after that just to check on the race. But on Wednesday an announcement stifled my participation. “PBS acted because the entire pbs.org site had been experiencing system overload due to massive accessing of the poll,” according to the Web site, and they would insert internet cookies on my browser to restrict me from voting repeatedly. They reasoned it would increase the mobilization of participants and reduce the manipulation of the results.

NOW’s September site traffic, if you compare one day to another, is up 7,000% percent when compared with August, according to Schwartzberg.

From the 5th to the 11th, the normal lifespan of NOW’s polls, the Palin poll received under 10,000 daily page views. But its popularity would only surge as the URL was archived on the site, replaced by another poll. It then took on a life of its own as a viral email.

Jumping from 10,000 page views on the 15th, to 90,000 on the 16th, the poll’s popularity exploded to 907,000 page views three days later. On Monday the 22nd, the poll received more than two million page views.

Links underneath the poll have “exploded exponentially” in popularity when added to the poll. The current poll on Obama has boomed in traffic, partially driven by the Palin poll popularity. The phenomenon has driven visitors to the other parts of NOW’s site, which includes a recent segment titled “Women, Power and Politics,” that included an interview with Sarah Palin from 2007.

As of Wednesday, the Palin poll is now the most visited page on the entire PBS Web site, searches related to Palin or polls represent nine out of the ten top searches, and NOW sites occupy eight places in the top ten PBS sites. PBS was so giddy they even released a statement declaring it hit an all-time record of site visits. Much of that, said Schwartzberg, is from the Palin poll.

So, it only makes sense that the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that almost 55% of people are “following the presidential election very closely,” more than 48% in 2004 and 27% in 2000.

When will this fascination with Palin end? Any thoughts on what spurred the viral email? Oh, and you may wonder when the poll ends? NEVER. Despite having the cookies installed, it is still active and there are no plans to de-activate it.

Vote on!

So, who’s winning? On Monday she was winning 50 – 49, on Wednesday, 50 – 49, and alas, a change. Late Thursday, a tie!

For an index of now polls in time, go here.

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

The Turbanless Taliban

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

I don’t want to get too much into the whole debate around Sarah Palin because it gives her credit she doesn’t deserve. She is the American Taliban: evolution is a myth, abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest, climate change is not man-made. She’s Alaska’s answer to Osama bin Laden, except maybe her kids are more fecund.

She is depressingly doltish, and speaks with a squawk that riles my innards, its inflections acting like a knife to my cerebral cortex.

She is a nonentity and is aware of the fact, as are the puppet masters in the Republican Party. She was chosen to get Hillary voters on their side, so the Republicans could con America into another eight years of corporate rule. It is a cynical ploy and certainly is not “country first,” but why is anyone surprised? It’s not like the Democrats aren’t playing the same game, although they are mini-me to the Republican Satan, it is true.

But the anatomy of the whole propaganda effort after her appointment is interesting. The Republicans must have decided to get a ‘Hockey Mom’ – a euphemism for narrow-minded provincialism – but realized that because she is completely unqualified and startling stupid, they would have to shield her from criticism by inventing a storm of outrage about liberal elitism and misogyny if anyone questioned her slim record.

It was all over the news channels straight away: everywhere there was this outrage at these liberal sexist elites who were dumping so much shit on this poor defenseless woman. But I searched in vain for it. I listened to all this stuff on Fox News and CNN and then turned to the newspapers like The New York Times and tried to find this mocking misogyny, and it wasn’t there. There was literally nothing aside from a few – literally one or two – remarks about having five kids and being VP might be difficult.

The whole thing was made up, and it worked; it put the Democrats on the back foot and they ceded a lot of ground to the Republicans. If you look at all the hours of invective wasted on this topic, no one who is accusing brings up any examples; that’s because it was a completely made-up episode that had been planned before she was even appointed.

Appoint the dumbo, then make everyone feel sorry for her, was the modus vivendi. And even though this is see-through, you never hear it from the Democrats because the Republicans control the debate so much that even drawing attention to this is not permissible.

And how disgusting it is that the Republicans will assume the vernacular of feminism and equality when they have dedicated so many decades to destroying both. But in the mixed-up, shook-up world of American politics, where truth gets buried beneath the semiotics devised by the powerful to keep the rest of us shielded from the truth, when will liberals just stand up and say, “You’re dirty scum!” when the Republicans turn the political arena into a sewer and get by through acting like rats?

Sarah Palin is within ‘a heartbeat’ of the American presidency. There is a good chance McCain will win in November, and owing to the fact he is 73 and not of great health, there is a considerable chance Palin will be the most powerful person in the world within the next eight years. After eight years of George W. Bush maybe that isn’t as scary as it should be, but it is still scary.

The fact that the Republicans have sacrificed the security of America by making this buffoon the VP-elect, is a naked display that they will do anything to get elected. McCain, I suspect, laughs about this idiot in private and Cindy is thought not to like her, which is no surprise.

While Obama’s advance is also a great leap forward for black people in this country, Palin does nothing of the same for women. In fact, by electing a medieval barbarian, who happens to be a woman, to the VP position, this is really a stab in the heart for the feminist movement. If after two waves of the feminist movement and a hell of a lot of struggling, the first woman to get her hands on executive power is Palin, then what does it say about us?

Palin fulfills all the stereotypes of the misogynists; she is a supplicant to an older man, she is as thick as pig shit, she is a backward Taliban and she married another dumb bastard too. The only thing that isn’t a misogynist’s dream is that she’s ambitious. I’m being unfair though.

It’s not her fault she is a misogynist’s dream—she’s just a puppet. But it is the fault of the Republican Party that they chose a woman like this as the first VP candidate – it shows what they really think of women. Far from the Democrats being the sexists, the Republicans are sexist for giving this creature up to the rest of the world as an example of womanhood in the U.S.

Because this has been a cynical public relations ploy, it is likely to die out any second. Palin’s star will wane and she will go back to Kabul – sorry, I mean Juneau – and read her picture books with her grandchild – sorry, I mean child – and fizzle out in the vortex of nothingness from which she emerged so unceremoniously.

Americans should be up in arms that she has been carried by the media for so long, however. She should be laughed out of the shop. How does anyone ask her a serious question without cracking up laughing? I am not exaggerating when I say I would rather trouble the brain of my 12-year-old next-door neighbor about foreign policy than Palin. At least he hadn’t been taught by rote what to say, and might understand a bit of what he was saying.

When the Republic of Rome fell and gave way to the dictatorship of Caesar, there were signals; the Republic of America could fall too if the Republicans are allowed to claim another victory and install the turbanless Taliban. Fascism won’t wear jackboots when it comes to the U.S., it never looks the same, but it could hunt moose and have stupid glasses.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Ballin’ Palin Can’t Make a Wrong Move

By JASON WALKER, Columnist

If a bridge goes to nowhere does it really exist?

Despite barely watching any coverage of the RNC I saw this bridge to nowhere issue discussed on multiple networks.

From what I understand, Congress earmarked some money to build a bridge in Alaska. Palin was all for building it until Congress told her they would be going Dutch. Since Congress only gave Alaska around half the money they initially said they would, Palin voted against building the bridge, but kept the money.

And…

I don’t see a problem. Was this “bridge only” money? According to the reports I’ve seen Congress didn’t say ‘if you decide not to build the bridge send it back.’ So isn’t it a good move if she decided the cost for state was too great and it would be better to use the money on other projects that wouldn’t require any additional funding from the residents? What elected official in the country would have given back that money? Who is going to say, “We don’t have anything we could use this for,” or, “This is way too much?” Nobody. And if someone did, why would you ever vote for that dummy again?

As governor her primary responsibility is to the people of Alaska. It sounds like what she did was in the state’s best interest, which makes it a pretty good decision in my opinion. I want my governor to have a state-first mentality. She was elected by the people of Alaska, not the entire United States, so serving those who elected you comes first.

So why bring it up? I guess there isn’t much out there about her to discuss and mentioning it in her speech opens the door for scrutiny. So what, she changed her mind after she found out it was going to cost more than she originally thought? We’ve all done that. I don’t know if there’s enough there for her to be touting it as evidence of her bold leadership, but there definitely isn’t enough there to question either. So why does it keep coming up? I actually thought it was a dead issue until I saw a clip online of an interview on 20/20 where she had been asked about it again.

Am I the only one who thought Charles Gibson was kind of a dick? Why has “hard-hitting journalism” become to mean the reporter acts like a douche bag? You can address serious issues or ask difficult questions without being accusatory or ultra-confrontational. But it seems like few know how to do that anymore. Reporters turn each interview into an audition for their own show or a shot at an anchor’s desk. Everybody wants to be Geraldo. Eighties’ Geraldo, not the one giving away tactical positions or making a fool out of himself in the water.

Anyway, the online clips actually got me interested enough to watch the interview. Even though parts of the interview looked more chopped up than a Clue tape, it still seemed that Palin was not comfortable talking about some issues.

She painfully danced around the issue of homosexuality saying, “I’m not going to judge them.” Yes she does. But don’t worry Sarah, we all do, gay or straight. What else is she supposed to say anyway?

She lost me when talking about her national security creed. It didn’t seem like she answered the question at all. It sort of boiled down to being more secure by reducing dependency on foreign oil.

Then there was “Troopergate.” I actually wish there was something there. It would be interesting if it turned out the trooper was a really good guy and she was an evil governor unfairly wielding her power. Sort of like every political movie you’ve ever seen except with a woman in power and, you know, for real. But it probably isn’t going to amount to anything. If it were that big of a scandal we would have seen that trooper’s face all over like that parade of busted women Clinton felt up. Besides the Republican party would really be slippin’ if they let that one get by them. That dude is still a trooper. If she wanted him gone he would have been gone. If she couldn’t take out some random officer with a shaky record, how can you expect her to help mastermind the next national disaster needed to instigate war? When the Sears Tower or Golden Gate Bridge goes down we’re going to know McCain and Palin were behind it in like a week.

I also thought it was interesting that she was a baller in high school. I bet she’s got way more handle than Barack. Despite his height advantage I bet she would house him in a game of one-on-one. He’s a black(ish) presidential candidate and he may not even be the best basketball player on the ballot. His little weekend games look like doo-doo next to a state championship.

All in all she looked too prepped in this interview. She stumbled through issues like abortion because she had been told to avoid saying certain things. I’m sure as she gets coached up more and learns the playbook she’ll learn to respond to those questions naturally. Then we’ll never be able to trust her again.

This whole Palin nomination is genius. She is Obama/Biden campaign cancer; the perfect decoy selected by the Republicans to distract everyone from the real issues and reflect the weakness of the Democratic Party. They can’t attack her for being inexperienced, they can’t attack her the way they did Hillary and, oh, that’s right, they’re not supposed to. She’s the VICE presidential nominee. By positioning Palin against Obama and evoking comparisons to Clinton the Republicans have set up the perfect stage to pull the upset. How bad does it look if your candidate for president is getting all he can handle from the JV squad? It looks like the Democrats finally woke up, but the media seems a bit behind and the more attention Palin receives the worse it will get for the Democrats. If we’re still talking about her children, bridges that weren’t built and employees who still have their jobs in November, then we’ll also be seeing McCain sworn into office in January.

Click here to see the whole 20/20 interview.

Jason Walker may be reached at Jason_R_Walker@comcast.net.

Hockey Mom for Veep

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

I met several hockey moms when I worked in Morristown, N.J., about four years ago. It was a breezy, yucky late-November evening and they were across from the town square, with their hockey-playing sons, asking for donations. The hockey season was fast approaching and the players needed money to buy new uniforms. These hockey moms were in their 30s and 40s. They had short hair and seemed like the type that are active in civic activities, such as the school board and town council.

I remember thinking how dedicated they were. I went back to the newsroom and worked on a political story for my newspaper and forgot about the hockey moms.

Fast-forward to last week: A hockey mom was on TV. Every channel had her on. I never before heard about her, and since I’m pretty plugged into national politics, that meant she couldn’t have been that important.

After researching this hockey mom, I realized I was right. Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) had been the mayor of a small town. She was against abortion rights, even for women made pregnant by rape or incest. She believed in creationism — so much so that she advocates it be taught in public schools. She said the war in Iraq was “God’s war.” She doesn’t believe global warming is man-made and she doesn’t support stem-cell research. She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and, before I forget, she also is a hockey mom. She actually listed “hockey mom” as a qualification to be our vice president when McMaverick first paraded her to the public.

I can see why McMaverick picked her as a running mate. She pleases the social right; she’s not bright (just clever in debates) and she appeals to disgruntled women who look down at Ivy Leaguers and tree-huggers. She’s the hockey mom with five kids that has a NASCAR dad for a husband who is governing one of the most overlooked states in our country. (Think about it: When was the last time you said you were heading to Alaska?)

And what should really be frustrating to voters is that the McMaverick camp (run by Karl Rove) is not letting Palin go on any of the “hard-hitting” news shows. She’s not scheduled to make appearances before George Stephanopoulos or Tom Brokaw. Chris Matthews or Charlie Rose won’t get to pick her brain. Nevermind The New York Times editorial board. Nope. She may just appear on the Bill O’Reilly propaganda hour. And, if Access Hollywood or The Tonight Show with Jay Leno come calling, she may be allowed to go on, only if there’s a “no-tough-question-rule” established.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), Obama’s vice presidential pick, just got grilled by Brokaw on Meet the Press last Sunday. Palin, who says she’s tough enough to take on corrupt Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) – which is not true – is not tough enough for the Meet the Press treatment. And if she can’t do Meet the Press, can she confront foreign leaders in the Middle East, career generals from NATO or the American public?

Maybe … if all they talk about is hockey.

Eugene Mulero may be reached at Eugene.Mulero@gmail.com.

Palin Fever Hits the Prairie

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

Two liberal women commiserate on a back porch during a cool night on the East Coast. They drink water now, instead of wine, after watching John McCain’s RNC acceptance speech. Two speeches in two nights had caused agonizing living-room protestations. For these women the rousing words of McCain-Palin signified doom for the Obama campaign. Say it ain’t so, it went. Sarah Palin and John McCain had sunk an illusory battleship and one of these women was thinking of a country for self-exile. They were in disbelief that large swaths of the United States could be inspired by Republicans in the wake of George W. Bush. These women had sensed the attractiveness of the speeches.

Thirty-year-old Julia Yach changed her electoral opinion to the Republicans upon Palin’s speech. Inside her home in suburban St. Paul, Minn., Julia’s 16-month-old daughter hangs on her leg while she talks on the phone, leaving her on occasion to pull books off a wooden shelf. Julia has two children, and works forty-hours a week as a communications manager in the furniture warranty industry. It’s an American company proud that it doesn’t outsource their call center, instead sending its calls to a small town in South Dakota. “If they don’t work in the gas station or the cheese factory, they work for us,” she says. She and her husband have two cars and their home is not at risk of foreclosure. Still, a vacation is not being planned any time soon.

The night before, she says, Sarah Palin’s speech had officially made her a swing voter, from Barack Obama to McCain-Palin. “I was so thinking that the Republican ticket sucked … and was almost relieved that there was somebody out there that could excite” the people, she says.

It was abortion and Palin’s tough words. Yach was impressed by Palin’s confidence and the strength with which she carried herself in the face of media scrutiny about her family. It’s not that Obama’s position was bad, to prevent teen pregnancies any step of the way, she says, it’s that Palin’s position was good.

The speech was also smug, Julia says, and maybe a bit overconfident. But that was OK.

Eight hours of prairie-driving away in Pierre, South Dakota, Julia’s mother, Carolyn Guhin, regrets not having watched the DNC convention. She is supporting Obama, but has yet to hear him speak.

An in-law celebrates the choice 1500 miles away. For Carolyn, a daughter of a schoolteacher and a car salesman from small-town Iowa, the Democratic Party has always been the public servants and the supporters of social justice. The Republicans were the fat cats. But Carolyn is against laws legalizing abortion, and she presents a profoundly complex viewpoint.

“I was trying not to think of the election … until Palin,” says Guhin.

A Catholic schoolteacher for whom the thought of hearing McCain speak this night “just gags me,” Palin’s speech had “fired her up” out of a slumber of general inattention to the campaign.

Palin came across like “the popular girl running for high school senate,” says Carolyn. “It was shocking how confident she was.”

Was it the tone, the aggression or the way of slipping in backhanded cuts on Obama that made it seem like this? Palin made comments that one had a sense were untrue, but seemed plausible, and totally indefensible in the moment.

Back in the Arizona delegation hotel in St. Paul, sometime between a delegate group photo and a delegate reception with a financial institution, Laura French, a 34-year-old alternate delegate, declares by phone that she “fell in love” with Palin and her speech, and was excited to embrace her as their new leader. At times French wears a “Unidos por McCain” button. After Republican primaries that were “divisive and anti-immigrant,” McCain’s July declaration at a luncheon for the National Council of La Raza (a Latino advocacy group) that immigrants were “children of God” as he repeated in his nomination speech, resonated deeply with French.

These reverberations are what Stephan Strothe, the chief correspondent for the Washington bureau of the German news channel N24 News, tries to convey to a German populace mystified by the popularity of the Republicans and blinded by adulation for Obama. A little more than a month ago, 200,000 Germans congregated to hear Obama speak at the Victory Plaza in Berlin.

At midday Strothe opens the blinds to his hotel room after live broadcasting through the Mid-Western night and the German early morning (4-8 a.m.). Bedtime was 5:00 a.m. Central time.

“(Germans) have a hard time understanding what has happened in the last eight years,” including the “false premises” for war and the state of the economy. It is not clear to them yet “how this can be a close race,” he says.

For Germans and the women on the porch, Obama should be the guaranteed winner.

Strothe is just trying to explain this different process to his viewers. The United States political process is highlighted by, “banalities and how the candidates wave the flag,” he says. “If all else fails you have delegates chanting USA, USA. That is totally foreign to my audience in Germany. We have to explain how the decisions are being made here.”

If only it were so simple.

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.