Taking bets on Palin-Biden
Anticipation for tonight’s VP debate has inevitably split itself into two scenarios. In the first, Sarah Palin performs miserably, filling the hall with excruciating silences, lopping off sentences before they have the chance to become sentences, opening for display a vast tundra of mortifying ignorance. Joe Biden doesn’t much figure in this first scenario. In the second scenario, she exceeds the low expectations to one degree or another while Joe Biden reminds us that he’s not exactly Bertrand Russell either. In this second scenario, Palin actually wins the debate. I would like to stake out my own position by saying I have no idea which way this will tilt – my general inclination is to expect the prevailing narrative to suffer a reversal, but Palin has been impressively bad so far, so who knows? – and also to ask for predictions from readers.
Update: I just realized it’s wimpy to solicit a prediction that I couldn’t bring myself to make. My prediction rests on the belief that that metaphysics of the prevailing narrative are, as a rule, simply too unstable. They almost require a correction. So, I predict that Palin will triumph by surviving, and that Biden will help her in this.
i predict Palin will be asked this question again
Couric: Do you think there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?
Palin: I do. Yeah, I do.
Couric: The cornerstone of Roe v. Wade.
Palin: I do. And I believe that individual states can best handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in an issue like that.
Pardon……but didnt Team McCain just throw the whole GOP position on judicial activism right under the straight talk express?
Gonna make one hell of a bump.
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 02:10 PM · #
I think the bar for Palin is now set so low that any performance above the level of “drooling and gibbering” will be scored as exceeding expectations. That will probably be enough to stop the negative impact she’s had on the ticket’s numbers the last week or two, but not reverse it. Still, stanching the bleeding will be something, after which Palin can be conveniently hustled off to controlled, friendly venues, never to take a question or interview from the media again.
I suspect Biden will be gracious toward Palin and spend his time hammering McCain. He knows the drill.
— DaveA · Oct 2, 02:39 PM · #
I’m inclined to agree with DaveA (though if Ifill gives Palin the Couric treatment, gentle but firm follow-up questions, he may be being too generous – under that scenario, Palin would IMO crumble badly). It’s possible, though, that another aspect of the “expectations” game may hurt Palin, even if she does manage to avoid huge gaffes. At this point, I think the narrative regarding her cluelessness has solidified to the point that mere coherence won’t be enough to change people’s opinions. To put it another way, I wonder if, even absent huge gaffes, she can “get away with” the kind of glib and cheerful know know-nothingness that she got away with when she was running for governor of Alaska. Given the doubts that she has sown regarding her knowledge of issues, the kind of remark she successfully made in those debates about the voters not really caring about facts & figures is NOT going to go over well with the voters that she needs to reach.
Under this scenario, the media narrative will be that she … not that she won, I can’t see that happening, but that she held her own. But the voters may not be convinced.
— LarryM · Oct 2, 02:55 PM · #
I predict disaster for Palin; this is higher pressure than the interviews, which obviously had her rattled. If she can’t handle those, how will she handle a debate? Biden has spent a few days just being told “DON’T SAY ANYTHING STUPID,” so I don’t expect him to share with us anymore of his visions from a Slider’s-type alternate universe in which President FDR delivered a televised address in 1929.
With Biden and the moderators playing it straight, Palin could end her national political career tonight. Best case, she survives…barely, and there will be disagreements post-debate (mirroring the post-interview disagreements) about whether she was historically bad or just bad. I hope I’m wrong, but the events of the last three weeks have been far better than anyone in the Obama campaign had a right to hope, and I don’t see Palin debating issues she was unfamiliar with a month ago as the event that will turn the tide.
— rab · Oct 2, 03:24 PM · #
Yeah. The bar is so incredibly low that unless she personally aborts a fetus onstage I can’t see the MSM calling it anything else than a win for McCain/Palin. I just don’t think a VP debate will do that much to swing it either way.
— Freddie · Oct 2, 03:26 PM · #
“if Ifill gives Palin the Couric treatment, gentle but firm follow-up questions”
Team McCain has already negotiated NO FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS.
kinda unprecedented.
I have a question for the rightside intelligentsia, as exemplified by the American Scene contribiters.
Will the Palin choice cleave the GOP along the IQ faultline?
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 03:31 PM · #
i mean….this is really pathetic, Ross.
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/the_struggles_of_sarah_palin.php
from what Palin SAID…..she believes right-to-privacy is in the Constitution.
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 04:41 PM · #
Excuse me, but how does that not frag every “judicial activism”, “legislating-from-the-bench” argument that I have ever heard from conservatives?
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 04:45 PM · #
Matoko – Justices Roberts and Alito also have said there is a right to privacy in the Constitution. They have declined to say whether or not it extends to abortion. If you are this ignorant about Con Law, you shouldn’t babble on and on about it. I am off to class…Con Law, that is…
— rab · Oct 2, 04:50 PM · #
Sorry, Rab….but i understand the Theory of Forms.
The conservative argument is that judicial activism and legislating from the bench are anti-constitutional.
As i understand it, Palin just fragged her party’s position on supreme court appointments.
Intentionalism FTW!
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 04:58 PM · #
She’ll probably do ok and look exhausted. McCain’s team is working overtime on this one. Biden is terrible on the campaign trail but very good in the debate format (remember back during the Democratic nomination debates…what a long, long time ago).
Since there’s nowhere else to put it, Palin was very vocal in her opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in “Exxon Shipping v. Baker”:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2008/08/veep-nominee-pa.html
I can’t tell why she didn’t mention it – if she forgot the name, didn’t want to rock McCain’s boat, simply was too uncomfortable to remember, etc.
— rortybomb · Oct 2, 05:03 PM · #
or too DUMB to remember.
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 05:09 PM · #
Matoko,
Conservative legal scholars believe that the Constitution contains a few provisions providing a limit right to privacy to individuals from government intrustion, including the First Amendment (protecting freedom of speech and religion), the Third Amendment (barring the quartering of troops), the Fourth Amendment (prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures), and the Fifth Amendment (protecting against self-incrimination). But conservatives don’t see the Constitution as protecting a more general right to privacy, or at least a right so broad as to protect abortion.
Palin’s an ignoramous, but there’s nothing contradictory in believing that the Constitution provides a (limited) right to privacy in certain circumstances but does not provide a right to abortion. Which isn’t to say the Palin even knew what she was talking about when she answered Couric’s question.
— Mike · Oct 2, 05:42 PM · #
What a puzzle and fascination.
Palin makes sense as a Wal-Mart assistant mmanager or owner of a second-hand clothing store; mayor would seem to challenge her native abilities.
To have such a person in the national spotlight is kind of a dystopian Cinderella story; Cinderella turns out to be as scheming and devious as her wicked step-sisters, and the dreams, pretenses, and self-deceptions of millions of grocery-store check-ou clerks are brought into high relief in all their crazy absurdity. Reality television indeed. A real life apotheosis of a bathos central to American domesticity.
Palin is indeed a powerful archetype of the little person, magnified and exposed in all her sleazy and corrupt small-mindedness who would, left to the quotidian devices of customary reality would remain respectable and unexceptional, a neighbor in the next pew filling her appointed place in a superficial world.
But the utter extraordinariness of her rise has thrust her into a place where her inadequacies stand out in stark relief.
It’s a crushing blow to the ‘you can be anything you want to be’ mindset. ‘You’ may in fact be wholly unequal to being what you want.
Once again life outstrips credible fiction by a vast margin.
How will she do? How will she be received? How will the nation see a quotidian archetype exposed in all its falsehood? Embarrassment and an extension of the McCain campaign’s need to sweep her under the rug, a fitting sacrifice to Hubris; in its own terms, a disaster.
In a word, embarrassment, with its suitable reaction of denial, dismissal, and a desire to forget as quickly as possible.
— felix culpa · Oct 2, 05:44 PM · #
Mike, I do understand the questions of constitutionality in all their nuance.
My point remains……that poor Palin has no capacity to see that her answers are at best unintelligible gibberish, and at worst, often antipathic to positions embraced by the party she claims to represent.
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 05:55 PM · #
heres a folk humor crystallization of poor Palin’s current position.
like we say Out Here in the West…..
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who’s hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.
The old rancher said, “Well, ya know, Palin is a Post Turtle’”.
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post turtle’ was.
The old rancher said, “When you’re driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘post turtle”.
The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor’s face so he continued to explain. “You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she doesn’t belong up there, and she doesn’t know what to do while she’s up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with”.
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 06:00 PM · #
….and actually…I have seen this.
snapping turtles are kindof a nusance in ditches and ponds out here in Colorado, like if you are trying to change an irrigation gate….but…the main reason someone would put a turtle on a fence post is cruelty.
:(
— matoko_chan · Oct 2, 06:10 PM · #
Well, Makato, we’re in total agreement on that score. I expect to spend most of the Palin-Biden debate curled up in fetal position, wincing in pain as I watch the hopes and prospects of an inexperienced politician implode before me.
— Mike · Oct 2, 06:17 PM · #
Given that we keep forgetting the bailout will dominate headlines on Friday and the Sunday morning shows will spend a large chunk of time talking about that no matter what happens at the debate, and that the next Obama-McCain debate is on Tuesday… maybe this’ll end up being boring, reinforce both sides, and we can move on.
But my prediction is that what comes out of this debate is that people who don’t know Joe Biden learn more about him and like what they see, irrespective of what his opponent throws out there. This parallels the first Obama-McCain debate – there’s a plausible scenario out there that no pundit predicts, and that’s that voters who aren’t pundits react unexpectedly, much like they didn’t see Obama as “too cool” because they weren’t familiar enough with the conventional wisdom to respond that way.
— Bahrad · Oct 2, 07:56 PM · #
Democrats need to seize on the opportunity provided by Palin to make a real dent in the anti-intellectualism of political discourse in this country. Getting a degree from a competitive college is not a bad thing; having a graduate degree is not a bad thing; knowing two dollar words and using them judiciously is not a bad thing. Etc.
To do this requires saying in a terse and persuasive way that someone like Governor Palin, who has declined to study or engage with much of the world beyond her immediate surroundings, is not qualified to hold the highest office in the country. I don’t know what the soundbite is— and I recognize the irony of making this argument with a soundbite. Baby steps…
— c · Oct 2, 08:09 PM · #
I predict that she’ll use her time to attack Biden and Obama as more of the same (according to the campaign’s convoluted logic whereby both are of Washington) and too liberal to be trusted on a whole range of issues. By doing this, she can safely ignore any questions she gets (remember, annoying the media is her schtick) and at least one of our digs will be memorable enough to stick.
Biden, on the other hand, will use his time to attack McCain, but he seems more likely to answer the debate questions, creating the effect of a debate happening on two planes, with one side engaged in the actual debate taking place, while the other is playing for a television audience.
The danger here is that Palin’s attacks backfire, but, then, vicious attacks are all the McCain campaign has left.
— Martin Johnson · Oct 2, 09:11 PM · #
My bet is this: Biden will come across as fairly in command of a wide array of topics; intelligently engaged, with a deep background and understanding of what has worked and what hasn’t. Palin will try to bait him with attacks, playing the role of angry Joe Six Pack, but Biden will keep his focus on McCain, not Palin. This is not a speech before a partisan crowd, nor is it an interview, but the format will still expose Palin for the vacuous little person that she is.
— John Stevens · Oct 2, 10:00 PM · #
Matt, too bad you spend so much time listening to and being persuaded by the media hype. It’s almost 10 p.m. EST, and guess what? She’s kicking a. She may not be pulling too many points with the beltway-brooklynway crowd, but she’s speaking the language the rest of America speaks. Tough and don’t push her.
— b · Oct 3, 01:57 AM · #
b – well, if you had written that at 9:30 it might have had some credibility. But then the wheels fell off.
I’m feeling pretty vindicated on my prediction from earlier today (10:55 a.m.). She beat the expectations game, but she is going to be perceived (by the public) to be the clear loser because she (badly) failed to demonstrate that she is prepared for the job on any level.
— LarryM · Oct 3, 02:42 AM · #
i thot she did better than expected…but obviously regurgitating canned talking points.
she did not answer 2 questions, and ifil was not allowed a redirect.
at one point it looked like she was reading off her hand.
of course she can give a populist speech, shes a demagogue.
the answers were a set of little canned speeches.
as far as i can tell Palin is still a post turtle.
she didnt really answer any of my questions.
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 06:41 AM · #
apparently palin was reading cue cards……there were answers on them, just not always to the questions that had been asked.
for example…..she muffed the achilles heel question, prolly because she didnt have an answer for that one written down.
i was hoping for the giant schism, where my beloved Dr. Krauthammer would denounce McCain as a scammer and repudiate poor Palin on national terebi….alas….looks like Ross and Dr. K can go on trying to believe.
i thought….maybe that the party might cleave at the intellectual faultline, and the theocons would go off to make their own party…..and give my grandfathers party back.
now the poor bedraggled excuse for conservative intelligentsia will have to try to groom Palin for 2012….sigh.
good luck with that.
;)
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 07:32 AM · #
“now the poor bedraggled excuse for conservative intelligentsia will have to try to groom Palin for 2012….sigh.”
Will they? Aside from the fact that VP candidates on losing tickets, under the best of circumstances, don’t tend to end up as successful presidential candidates, I’m inclined to think that most smart Republicans who are still defending Palin are doing so on a “look, this is what we have to work with, and winning is better than losing” basis in their heart of hearts.
The next few years are going to rocky for the U.S.; that will probably create opportunities for the GOP. But I have a hard time seeing the “conservative intelligentsia,” such as it is, getting behind Palin, unless they are forced to by primary voters.
The question then becomes … who? I’m placing an early bet on Huckabee, though the visceral negative reaction of the Republican establishment to him might end up being problematic.
— LarryM · Oct 3, 04:26 PM · #
For the record; c, your comment at 4:09 was as satisfying to read today as it was yesterday. Terse and clear and essential for honesty (which I’m hoping will rise in value as its evident need becomes more widely recognized in a troubled market).
— felix culpa · Oct 3, 08:33 PM · #
I agree with felix….the ugliest part of this campaign is the IQ-baiting practiced by that aging carny shill John McCain in a desperate attempt to exploit a demagogue to elect himself president.
Heres the signalling….you dont need that fancy education or experience or IQ…you are just as smart as those snooty overeducated elites that got all the advantages.
You are just smart in a different way, a better way.
Godsmart.
It isn’t classwarfare…..its bellcurvewarfare.
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 10:03 PM · #
wow..i replayed the part of the debate where Palin ignores Ifill’s question about her Achilles Heel.
I honest to gawd think Palin did not understand the question.
I think she didn’t know what “Achilles Heel” means.
Why dont you defend her Ross Douthat?
/spit
— matoko_chan · Oct 4, 12:20 AM · #