… as well-deserved fodder for late-night, early morning and midafternoon comedians.

I’m sorry. I watched in shock when Dan Quayle became a VP nominee, selected by the elder George Bush. By any measure, in the table of elements, his atomic weight was zero, a putty of a putz that fortunately never got his hands on actual power. Worried that he might become a cancerous tumor, he ultimately proved to be naught but a benign colon polyp.

The pick made sense eventually, when I became acquainted with the persona of the younger George. Quayle’s gaffes were very Dubya-esque, minus the assholian nasty side. He was the son George the First dreamed of having: somewhat pleasant in his stupidity.

And now we’ve got Palin - soulmate of another non-reformed reformer - and some are warning against underestimating her. Nope. Not again. I won’t buy that crap from cowering Dems or liberals who jump at every McCain surprise, fretting that it’s a fresh portent of the end times.

I’ve gone back and scoured over the records of Obama and Palin and Biden and McCain. And frankly, her possession of a vagina is the only rationale for her being thrust to a level above her experience, intellect and capacities. It used to be called the ‘Peter Principle’ but the ‘Palin Principle’ proves just as apt. A visit to Kuwait? Obama’s 1984 Bachelor’s thesis on Russian nuclear disarmament surpasses that in foreign policy understanding. Sitting on a city council in a town of 6,000 is how one learns Roberts’ Rules of Order, not how one gets educated about the SALT treaty, an enemy’s nuclear capacities, or how an American company does business in a friendly foreign nation. Voting to get a pothole fixed in 1992? While Palin was doing that, the Obamas directed a voter registration drive effort for Project Vote, where they directed 700 volunteers who registered 150,000 voters. While Barack was recruited to begin teaching Constitutional law at the conservative University of Chicago, had begun working as an associate at a a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, and also had begun serving on the boards of several civic and philanthropic foundations with larger budgets than Wasilla, Alaska ever dreamed of.

My initial reaction Friday was to pop off with a bit of satire. Then I presented a serious analysis. On further reflection, her selection deserves no less than open and perpetual mockery. This isn’t about the Mayberry Macchiavellians Part Deux. It’s more like Aunt Bea teaching Goober to pee.

Call me a sexist pig or whatever you want. But this isn’t close to Mr Smith Goes To Washington. This is a reformer - turned Tammany Grange Hall Boss when it suits her. This is a small town mayor tasked with breaking tie votes in the Senate, if a tour guide will only show her where the Capitol Building is, then leads her to the proper floor. (Go right from Alaska a bunch, and it’s a bit lower than Canada, over near that big blue area on the map. Look for the red star.)

It’s not McCain that deserves the greatest dissing for picking her. It’s the 48.3% of the Alaskan electorate - that’s under 115,000 of its 670,000 residents (roughly 1 out of 6) - who considered her capable of being governor. Couple the crowd for Obama’s speech at Invesco Stadium (84,000) with the number of students at the Denver-based University of Colorado (28,000) and that’s just 3,000 shy of the total number of voters who made Palin a governor. Now I know Alaska has a significant shortage of women, but hey, you hosers, that wasn’t an American Idol vote for the sparkly-toothed singer with the hooters. That’s supposed to be an important elective office.

You elected a complete contradiction. Economically, she’s a… conservative socialist. She likes her endangered species … to stay endangered if they’re big and scary. She wore a Buchanan for President button … but didn’t really support him. She smoked marijuana … but didn’t like it. Utilizing the power of government improperly is a corruption that must be stopped … unless you’re the governor and an underling isn’t doing something improper to avenge your family involved in a domestic dispute that courts and laws were built to resolve. She likes her gay friends just fine … but is committed to keeping them uncommitted with a constitutional amendment that would be the first in US history to sanction the denial of rights.

And now she’s the representative of the advance of woman through the glass ceiling … to a position where she’s supposed to do stuff daily without any idea what people in that position do. But she’d like to take away the rights of women to decide what will go on in their own bodies right after they’ve been raped?

Look, I really enjoyed Northern Exposure, but I’m pretty sure that was a fictional sitcom. Are you trying to tell us this really passes for normal up there? This is like a fraternity prank after the guys sat down to smoke a salmon. In a bong.

I am wholeheartedly in favor of a citizen legislature that grants lots of room for responsible citizens from many professions to take part as our representatives and lawmakers. I don’t favor a Congress overloaded with lawyers and business executives that’s still way underrepresentative of the majority of our population: women. Sarah Palin has enough civic duty credentials to aspire to the state or national legislature and to convince voters she should get a majority of their votes. And she also has every right to accept John McCain’s offer to run for VP.

I am not a majority of voters. I’m an amateur election analyst. I’m absolutely convinced that Senator McCain has made a massive campaign blunder by nominating a person without background or training in foreign policy, international relations, military defense or national security, the chief responsibilities of the executive branch of the most powerful country on the planet. I could not care less whether such a person is a man, woman, hermaphrodite, vegetable or mineral. All would be unqualified to step into the chief executive role in an emergency without such experience or training.

A decade of public service in a town of 6,000 getting elevated to a state governorship is - I believe - already an unprecedented giant step above what any male mayor in US history has accomplished except those who had to do so at the creation of the positions when their states were created. She’s achieved a promotion without parallel in well over a century. And it’s simply ludicrous to believe that her acceptance of the offer will enhance, in any way, the election of John McCain to be our next president.

In the process, she can actually damage the advance of women through that top ceiling. Those who believe women aren’t up to that task will try to advance that lie with any campaign misstep she might make, including some of the statements she’s already made.

Track, who joined the US infantry in September last year, is about to be deployed to Iraq. “It has really opened my eyes to international events and how war impacts everyday Americans like us,” she said.

Really? She just grasped that in the last year?

As a citizen, I’m extremely irritated by any potential setback for women to advance in public service at any level of elective office. I helped raise three daughters to believe there is no limit to what they can accomplish by adhering to the law, getting better educated, working hard and persistently. As I’ve seen growing numbers of women filling Senate and Governor seats, I’ve long believed that last glass ceiling would be broken by extraordinarily talented and experienced women whose achievements in office would set a standard that few male presidents have ever matched. And before my daughters reached the age of eligibility for the office (35).

I never taught them that life would be easy or fair, and I never suggested a dishwasher should advance to restaurant manager in one step then become CEO of McDonalds in the next, risking massive failure at each promotion that could risk the livelihoods of many, many others. Had I advised that, a mental health intervention would have been in order.

I’m not pissed at Sarah Palin for believing herself capable. I fully anticipate that most women voters will disagree. I’m really pissed at McCain for potentially setting back the advance of women by creating a convenient foil for his forthcoming loss. So remember, it will be his choices that
cost him the election. It won’t be Sarah Palin’s fault, but Republican misogynists will soon enough be making that claim. Bet on it.

And consider the views from Wasilla… including her own mother-in-law. No wonder Harry Reid says several Republican Senators have confided that they won’t be voting for McCain in November. I imagine there’s a number of far more qualified elected Republican women who’ll be among them.

View the latest storm images from the Times-Picayune

Bush, Cheney to skip GOP convention due to Gustav

NOLA.COM

Governor Jindal’s Update on Hurricane Gustav Preparedness Efforts Today, Governor Jindal met with the unified command of the emergency operation center at GOSHEP to receive an update on the state’s preparedness efforts.

Nagin: Flee ‘mother of all storms’

…… This Post WILL Update …….

Video here.

All the sailors
with their seasick mamas

Hear the sirens on the shore,

Singin’ songs
for pimps with tailors

Who charge ten dollars
at the door.

You can really
learn a lot that way

It will change you
in the middle of the day.

Though your confidence
may be shattered,

It doesn’t matter.

All the great explorers
Are now in granite laid,

Under white sheets
for the great unveiling

At the big parade.

You can really
learn a lot that way

It will change you
in the middle of the day.

Though your confidence
may be shattered,

It doesn’t matter.

All the bushleague batters
Are left to die
on the diamond.

In the stands
the home crowd scatters

For the turnstiles,
For the turnstiles,
For the turnstiles.

Video here.

There you stood
on the edge of your feather,

Expecting to fly.
While I laughed,
I wondered whether
I could wave goodbye,

Knowin’ that you’d gone.
By the summer it was healing,
We had said goodbye.

All the years
we’d spent with feeling
Ended with a cry,

Babe, ended with a cry,
Babe, ended with a cry.

I tried so hard to stand

As I stumbled
and fell to the ground.

So hard to laugh as I fumbled

And reached for the love I found,
Knowin’ it was gone.

If I never lived without you,
Now you know I’d die.

If I never said I loved you,
Now you know I’d try,

Babe, now you know I’d try.

Babe, now you know I’d try,
Babe.

Video here.

Sailing heart-ships
thru broken harbors

Out on the waves in the night

Still the searcher
must ride the dark horse

Racing alone in his fright.
Tell me why, tell me why

Is it hard to make
arrangements with yourself,

When you’re old enough to repay
but young enough to sell?

Tell me lies later,
come and see me

I’ll be around for a while.

I am lonely but you can free me
All in the way that you smile

Tell me why, tell me why

Is it hard to make
arrangements with yourself,

When you’re old enough to repay
but young enough to sell?

Tell me why, tell me why
Tell me why, tell me why

Video here.

Now that you found yourself
losing your mind

Are you here again?

Finding that what you once
thought was real
Is gone, and changing?

Now that you made yourself
love me
Do you think
I can change it in a day?

How can I place you above me?
Am I lying to you when I say

That I believe in you
I believe in you.

Coming to you at night
I see my questions

I feel my doubts

Wishing that maybe
in a year or two

We could laugh
and let it all out

Now that you made
yourself love me

Do you think
I can change it in a day?

How can I place you above me?
Am I lying to you when I say

That I believe in you
I believe in you.

Video here.

I look at you all,
see the love there that’s sleeping,

while my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor,
and I see it needs sweeping,
still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you,
how to unfold your love

I don’t know how someone controlled you,
they bought and sold you

I look at the world,
and I notice it’s turning,
while my guitar gently weeps

With every mistake
we must surely be learning,
still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how
you were diverted,

you were perverted, too.

I don’t know how you were inverted,
no one alerted you

I look at you all,
see the love there that’s sleeping,

while my guitar gently weeps.
Look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps

Kudos to Trapper John

And then, there’s a serious side as well.

But even conservatives aren’t sure what John’s wrought.

I think she’s living proof of a bridge to nowhere.

Three years ago, today.

Yesterday, they buried the final 85 unclaimed victims of Hurricane Katrina. Evacuations have already begun in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Gustav, which is anticipated to make landfall on the Gulf Coast early Tuesday morning, 4 days after the anniversary of Katrina’s hit.

Katrina reached Category 5, the highest status and most dangerous category, as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico. It dropped to Category 3 by the time it hit New Orleans and southern Mississippi. Maximum winds were around 125 MPH as it struck.

Eerily, Gustav is following an identical path. From this morning:

At 6 a.m. EDT data from Air Force Reconnaissance Aircraft now indicates Gustav is very rapidly strengthening, with maximum winds now at 115 mph. This makes Gustav a category three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, making this a major hurricane. Gustav is heading toward western Cuba.

Hurricane Gustav is now moving northwest, away from the Cayman Islands as of early this morning, but flash flooding rains, strong damaging winds, and battering waves will continue to impact the Islands this morning. Conditions should improve by this afternoon.

At 5 a.m. EDT, Gustav was centered about 255 miles east-southeast of the western tip of Cuba, moving northwest at near 12 mph. This motion would bring deteriorating weather conditions to western Cuba this afternoon, with the center passing over or near western Cuba this evening. Additional strengthening is expected as it approaches Cuba.

Expect strong, damaging winds, flash flooding rains, and high seas to quickly develop over western Cuba this afternoon, and become worse this evening. Rainfall amounts of up to a foot are expected, with local amounts of more than 20 inches possible. Squally weather will also impact central Cuba.

The current forecast track continues to indicate Gustav will enter the southeastern Gulf of Mexico early Sunday, and track northwest reaching the central Gulf Coast by early Tuesday morning; Gustav will slow as it nears the Gulf Coast.

In the center of its projected path: New Orleans.

Among those evacuated already:

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi ordered the evacuation of 4,000 trailers inhabited by people whose homes were damaged by Katrina.

That’s right, three years later, 4,000 trailers are still home to evacuees in Mississippi. Even more remain trailerized in Louisiana.

Three. Years. Later.

The housing bubble has caused a glut of overbuilding. Between rental vacancies and foreclosures, there are more empty houses in this countr than there’s been in decades. And this is our answer, our historic rebuilding our president promised.

In New Orleans, advance coordination is well under way for Gustav. Thousands of national guardsmen are already deployed. The President won’t be joshing with a music star and strumming a guitar when Gustav arrives. The night before, he’ll be speaking at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

The temporary trailer parks will have long been emptied. And everyone is glad that memories are short everywhere besides Bourbon Street and the new temporary shelters for the trailerized.

And they’re crossing their fingers. Because the levees are only partially rebuilt.

“It’s not the wind or the water I’m worried about,” said Tyler Malejko as he nailed thick wooden planks to the window frames of his wife’s upscale kitchen cabinetry store in the Mid-City neighborhood. “The police couldn’t protect anybody the last time, and I have no confidence things will be any different now.”

Elsewhere across the city, pockmarked with 65,000 blighted houses destroyed by Katrina and yet to be razed or rebuilt, there were signs of mounting psychological distress. Calls to a mental health hot line at the Louisiana State University medical center in New Orleans spiked Thursday and Friday.

“The stress is obviously compounded by the fact that there is now the threat of a major hurricane again,” said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of the LSU psychiatry department. “People are worrying what will happen to their homes they have worked so hard to rebuild. People are tired. They’ve been through so much.”

Some beleaguered New Orleans residents were predicting they might choose to never return if Gustav drives them out again. Osofsky said he spoke with one exhausted professional who was planning a “last supper”—a dinner among friends before they evacuated the city forever.

They’re ready.

“What you’re going to see is the product of three years of planning, training and exercising at all levels of government, starting with the local and the state level and leading up to the federal level,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday from New Orleans. “So we’re clearly better prepared.”

Yes, three years of planning, training and exercising. And the last 85 just got buried while 65,000 homes are yet to be rebuilt. The trailer refugees won’t have to drown. Far away, Baghdad’s been destroyed and its rebuilding’s underway, along with other Iraqi cities. And even our offshore oil drillers are better prepared for Gustav.

We’re better prepared to call this outcome a mission accomplished. A nation of high morals and achievers gets the leadership it wants.

Heckuva job, George. Maybe a cranky old maverick and a moose-shooter will do it better someday. After all, they’re reformers. Sort of. According to the advertising. Gustav’s already watered down Guantanamo. Osama Bin Laden’s safe and sound.

What can we accomplish in the next three or four years? We’ll be better prepared to answer that in November.

We’re coming.

.

.

Twice as good in fact.

Jerry Springer was mayor of Cincinnati for a year, a city of some 330,000.
Sarah Palin has been the Governor of Alaska for almost two years, a State with twice as many people as Cincinnati.

Twice the executive experience leading two times more people than Jerry Springer.

Fabulous! And scandals too!

Fittingly the Democrat Springer was getting blow jobs from a hooker and it ruined his political future. Palin? What’s a little abuse of power for personal gain as long as you’re a Republican with ties to the oil companies? IOKIYAR!

For 21 more “Hilarious” reasons picking Palin should be relentlessly mocked, see Robert Greenwald’s Blog.

One of the sad things about the bitter identity-politics battle in the Democratic Primaries for President this year was the way some people began to consider sexist rhetoric okay if it helped defeat the awful witch Hillary. The media pundit sexism was surprisingly open but not really unpredictable. The number of lefty bloggers, even women bloggers, who bought into this was horrifying.

Today Jane Smiley has gone way beyond even that bad line, since her Precious has now been threatened in her mind by the McCain choice of Palin. In What’s He Going to Call Her in Public? she gives several instances of her rabidity:

Who’s that again?

She has a four month old baby and she’s hitting the campaign trail?

Is she breastfeeding? …

A beauty queen?

Is she related to Katharine Harris? …

Does she pay her nanny’s social security?

If the red phone rings in the middle of the night and she’s breastfeeding, will she answer it?

I think about all she missed is the claim that Palin would be unable to function for a few days each month when having that bothersome hormone stuff kick in. Come on Jane, there must be some better angels in you than this….

What’s scarier than Alaska’s neophyte Governor being anywhere near the Oval Office?

Duh! Alaska’s killer bears on the loose. (Due respect to S. Colbert.)

Meanwhile, we lost one more soldier today and two yesterday in that fucking war, bringing the U.S. total casualty count up to five this week. That gets added to the 266 killed and 176 wounded Iraqis reported (plus another 9 victims of that favorite Baghdad pastime, kidnapping, in what McCain calls “A peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state that poses no threat to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists.”

Preoccupied with the horrors of yet another Global Warming denying Veep with a gun fetish, Blogtopia (ysctp!) largely ignored (at its peril) the dangers faced when we turn on the End Of The World Machine — which might prove once and for all that the Universe was indeed designed by a Mad Magazine cartoonist during an acid trip induced fit of boredom. That would certainly explain how we could start a war based on the lies of Iranian spy/bank embezzler Ahmed Chalabi, who’s deputy is now in jail accused of terrorist bombings.

Then again, we probably should rejoice, since this week spells the end of the Reagan Era coalition as well as the death of Trickle Down economics.

Who said you never should bring out a new product in August. We are at the beginning of a whole new world folks. Let’s do it right this time.

Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan for President and here’s the skinny on her from an Alaskan blogger, including her ethics scandal. Her maverick reformer cred further wavers at the outset. And even though people like me who oppose domestic violence may think the trooper got what he deserved, the fact remains she initially covered up the truth, used her gubernatorial powers improperly and real reformers simply don’t do that.

She was also endorsed by Senator Ted Stevens:
.

.

And he’s under current indictment on corruption charges. And all of this is being covered in the corporate press. So why did McCain REALLY choose her?

(Update: Eli at Firedoglake has even more)

Consider the pros and cons McCain had to weigh, starting with some election history:

In popular votes, Jimmy Carter had 50.08%. It’s been 32 years since a Dem carried 50%. Before that, it was LBJ’s landslide in 1964, so once in 44 years means the country’s voters have been leaning rightist. The closest race to that was Clinton in ‘96, at 49.23%, and that took the advantage of incumbency to achieve. But let’s consider the thing that really counts, the close electoral vote contests:

1976: Ford would have won with 30 more electoral votes.

2000: Setting aside the disenfranchisement of voters, the flawed counts and the Supreme Court’s usurpation of the accurate recount process, Gore would have won with 4 more electoral votes.

2004: Though Kerry won 8 million more votes than Gore and the most of any Dem in history, Bush’s ground operation was even better. Both broke the previous highest vote-getter (Reagan in 1984). And Kerry would have won with 19 more electoral votes.

So, from a historical perspective, the Democratic Party split in response to the Civil Rights bills has existed for 40 years. Throughout the entire history of the Democratic Party, Southern Democrats have ALWAYS held the upper hand over the party. The notion that it’s dominated by Northern liberals has been a carefully constructed myth that began during the McCarthy-Nixon era as they tried to portray Democrats as Commie appeasing traitors.

With the antiwar movement of the late Sixties/early Seventies, which became a movement of a majority of Americans, Nixon successfully made the ‘weak on national defense’ charge stick. At the same time, though, he was actually mining angry, racist Americans, mostly in the South, by exploiting the Southern (racial) strategy. Every Republican since has emulated that. As a result, the South, as a region, held a virtual stranglehold on presidential elections for the next 40 years.

Since JFK’s squeaker election in 1960, no Democrat north of the Mason Dixon line has come close to winning the office, but John Kerry came very, very close. As well, no Republican has won north of that line either. The Bushes had to abandon their New England base for a Texas base before winning the office. And Reagan/Nixon, as Westerners, still lived in Southern California (though it’s unlikely that their region made the difference. It was the campaign racism and hawkish positions that still drew the support of Southern voters).

The notion that Reagan drew them on economic issues arose because the economy was sinking throughout the 1970s under the weight of the debts of Vietnam, coupled with Federal Reserve errors and even bigger: the rise of OPEC. So the Reagan Dems existed, but without that, most were predisposed to vote Republican because of the old formula of race + hawkishness. Carter helped solidify the weak-on-defense claim because of the Iran hostage crisis, but no other evidence of that claim against Dems is supported by any facts. (The GOP will also point to the Bay of Pigs as a loss of nerve by JFK but in fact, JFK NEVER planned to do that. The fiasco was launched by the US military and intel operatives without his assent, a very dangerous thing to have occurred in a democracy. JFK simply refused to be bullied into doing what he always opposed, which was courageous as it risked his career.) But it added the anti-Castro Cuban-American bloc to the GOP column in the 47 years since.

Am I digressing too much yet? Need some coffee?

The Southern electorate was further bolstered by Sunbelt migration, but that’s nearly peaked with the 1946 first wave baby boomers reaching retirement age. Within 8 years, that shift should reach stasis and decline. And as recent elections show, the northern Democrats are edging very close to a majority by staying close to an equilibrium in the Midwest while growing its support in the West. The urbanization and migration patterns of older Northerners is also having an increasing impact in Eastern Virginia and the Eastern half of the Carolinas. That Sunbelt migration is a bit of a misnomer, as the entire West Coast has also gained from it. It would be better described as an Anti-Snow migration.

Looking ahead, then, much of the state growth changes are more likely to come from immigration, which mostly means from Latin America, with its greatest impact on the West and Southwest. Such families are leaning heavily Democratic, though Republicans try to make inroads into the heavily Catholic demographic by exploiting the abortion issue and exploiting racial divisions that still exist there (as race is an issue globally). But they’re still losing ground with that strategy, which provokes more of their xenophobia appeals, loaded with myths, about “illegals”. They’re trying to hold on to their slipping grip on political power.

Bringing us back to the voting trends that have been shifting away from Republicans for 16 years, even though they’ve maintained a narrow edge in the past two elections. The Bush record makes it very difficult for them to hold that edge this time, no matter who their nominee is. Party registration in the past few years confirms this.

McCain’s strategy to date of embracing Bush and sucking up to every base the GOP has, wasn’t providing very hopeful signs. An electoral college winner has to be able to get to a minimum of 49% in most cases and McCain only recently peaked at 46% and subsided. Obama’s polled as high as 50% to 52% for parts of this year.

So in simplest terms, McCain has to hold every single state he can that Bush won or find a swing state Gore and Kerry won to replace any he loses. And the state by state polling hasn’t been very favorable to him grabbing fresh states. NH (4 E-votes), and MI (17), are really all he has any chance at fresh gains.

So the Palin choice demonstrates that his internal polling showed Pawlenty (an under 50% winner by 1%) would not draw MN and neither would Romney guarantee MI. Which forces him to plan B: hold that line!

The real battlegrounds

Among the states McCain is in the greatest danger of losing that Bush won are NM (5), NV (5) and CO (9), which would lose him the election. So McCain has been forced into a defensive strategy with his VP pick Because NM, NV and CO offered no Republicans that could help him hold them.

That’s why I was convinced he’d pick Rob Portman, as OH is the fifth most likely state to join the Democratic column, based on the polls. Instead, McCain appears to be embarked on the Squeaker Strategy. Palin at least guarantees Alaska’s 3 votes remain in his column. But he still needs one other small state gain to eke out a win. The most obvious is he’s now going to go hard for NH (4) because, unlike most Oval Office seeking Republicans, he’s been historically popular there.

Realistically, McCain won’t win NM. He only has the potential of adding NH and MI and besides them, NV, CO, OH, VA and MT are at the highest risk of being won by Obama. Obama even has a shot at MO and FL too.

Conclusion

This can’t be about disaffected Hillary voters as I’ve pointed out previously that most of the non-feminist ones are likely blue dogs from Southern states, most of which Obama won’t carry. The feminist Hillary supporters aren’t going to vote McCain-Palin and surrender the right to reproductive choices for decades. And the GOP - with an assist from the corporate media - has exploited the myth that it’s all about angry feminists versus Obama precisely to provoke Democratic infighting. Just as race and regional bias have been left out of the myths about ‘weak on defense’ and ‘Reagan Democrats’, the net result is to advance Republican elective chances.

So with this VP pick, it signals a gamble on McCain’s part. He could lose NV, CO, NM and MT but if he picks up NH, he still wins. Of that most vulnerable group I just defined, he can least afford to lose OH and VA, as he’ll need to take more Kerry states to offset either, and only MI is within his reach.

So why didn’t he choose Portman of OH? That’s pretty perplexing, other than not wanting to tie himself any closer to Bush, or the vetting turned up a flaw.

Or maybe he’s just confident he can hold both VA and OH, possibly with the blue dog disaffected Hillary supporters his internal polling reveals.

But any way you slice it, McCain’s going after a 1-to-3 electoral vote win, it seems. There’s no room for error. He sacrificed the foreign policy and overall inexperience arguments to roll the dice. The only thing he’s guaranteed is Alaska’s votes. Does he think Palin can pull in more Libertarianish independent western voters? As a mayor of a town of under 6,000 and governor of a state of 670 thousand for a mere 20 months, let’s put that in perspective: there’s 18 US cities larger than the people she governs. Should we elect the mayor of Charlotte or Memphis, with similar populations? That’s pretty insulting to Libby Dole, Hutchison, Collins and other very experienced women in Congress. He’s essentially labeling all of them as tarnished insiders when most have cleaner hands than the ones attached to his wrists.

Or was he hoping to hold his edge in white male voters by offering an attractive woman as a mere Madison Avenue ploy? (If you hear the sound of one hand clapping, you can guess where the other hand is). Is it sexist to exploit a woman this way? Or is it sexist to suggest what might be motivating such decisions?

I think it’s insulting to male and female voters equally. It resembles too much what he’s learned from his mentor, GWBush: anything to win and let the country deal with any bad decisions that result afterward. Putin and Bin Laden and the daffy dictator over North Korea are supposed to be impressed because the VP can shoot a moose? Because she has a good hook shot? I mean, really, this person makes Dan Quayle seem Churchillian.

The only way this isn’t a gamble is if he’s holding an October surprise card up his sleeve. Otherwise, this is an act of desperation based on eking out the narrowest win in modern history.

We can only surmise but the appearance of a desperate gamble isn’t likely to inspire confidence beyond a mild, temporary bump in the polls. It clearly will inspire much talk that McCain is in trouble.

Well, I certainly won’t make fun of her for being a scholarship contestant. Why, back in school, I too was often referred to as miscongenial.

What?

Never mind.

Seriously.

But the former beauty queen is known as Sarah Barracuda, so this dog has teeth. Not that she’s a dog or anything — she’s purrty, yep. As long as Biden remains the gentleman he is, there should be no worries at their debate. I hope.

Meanwhile, I continue to marvel at how out of left field Talk Left’s Armando (BTD) continues to be this election cycle. Breaking with co-blogger Jeralyn Merrit (who doesn’t really prove she’s over her feminist blind-spot by staing the obvious — that Palin simply isn’t qualified and helps Obama more than McCain) Armando can’t accept the ridiculousness of the Palin pick, thinking instead this is a calculatedly inspired attempt to strategically remake McCain’s message.

Nor is he content to leave us with his, uhm … interesting opinion. He sites approvingly fellow Klinton Kool Aid drinker Ed Kilgore with this nonsense:

I have to admit some significant disagreement with how most Democrats (including the Obama campaign) are reacting to the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running-mate. Many are simply deriding Palin as a lightweight or someone obviously unqualifed to be commander-in-chief–another Dan Quayle. Others watched the event in Dayton and found the whole thing laughable.

. . . [W]hat I saw in Dayton was (1) the “maverick” GOP presidential candidate introducing his “maverick” running mate, even though Palin, even more than McCain, is actually a conservative ideologue whose selection thrilled both cultural and economic factions of the Right; (2) a direct appeal by Palin to HRC supporters to consummate Hillary’s campaign by shattering the splintered “glass ceiling;” (3) a compelling personal story of a woman who (a) has one son with Down’s Syndrome, (b) another who is being deployed to Iraq on September 11; (c) is married to a Native American (at least technically) union worker and athlete; and (d) has bravely defied her party and oil companies in Alaska.

Let’s regroup a bit here, shall we. McCain left his last bit of Maverick Manhood on the alter of the Christian Right’s demand that they be relevant; that they remain powerful enough to hold a veto threat on Mccain’s choice of running mate.

Taylor Marsh at least has put down the Clinton Crack pipe and tells us McCain thinks women are stupid and want’s to mute his geezer quotient with Palin’s babe vibe. He also was prevented from acting on his own instincts, choosing a running-mate he doesn’t even know.

McCain faced outright revolt Monday in Minneapolis if his choice wasn’t anti-choice. Karl Rove warned off his best friend, Joe Lieberman despite his militantly chickenhawk bona fides as way too liberal (read: reasonable) on non-war issues. Condi Rice won’t have anything to do with this silly game it seems since the White House has done it’s best to take Iraq off the table for McCain, and the tax-cut purists have been successful in making the Maverick buck his own Maverickness, enjoying McCain’s about-face on disapproving the Bush/Cheney administration’s approach to the economy.

The banking arm of their party had to back off pushing Romney once McCain’s “housing problem” came to the fore, but no doubt would have forced McCain to make his bed with an avowed enemy if the rich-guy issue hadn’t blown up in their face. Multiple Choice Mitt can dance the anti-choice jig as long as the cameras are on and the nay-sayers could have been bought off. So … Plan D?

No, make that Plan E for Estrogen. D was Drill, Drill, Drill. This is yet another gimmick!.

Take their consideration of Tom Ridge. Qualified, competent, experienced, well liked and helps land the hugely important swing state of Pennsylvania. Naturally logic goes out the window with this gang. Ridge was completely unacceptable because he holds a reasonable position on reproductive rights. That’s it. Since Ridge was sent packing by the folks who have the power to tell the titular leader of the Republican Party what to do, the stack of applications got pretty slim very fast.

Palin is a narrow ideologue: pure on guns, god if not gays, and more like Cheney (but with better aim) than the mythical independent-minded man McCain would like you to think he is despite agreeing with George Bush’s legislative agenda 95% of the time. It’s almost as if they ticked off resume points on all the potential candidates for VP and she was the only one left standing that would be acceptable to the mob of Christianists, war-mongers and intolerant hate peddlers that permeate the GOP activist base — the pick’s strategic idiocy and betrayal of the nation’s security her unfathomable incompetence risks be damned.

Risking Boos on the Convention floor would have made for horrible TV.

To fear this pick, to disfavor mocking it but instead taking it seriously enough because together Palin and McCain represent a some kind of break with the attempt to tie Bush to McCain is to live in another world and ignore the reality that this team represents more of the same old GOP, not a new approach free of the constraints of the DC power elite. Indeed, scorn is exactly what is called for in a “change election” when they again calculate the odds of winning at the expense of competent governing.

Ridicule is not only acceptable, it is required. Heckuvajob Johnny.

One need only watch the wingnuts finally getting off their hands and jumping with joy, emptying their checkbooks in the process now that they have an excuse to walk back all the nasty things they’ve said about McCain over the years.

This is worse than more of the same, it’s spineless. Cowardly Republicans are something we’ve all had ENOUGH of. Obama’s theme has always been about judgment. This doesn’t change his narrative and merely reinforces the meme of McCain’s pathetic pandering to the power-brokers of the right wing.

I can’t help but think that not even McCain thinks he can win this thing, knowing he’s a sacrificial lamb. He has to recognize he’s a mere tool, a placeholder keeping a dying brand of conservative on life-support. Never in a million years would he let the nation he says he loves be entrusted to someone who’s most consequential executive decision was not to buy a bridge to nowhere.

So Johnathon Sidney McCain The Third (esquire)’s handlers have selected his vice presidential running mate. I’m not sure how they convinced Michael Palin to come out of retirement, and start wearing women’s clothing again:

What’s that? It’s Sarah Palin, corrupt anti-choice creationist Republican’t from Alaska who said she didn’t want the job? Who has even less of a clue about foreign policy, economics, federal politics, and governing more than a small town than Johnathon Sidney McCain the Third (esquire) claims his presidential opponent has?

Look for a shriller, less-coherent version of the Monty Python Pepperpots in the next set of Gramps Simpson for PrezNit commercials, even now being hastily cobbled together in Dick Cheney’s Secret Underground Bunker. Coming soon to invade your living room!

Big time props to commenter Quaker in a Basement for imbedding this in one of Oliver Willis’ posts so’s I could show it to you!

Update: Our good friend Tild has provided a new campaign button for the occasion:

I’m taking Minnesota off the dime and putting it fully in Obama’s corner this week. RCP still puts the Gopher State as a toss-up with Obama up by 4.5%, but it’s clear with Electoral-Vote.com putting him up 47%-42% in a state that was carried by the Dems every election since Reagan’s ‘84 landslide (not even Nixon could take it) and Pollster.com’s trend estimate showing the Democrat with a 7.5% lead there — plus FiveThirtyEight.com’s list of all the Minnesota polls throughout the summer show Obama leading every time concluding that McCain only has a 17% chance of taking those 10 electoral votes as things stand right now.

Mind you, this could all change since the GOP enjoys the home field advantage with their upcoming convention in the Twin Cities, it’s nonetheless long odds. So color the MN map blue for now.

Note there’s no post-convention Obama bounce reflected in any of the state-by-state analysis yet. Only the national trends are indicating an uptick in the Illinois Senator’s numbers that can be correlated directly to this last week’s festivities since there isn’t really enough individual statedata to go by. The FL, OH NC, PA and Tx polls announced Tuesday, 8/26, and CO, FL, NM, NV, PA and RI Wednesday 8/27 can only show us a baseline where the candidates started out immediately on the heels of the Biden for VP announcement, but before the full effect of Obama’s remarkable acceptance speech could sink in.

There is enough in those polls to take out the crayons again, even if it’s too early to tie the new blue found in Nevada directly to anything that came out of Denver. Changing Colorado from yellow to blue no doubt has something to do with the invasion of Democrats there this week which, unlike Minnesota, has been a true battleground right along. Pollster.com’s trend methodology doesn’t lend itself to quick movement of a state from one column to another, but 538 and E-V switched CO and NV to Obama — barely. Swinging barely the other way are Montana and the Dakotas, but really, who cares?

More interesting is the new colors for the Carolinas which are moving in opposite directions. A troubling trend in Ohio and Pennsylvania moves Ohio back to “pick ‘em” and Pennsylvania displaying weaker support for the Democrat but still in his pocket. Here’s where I’m hoping an enduring bounce will erupt.

Just my informed guestimate, but the combination of Thursday night with McCain’s inexplicable selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will not only move undecideds to Obama, but push the PUMAs away from McCain. This is a transparent pander to disaffected Clinton supporters who are way smarter than the Rovellians understand — it’s beyond insulting. Offering a token substitution to supporters of the single best female politician of the age with a GILF known as Ameirca’s Hottest Governor, who stands for everything Hillary isn’t just won’t cut it. Again the GOP uses smoke and mirrors, convinced you and I are just plain dumb. Palin’s experience as a part-time mayor and being brand new on the job as Governor of a state wracked by Republican corruption can’t hold a candle to Hillary’s qualifications even before she moved into the East Wing of the White House.

To my eye, we now know McCain is simply not serious about the job he’s applying for and has delivered tepid supporters with a less tribal sense of GOP party loyalty yet another excuse to sit this thing out. McCain is too fearful of losing his die-hard conservative base to ever again deserve the maverick reputation he spent a lifetime nurturing.

Is their bench really so shallow they put up a yet another politician being investigated for corruption by her own party, alleged to have used her political clout to get her ex-brother-in-law fired?

Yet for all that, I’m still keeping Alaska in the toss-up category, dammit. But look for it to turn blue next week with Ted Stevens still rolling along, having won his primary and energizing the Democrats who should be noticed in the Anchorage Press’s poll due soon. Unfortunately it will be a short-lived victory once the pick of the popular Palin is put in the mix. Alaska is no longer in play.

Per Marc Ambinder.

He has some pros and cons, too. But I’d add another con: zero foreign policy experience if McCain falls ill or can’t finish his term.

It still suggests McCain was bleeding his last base: the horny white male voters.

Wait, was she chosen to be his VP or to jump out of his birthday cake?

Update: CBS news bulletin at 7:40 am PDT… it IS Palin. Under an ethics cloud, less experience than Obama, but it likely guarantees he’ll hold AK’s 3 electoral votes.

Update: Further confirmation it’s NOT Pawlenty.

7:03 am PDT Update: CBS is reporting it’s NOT Romney, either. So unless ABC has the Palin-still-in-Alaska story wrong, this still leaves one person, George Bush’s pick: Portman. However, since McCain ALSO told CBS it would be an ‘historic pick’, does that mean Bobby Jindal or Kay Bailey Hutchison is back in the mix? Howzabout EBay CEO Meg Whitman?

………..

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin? If so, he had to reach deep to demonstrate some maverick bonafides again.

I have trouble buying it. She’s three years younger than Obama, making the ‘inexperience’ charge harder for McCain to wield. And it would seem like a deliberate effort to go after disaffected Hillary supporters. But she’s built her career on clean politics, bucking her own party to do so.

But guess again: from Wikipedia…. man are they on to this fast!

Palin has been rumored as a candidate for the vice-presidency with Republican presumptive nominee Senator John McCain in the 2008 election.[55][56] Due to her gender, youth, background in government reform, pro-life stance, fiscal and social conservatism, and an approval rating in Alaska generally in the range of 80 to 90 percent, Palin could become the second female vice-presidential nominee of a major party, following Geraldine Ferraro as Democratic nominee in 1984. Palin is supported by a community of online groups.[57][57][58][59][60][61]

On August 29, 2008, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends reported that Palin’s family departed hastily from Anchorage, Alaska, aboard a Gulfstream jet that landed near Dayton, Ohio, site of McCain’s planned vice presidential announcement. They cited the website Change&Experience.com, which also had correctly leaked travel details for Senator Joseph Biden to Springfield, Illinois, for Barack Obama’s announcement. [62]. The report cited two men, a woman and two teenage boys, were seen departing the plane, in “the most secretive flight we have ever had” at this particular airport.

Later that morning, ABCnews reported that Palin was in Alaska and had no plans to leave for Ohio.

The InTrade betting swung from Pawlenty to Palin. Some folks still think its Mitt.

I think the key swing states McCain needs to pursue are FL, OH, MI, MO, VA, CO and on that basis, Portman (OH) and Mitt (MI) have an edge. Would Pawlenty swing MN? The odds aren’t great, but it could happen.

But the bottom line is that McCain doesn’t have the luxury of a VP who can’t swing a state. If he paralled Bush in 2004 but lost VA - which is distinctly possible - or OH, he’d lose. So those three guys are the likeliest picks:

Mitt Romney: Jeb Bush’s favorite, reinforces his penchant for going along with Bush choices.

Rob Portman: a lobbyist for Oman, and served in several slots as a Bush appointee and close friend, and Bob Novak claims he’s George’s fave in the Veepstakes. Man, there’s that Bush influence again.

Tim Pawlenty: Won re-election 46.7% to 45.7% in 2006, which doesn’t suggest he can swing MN. And… Claimed today he WASN’T the pick.

Which leaves the Bush boy choices.

Say hello to the Grand Old Partycrashers: Gustav and Hanna.

And today, McCain shares his 195th birthday with the third anniversary of the arrival of their first party pooper, Miz Katrina.

The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion (2005 U.S. dollars) in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

He’ll celebrate by introducing us to a costlier natural disaster: his VP pick.

You know what national problem Barack Obama did not mention last night? It’s a pet complaint of bloggers on the right and left every day. Our shitty corporate media.

However, faced with such an extraordinary evening culminating a week of outstanding choreography, not even the most jaded right wing tool could deny the historic nature of what they witnessed. (Note that Hannity and O’Reilly fled back to New York instead of making insta-analysis after the speech, opting for data mining and eating boogers found under their beds and waiting for Limbaugh to write their talking points for their radio hate fests in the afternoon.)

Pat Buchanan calls a Democrat’s speech the best and most important political convention speech he had ever heard, going back 48 years. MSNBC to it’s credit, along with CNN backed off the commentary and just let the show unfold for the most part.

David Gergan calls a Democrat’s speech a Symphony and a Political Masterpiece.

WaPo/Fox’s Charles Krauthammer? Obama was “Brilliant.” Even the neocon’s neocon can’t deny what was right in his face.

“[A]wfully impressive performance,” Bill Kristol.

Greta Van Sustren: “It was a great speech.” “Dazzling,” “Dazzling,” “Dazzling,” “Dazzling,” but can he deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver? (She truly is awful.) Pollster Frank Luntz answered her, predicting a predictably inflated 10 point Obama bounce, that the change Barack talks about will not come from him, but from the American people. Luntz reminded us of the line from the speech that change doesn’t come from Washington. Change is brought to Washington. [Ooo, make that 5 Greta “Dazzlings.”]

Bubba got their notice too.

Karl Rove had enough integrity (I can’t believe I wrote that) not to simply parrot Sean Hannity disingenuously trashing Bill Clinton’s speech the night before, but talked about Clinton being the first to lay the groundwork for an anti-McCain argument at the Convention — an argument Obama ran with last night. Peggy Noonan swooned for the Clenis as well.

Even some conservative commentators were impressed. Karl Rove said on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, “He gave the best argument offered thus far on the third day of the convention for Barack Obama. He gave a comprehensive view domestically and internationally. It wasn’t his endorsement tonight that mattered…but what he did do is he set a theme: Restoring the American dream at home and America’s leadership abroad.” Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal that “halfway through” Clinton’s speech “I thought: The Master has arrived. Crazy Bill, the red-faced Rageaholic, was somewhere else. This was Deft Political Pro Bill doing what no one had been able to do up to this point at the convention, and that is make the case for Barack Obama.”

So, how did Rove assess Obama’s acceptance speech? “Clintonian.” High praise, at least in what passes for gray matter between Rove’s ears. Rove mostly played the role of wonk instead of speech critic, examining the argument Obama make that he saw coming from the Bill Clinton preview, and advising how to counter it. I think he knows there’s just no use fighting rhetoric and symbolism against our guy with their guy, who just isn’t up to the task.

They’re all putting a happy face on everything, but you can just tell the GOP punditocracy is freaked. It must be even worse in the lobbyist encrusted trenches of McCain Central.

Lone Fox nay-sayer Juan Williams was unsatisfied that not enough inspiration, not enough emotion, not enough MLK (even though having MLK,III and his sister speaking should pretty much cover that). Williams felt Obama didn’t take advantage of the moment, not giving us enough of the stuff McCain and Co. says is the reason Obama is all fluff.

To Williams, I say: ENOUGH.

Howzabout that Senate Majority Leader?

“There isn’t a Republican serving in the Senate that’s happy he’s the nominee. Now, they’re all supporting him, but I’ll tell you they have told me. I’ve had Republican senators tell me they don’t think they’ll vote for him,” Reid said.

See the rest of his full frontal assault here.

Not Michelle, the one with Nixon roots:
.

.

Bill Clinton’s speech drew praise from Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove. Now Buchanan is swooning. As I said in my previous post, I feel sorry for people incapable of feeling what happened tonight in Denver. The callers to C-Span made it clear that they still exist, so caught up are they in their determination not to listen, to hear, to understand that America can dare dream of its capacity for greatness again.

McCain’s sister-in-law is voting for Obama!

Take that Gramps.

Thanksgiving is gonna be interesting for the McCain clan . . . if they can only decide which house to have dinner at.

Sure, that was a cheap shot. Here’s something more highbrow dealing with judgment and pre-9/11 thinking.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) on Sept. 10, 2001, warning against the Bush administration’s approach:

We will have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat while the real threats come into this country in the hold of a ship, or the belly of a plane, or are smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial in a backpack.

Cirincione writes, “If George Bush had listened to Joe Biden instead of Donald Rumsfeld, the history of the past seven years would have been very different. We might have prevented 9/11.”

The next day, that fateful day, Condi Rice was scheduled to give a speech on the threats we faced in the 21st Century. There wasn’t a mention of terrorism in the draft. It was all about selling missile defense systems for Raytheon and McDonald-Douglas. After the terrorists struck they tried to cloak her speech as some sort of national secret out of sheer embarrassment.

Judgment? McStoopid won’t even be able to fill a third tier college basketball arena to announce his VP, choice (Nutter Auditorium no less.) It is to laugh. He’s doing it on the anniversary of Katrina’s landfall while another hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast.

I refuse to even consider that this thing is even going to be close.

Forget the couple of minor negative details that could be mined. Yes, he can. Yes, he did. And this kid still knows not to interrupt a rosy afterglow to a great climax.

Those without a nerve to sense what just happened? I really, really feel sorry for you. I always feel sorry for lonely people and people who hide under the bed.

You want only one thing.

Photo Via Kossack Iceberg Slim who has tons more from every night of the convention.
:
Best soundbyte of the night.

“Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land — enough!” Obama said. “This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough.’ ”

Balloon Drop? Feh! Lemme see the GOP beat fireworks and confetti cannons M.F’rs.

But that’s just fluff, indicative of the phenomenal support team that made Barack Obama unbeatable. But the red meat I’ve been dying to hear from him was reported this way by MoJo’s David Corn:

Obama sounded strong; he looked strong. “If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice–but it is not the change that America needs,” he said. Obama warned McCain to stop questioning his patriotism: “I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.” And, he said, don’t go pulling the same-old, Rove-like stunts, accusing Democrats of being nothing but tax-raisers and national security weaklings:

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America–they have served the United States of America.

And the smart campaigning goes on. Think about how many more contacts they make in the swing state of Colorado for the GOTV effort by opening up this historical event to 75,000 people. They picked up another 30,000 text-message subscribers across the nation tonight as well.

Really, the whole point of a national convention is to serve as a kickoff rally for the final campaign season in what’s become a permanent campaign cycle. It’s also a payoff to thousands of delegates. They get to network, schmooze, feel like an integral part of the big final thrust of a campaign year, which they are.

The least important part is the corporate media opinionating that follows, even though candidates and party officials hope to get some favorable coverage from the deal. After the past few elections, you’d think some new model would be developed that might stand a better chance of achieving the last because, frankly, the pundit coverage this year has sucked harder than the suckiest suckhole of suckness. It’s been like a desperate race to demonstrate the most superior mediocrity possible, exceeding every standing record of ewwwwww.

On Tuesday, Dennis Kucinich fired up the crowd. So did Governor Schweitzer. And Hillary, who unleashed the best speech I’ve ever heard from her, did everything anyone could be expected to do in pushing her supporters to work hard for Obama’s election.

Still the punditry ripped her performance apart. They ripped Bill, too, and Michelle Obama. It absolutely reminded me of Jesse Jackson’s old complaint that if he walked on water the corporate media headlines would read “Jesse can’t swim.”

Blogger activists weren’t much better. Some connected emotionally to one speaker or another, but a number of well-read longtime bloggers with demonstrated superb election analysis skills fretted. McCain wasn’t being attacked enough, they said. The crowd wasn’t being properly fired up. The convention theme meandered. Something - though they couldn’t always define it - just didn’t feel right. Halfway through the third day, these were examples of what I was reading.

And me? I’ve also grown skeptical. Of such analysis.

Perhaps that’s because I take a longer view. And a broader view. After all, I don’t really qualify as a political activist. I’ve largely left the world of door-to-door campaigning for candidates. I phone-banked only once in the past three years. At 55, I leave a lot of that essential foot-soldier work to younger voters or middle-aged folks with the middle class comfort of more free time. But I retain my love of grassroots politics and my love of journalism. Which means I like to look for clues in different places, like the grass just above the grassroots. You know, where all those pesky votes are.

The canned speeches that are interspersed throughout the days of every national convention are predictable, unenlightening and boring.They carry less impact than a telemarketer’s script on the average non-activist voter. For the vast majority of voters, their impressions of the speakers and candidates won’t be formed from sitting, transfixed, watching CNN and MSNBC and Fox and C-Span. They’ll get snippets of the speeches from their local TV newscasts, from the nightly national news, from the next days papers. The spin will come from family, friends and coworkers, through the filters of people they’ve learned to trust or distrust from personal experience.

These voters really are the grass. They vote out of civic duty or the sense of urgency when something in the country or community’s seriously amiss. Nearly 2 out of 3 tend to vote straight ticket out of longtime party loyalty, varying only when they see some serious flaw in their party’s candidate(s). And the feedback I’m hearing from folks like this doesn’t suggest they’re feeling there’s anything seriously wrong with the Democratic candidates for President or VP.

Got that? The only folks talking that way within my circle of hearing are Republicans who weren’t planning to vote for any Democratic until Hell freezes over and when I last checked, Crawford’s pretty warm.

Seriously, I’ve talked to dozens of people, family and friends north and south, coast to coast, and many total strangers in Oregon, a notably independent/libertarian state. Hairdressers, foodservers, teachers, millworkers, construction personnel, bus drivers, middle managers, college students and more. For the past three days, a visiting school bus driver from conservative Cincinnatti, his son - a graduate student - and a semi-employed landscaper from here joined me in watching the coverage.

The main thing I’ve heard is curiousity. People really do want to know more about Obama and his family. Many really enjoyed the first night’s messages that helped satisfy that curiousity. They didn’t just see family warmth but folksy wisdom, grace and motivationals, the intergenerational sinew that threads through their families, too. These impressions will serve them well when the attack ads come, trying to paint Obama as a sixties radical, a black man desiring vengeance on ‘whitey’, a Muslim terrorist and all the other Rovian hooey Team McCain and the FiveTwoSevens will spew.

Some did wonder if Hillary supporters would bolt the party but Hillary utterly destroyed that fear. And last night, her husband also demonstrated a command of speech and audience that had been absent in recent years, also delivering at the time he’s always enjoyed most, in the heat of a campaign against Republicans.

From what I heard, it caused older folks to remember that life was pretty decent in the Nineties and it’s a lot more worrisome now. Most of them aren’t anti-McCain but they definitely are disgusted with everyone in the current White House. So the Obama strategy of tying McCain to Bush while granting some respect to him seems to be working. Unlike past campaigns, going for the jugular of an old guy has a definite chance of backfiring. Countering his slung mud and attacking his policies as too little, too out of touch and too similar to Bush may not seem as exciting, but the underlying message is starting to seep in: there’s no innovation in the old guy. He’s a caretaker, not someone who can deliver overdue changes.

The main unsettling elements of Obama exist out of unfamiliarity with him. It’s already apparent he’s no Malcolm X and no one to fear. Many voters have worked with and mildly socialized with black coworkers but, especially among older voters, they’ve never been in a black family’s home nor had those families in their own. The reassurance provided by the convention proceedings that the Obamas have common concerns and feelings and familial relations is settling those uncertainties.

From my feedback loops, there are very few worrisome things that stand out. First, as has been the case for the past 40 years, there remains the impression that Republicans are generally better at national defense, though most are cognizant that Iraq has been an unnecessary error. Even moreso, the use of torture is reviled and the failure to capture Al Qaida’s top two leaders is seen as the major failings of the Republicans. Obama can easily be aggressive on those two points and chip away at that edge. But as long as US troop fatalities stay down and no terror attacks on US soil occur, all the messaging in the world is unlikely to make a big dent in that. So pinpoint targeting about specific weaknesses remains the better way to mine more voters in that arena. And Team Obama is doing a credible job with that, and Biden on board - along with numerous recognized defense specialists - provides a solid argument that Obama won’t prove reckless on that.

Second, the major economic issues impacting most American voters are higher prices, led by gasoline, and the decline in value of a principal asset: their homes. Most are not in real mortgage danger. Most aren’t feeling their jobs are directly threatened… yet. But they’re monitoring the latter, just in case. Barring a national defense emergency or a huge upswing in troop fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic issue will dominate this campaign. But some of it is obviously beyond Obama’s capacity to control. If gas prices come down a dollar from their peak by Election Day, for example, that will make it harder for him to press the economic case, even though gas will still be up 250% from when Bush took office.

Do I think Republican supporters can manipulate that? Yes, I do. The oil giants have enormous resources to utilize on the stock and commodities markets that can definitely influence how speculators bet. Pump prices locally have fallen about 45 cents from their peak already. And post-Labor Day weekend, they can definitely be driven down more. Home heating prices, though, remain a big concern in the northern half of the country especially, and even the oil companies can’t manage an unseasonably cold Fall if nature provides that.

They also can’t manage real estate valuations. Past history indicates housing bubbles are followed by a 30 to 36 month decline in valuations. But that’s not followed by an immediate bounce. Typically a flat period follows of about three years. Nothing the Republicans can do will alter that. So no matter if other prices drop a bit, that one economic negative will remain in the perception field of voters when Election Day rolls around. Unemployment reports will also matter. So it should be pretty apparent to most election analysts that credibility on jobs growth and energy alternatives promotion will be the leading issues of the campaign. Team Obama’s most aggressive mission will be to demonstrate that McCain has never walked his brand new talk on those two fronts. It should also be apparent that McCain’s been very aggressive trying to present himself as the ultimate energy guru and that’s the only place I’ve seen so far where Team Obama has yet to establish the upper hand. But there’s plenty of time left to achieve that, and the best campaigns don’t fire their best shots too early.

American voters want economic reassurance. They want an upgrade in their sense of the nation’s moral standing in the world. From what I see, Team Obama is walking the fine line of capitalizing on those current GOP-caused weaknesses while keeping in mind that too much emphasis on the negatives can promote a sense of helplessness and even despair. They’re aware that Reagan went through a deep recession and still won an impressive re-election without a significant overall economic advance above the January 1981 numbers he inherited. But the trend was uphill from the lows of 1982-83 and Reagan sold a positive meme of ‘Morning in America’ that gave people hope.

So far, in the convention, the emotional impact has provided a series of messages that are having a positive impact. Day One provided the calm reassurance that the Obamas were in tune with middle class familial values. Day Two and part of Day Three put to rest the fears of a party too divided to focus on the country’s needs. The Clintons and Kennedy proved adept at reminding voters of the positives the country experienced under Democratic leadership. And Beau Biden’s speech added a poignant, tear producing intro to a side of his Dad that most US voters had largely been unaware of, that clearly will boost his acceptance as another guy with strong familial values, instead of the former image as a slightly too smarmy Washington insider.

I may not agree with how many people think, but I don’t try to counter human nature. And after observing many elections, I know many Americans don’t cotton to too erudite (Adlai), too wonky (Dukakis and Gore), too smarmy and slick (Edwards, Sharpton, and to a lesser degree, some moments of Biden and Obama). Of course, Bush got away with incredible amounts of smarmy, but most of that came after his first election, which is a significant point. Slightly smarmy and slick can be balanced with the sense of shared familial values and enough of a gravitas to demonstrate there’s a serious foundation beneath that. And I think Obama and Biden have sold the message that their foundations are incredibly strong.

On a different note, I suspect many older Americans also are cognizant of and impressed by some historical differences that demonstrate real progress over the decades. Most everyone’s aware that Hillary and Barack represent a seismic shift in the gender and racial dynamics of what the American electorate wants, will accept and will advance in the future. But consider some other advances that have been standouts during this convention and the primaries preceding it. Anti-gay barriers are being torn down. So are notions that leading Democrats are hostile to religious beliefs. And here’s one I’ve heard no one else point out: McGovern’s first VP choice - Tom Eagleton - had the onus of being treated for depression which led to his being dumped from the ticket. But Joe Biden, having undergone surgical repair of potentially debilitating brain aneurysms, is understood to be perfectly fit to continue as a strong leader. We’ve evolved impressively as a nation in the past 36 years. It may seem slow, but it continues to advance in the right direction. Such acceptances may be taken for granted by younger voters attuned to a different normalcy than what reigned in 1968 and 1972 and for some years afterward. But for me, these changes fill me with an optimism going forward, above and beyond a single presidential campaign.

And I have to say that the only critiques I have of the DNC presentation so far are minor. Bill Clinton put forth the reminder of the importance of hope in a way that other speakers, for the most part, haven’t. It’s now up to Obama himself to drive that point home, which I fully expect he can do. And Clinton’s been the only one so far to tackle head-on the claim that Obama’s too young and inexperienced, reminding voters that the same claim was made against him. Don’t dismiss the major impact Bill’s speech has had. Even the overly gushy Republican pundit, Peggy Noonan, wrote in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal that ‘The Master’ had delivered. That’s a huge change for someone known for numerous past disparagements of the Big Dawg. As a former speechwriter, though, she let her professional judgment stray off the standard GOP modus operandi of attacking the Democrats no matter what. And even Karl Rove felt compelled to concur:

Even some conservative commentators were impressed. Karl Rove said on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, “He gave the best argument offered thus far on the third day of the convention for Barack Obama. He gave a comprehensive view domestically and internationally. It wasn’t his endorsement tonight that mattered…but what he did do is he set a theme: Restoring the American dream at home and America’s leadership abroad.” Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal that “halfway through” Clinton’s speech “I thought: The Master has arrived. Crazy Bill, the red-faced Rageaholic, was somewhere else. This was Deft Political Pro Bill doing what no one had been able to do up to this point at the convention, and that is make the case for Barack Obama.”

What could be stronger is the message of what younger presidents besides Bill Clinton have achieved. Teddy Roosevelt (42), such a great trustbuster and conservationist that he was driven from the GOP. JFK (43), the Cold Warrior who kicked off the space race, advanced the nation’s image with the Peace Corps and ultimately aided the advance of the Civil Rights movement and laid the foundation for LBJ’s greater War On Poverty. Clinton (46) and his era of prosperity. Obama’s age and national-level inexperience remain the principal reservations some voters have that Team McCain will do its best to exploit.

I also think the Bush-compounded tragedies during Hurricane Katrina has not been mentioned enough, either. And echoes of that may be coming from an uncontrollable source.

But the stage has been well set for Obama’s concluding performance. Two other highly popular Democrats - Howard Dean and Al Gore - will provide key supporting speeches, but most voters’ will be looking at Obama and thinking: can this good family man and surprisingly adept campaigner restore our economy and national reputation while keeping us protected from those who would harm us?

His speech alone can’t answer that question. But if it reassures and inspires and demonstrates an understanding of the challenges ahead and the necessary policies to meet them, it will be the firm first step that the fall campaign can successfully build on. The ebb and flow of polls and punditry common to post-primary, pre-Labor Day campaigns has produced nothing particularly surprising or unsettling to stand in his way.

In fact, most of McCain’s mythical appeal as a maverick is bolstered when he’s a clear underdog in the polls. Had Obama tried to run up his edge throughout the summer, that posed a danger of building more sympathy for the underdog, a distinctly American trait. Obama and his two leading campaign strategists have already demonstrated their capacity to understand the strengths of past solid campaigners like Rove, the Clintons and Reagan. Messaging, timing and a solid ground organization are their forte along with a fundraising operation that grants them leeway to purchase any general and spot advertising needed.

Tonight, Obama doesn’t need to close the sale. He only needs to reinforce the message that he’s in charge, serious, capable and offers an optimistic vision of what can be achieved. Between the anniversary of 9-11 and the six weeks that follow will be the time for pouring on to the solid foundation that will be in place after tonight.

And I report this from a fairly objective viewpoint as I’m not among the worshipful. I do consider Obama to have far superior tools and capacities to serve as president than McCain does. But having viewed Ted Kennedy’s 30 year effort to deliver an effective national healthcare program, the corrosive cumulative impact of the lobbies -especially the insurance and pharmaceutical ones - and the thin, plundered Bush Treasury that he’ll have to work with, I remain skeptical about his chances to deliver a comprehensive plan for that. I was equally skeptical that any Democrat could deliver that.

I’m not fully supportive of his energy plans. I do believe he’ll prove solid on human rights, job growth, national security and foreign policy. And as my readers know, I remain sharply critical of his FISA/telecom immunity vote. Yet other than the last, on every issue, he offers better policies than McCain does. And from my feedback loop of six or seven dozen Americans across the country, of many ages and incomes and other distinctions, I think it’s clear that they ‘get’ that: Obama’s a moderate Dem only minimally different than Clinton was.

And the DNC has bolstered that message, without any glaring weaknesses. Let the pundits try and dispute it with their anti-Democratic biases. But it’s unseemly to see a few prominent bloggers adding a handwringing chorus. I attribute that to tunnelvision. But whatever its source, please stop and listen to the roses.

Why is Obama accepting the nomination at a sold out 75,000 person stadium?

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