The Snarky Liberal

In my first attempt at liveblogging, I’ll be covering the vice presidential debate over the next couple of hours. Joe and Sarah just strolled onstage, so here we go!

8:10 p.m.

We’re off to a good start–Biden is gaffe-free in his first two statements on the bailout and the economy, reiterating McCain’s flub about the “strong” economy.

Palin seems robotic in her opening salvo discussing the barometer of economic downturn as a group of soccer moms, saying that the “barometer would be resounding” and “the fundamental of our economy being strong.” She starts to warm up talking about Wall Street corruption. Oh, and for those of you playing Sarah Palin bingo, there was your first “maverick” and first “hockey mom” of the evening!

8:15 p.m.

Woo hoo! Biden calls Palin out on her deliberately misleading statements attempting to paint Obama as a tax-raising elitist. Palin then promptly changes the subject.

8:20 p.m.

Gwen poses a question about class warfare. To Biden–why is it okay to disproportionately tax the rich? To Palin, why is it okay to enact policies that would create more uninsured poor?

I can’t stand it when Palin replaces every instance of the word “the” with the word “that.” Instead of saying “with the $5,000 tax credit being offered,” she says “with that $5,000 tax credit being offered.” It’s a cheap attempt to sound folksy and it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Biden gets the first laugh of the night with a “bridge to nowhere” joke. Atta boy.

8:30 p.m.

The conversation has become a flurry of numbers. How many times did which candidate vote for how much money in tax breaks?

Palin is beginning to drop her G’s–”bringin” and “relyin” have jumped out at me so far. She now wants to talk about her “record on energy versus your ticket’s energy ticket also.”

8:39 p.m.

Palin takes positions on global warming that are so vague, anyone could agree with her. So far, however, she’s given us a disappointingly small number of overt gaffes to mock mercilessly.

Apparently Americans are “hungry” for oil, since Palin used the word twice in the same breath when referring to energy. Coached, anyone?

I am so happy to hear Biden take a firm stance in support of providing gay couples the exact same constitutional rights as straight couples. Palin, true to form, continues to refer to being gay as a choice. Lord give me patience.

8:45 p.m.

Palin just loooves to change the subject. We were talking about the war in Iraq, and Palin starts quoting things Biden said about Obama during the primaries that have nothing to do with the war.

“John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again.” *cheer*

Apparently Palin didn’t watch the presidential debate last week, because if she had she would know that the difference between McCain and Obama wasn’t on funding the troops–it was on the timeline for withdrawal.

8:49 p.m.

It’s NUCLEAR. For the last time. NEWK-LEE-ERR.

8:56 p.m.

That’s right, Sarah. They hate us for our freedom. Not for our persistent globalization or our support of Israel. It’s because of our freedom.

Biden’s “I haven’t heard how his policy is going to be different than George Bush’s” tic makes me want to hit the mute button.

9:20 p.m.

Is it just me or is Palin using the same buzzwords over and over? As with “hungry,” “main street” and “straight talk,” she keeps repeating herself, often within the same sentence. She also has an infuriating habit of replacing the word “you” with the word “ya.” Yet another grab at the “regular folks” vote.

It seems like, on both sides, the answers given by the candidates have little to do with the question asked.

Now the topic has shifted to the constitutional role of the VP. Biden says that the primary role of the veep is to act as adviser to the president on important decisions. Does anyone really see John McCain turning to Sarah Palin for her sage advice on foreign policy, national defense or the economy?

9:26 p.m.

Final question: Can you think of an issue in which you were forced to change your view to accommodate certain circumstances?

Biden: I switched positions on judicial partisanship with the nomination of Robert Bork.

Palin: We passed budgets that I did not veto (”quasai-caved”), but in general, no, nothing.

9:50 p.m.

Final thoughts. First of all, liveblogging sucks. I think I was only able to skim off the surface scum from what was undoubtedly a deep, stagnant pool of soundbite sludge.

Secondly, Biden did everything right. He smiled charmingly without coming off as sleazy or patronizing. He spoke eloquently and specifically about every subject. He showed passion without losing control of his words and making outrageous gaffes.

However.

The mere fact that Palin managed to get through the night without forgetting her lines or veering away from the talking points may mean that this debate is cast as a victory for her. She changed the subject masterfully when the moderator’s questions made her uncomfortable, and she threw non sequitur accusations at the other side at every opportunity. And just as so many pundits predicted, she was able to exceed expectations simply because expectations for her performance were so effing low.

Let’s hope tomorrow’s poll numbers don’t fall victim to the same low expectations.

Now, maybe that’s not entirely fair. She was, after all, the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska from 1996 to 2002. But let this serve as an illustration of how idiotic it is to compare Palin’s level of experience with Obama’s. Palin served as “executive” for a population of less than 6,000 people, little even by small-town standards. Obama’s state senate constituency, by contrast, was made up of at least 45,000 people–and those are just the ones who voted for him.

Let’s look at where they each were in January 2007. Palin was the newly elected governer of a state inhabited by 683,000 souls. Obama had already logged two years in the U.S. senate representing a state of about 12.8 million. Okay, since each state has two senators, let’s call that a constituency of 6.4 million. It’s still nearly ten times larger than the entire state of Alaska. Ten times larger!

The internet didn’t know who Sarah Palin was in 2001. And except for those 5,469 parka-clad Wasilla residents, neither did the nation. Thankfully, the country is finally starting to see through the McCain campaign’s attempts to turn Palin’s molehill of a resume into a mountain of experience.

Be sure to tune in to the VP debate Thursday night. Watching Palin squirm while trying to defend her inch-deep experience will be uncomfortable but definitely worth it.

No wire hangers!

Obama had it right when he told the press to back off Sarah Palin’s soap opera of a family–but for all the wrong reasons. When you parade your children around as campaign props, not to mention issue press releases about them, you can hardly take offense when the media start discussing them. It’s not because of some misguided sense of chivalry that the mainstream media and the liberal blogosphere should cut it out.

Her personal life should be “out of bounds,” as Obama urged, because every time we take aim at Bristol or analyze Palin’s skills as a mother, the monster that is the Palin Phenomenon grows a little bit stronger. With each jab at her all-too-public home life, Palin gets to cry sexism–sometimes even legitimately, like when we speculate whether she can handle raising five kids and being the VP. Would we ask the same question of a male candidate?

An official notice to those who are freaked out by the thought of a Palin America: stop playing along! When she trots out her youngsters or cites her mom credentials as candidate credentials, don’t take the bait. She has Joe and Jane American on her side when it comes to folksy family anecdotes. Don’t fight her on the issues she’s sure to win–they’re the issues that didn’t matter in the first place.

The ONLY way to beat Palin is to quit letting her (and, by extension, the Republican party) define the debate. Forget the identity politics. Let’s deal with the issue politics, because that’s where she’s far out of the mainstream. The majority of Americans disagree with Palin on a whole slew of subjects, but how will they ever know when all we talk about is her uterus?

When she’s not deliberately misspeaking (also known as “lying”), Sarah Palin is accidentally misspeaking (also known as “not knowing what the heck you’re talking about”).

While trying to sound as though she has even a modicum of national experience, Palin complained in a recent speech that mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become “too expensive to the taxpayers.” In fact, the two government-sponsored enterprises do not use taxpayer money–at least they didn’t until this weekend’s bailout, which Palin was advocating at the time of her misstatement, and which could end up costing taxpayers a bundle.

The housing market crisis has been THE economic issue for what, like two years now? And Palin doesn’t know the most basic facts about how Fannie and Freddie work? What was it Giuliani once said about the White House not being the place for on-the-job training? 

The McCain campaign is desperate to paint Sarah Palin as a lifelong political reformer. As it turns out, Palin was indeed a proponent of change as the newly elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and first-time political office holder. According to Time, Palin inquired into the process for banning books in the public library, shocking the town librarian. Then she threatened to fire the librarian for failing to give the mayor her “full support.”

Apparently Palin really does have a record of reform. When it comes to evangelical Christian issues, she’s an enthusiastic proponent of sweeping change. Like a true reformer, she encourages schools not to be “afraid of information” with respect to teaching creationism (but conveniently changes her tune when it comes to sex ed and books containing “offensive” material). 

For the last time, people: religion and public services, especially education, do not mix. Nothing inspires more anger in my rabidly liberal heart than a refusal to keep the two separate, a refusal that ends up manifesting itself in so many insidious ways.

Then again, maybe I have no reason to be worried about Palin’s religious extremism, since the McCain campaign is pulling her strings. They won’t even let her write her own acceptance speech, so maybe her polarizing views won’t make it past the Republican censorial squad. One can only hope.

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The Alaskan Independence Party: Polar Bears First

Sarah Palin may or may not have been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, the state’s third largest political party, in the 1990s. At the very least she attended the party’s convention in 2000, around the time her husband was registered as a member. The AIP’s main objective is to allow Alaska the opportunity to secede from the nation and become an independent country.

I guess when McCain specified he wanted a VP who would put “country first,” he should have been more specific about which.

Sarah Palin, Noted Fauxminist

There’s a whole lot of whatnot and hullabaloo flying around about Sarah Palin. She’s a supermom. She managed a meteoric rise to power while raising five kids, snowmobiling the tundra and terrorizing the local moose population. She went back to work three days after giving birth. She’s got awesome optical accessories.

In the rush to enumerate her accomplishments, women are losing sight of the fact that Sarah Palin is not a feminist. She is a token woman, a ploy to simultaneously appease disgruntled Hillary supporters and the reluctant religious right. John McCain needed some feminist street cred; Sarah Palin was the solution.

Women, especially liberal women, who support Palin solely on the basis of shared genitalia are undermining feminist causes and playing right into McCain’s hands. I’m talking to you, PUMAs.

Feminists believe in equal pay for equal work. Feminists believe in a woman’s right to control her own body and make her own reproductive choices (Feminists for Life is a contradiction in terms). In a Palin America, a woman who is raped and impregnated would be forced to carry that rapist’s fetus to term. In a Palin America, teenage girls (and boys) remain blissfully ignorant when it comes to contraception.

Not to mention, liberal ladies, that Palin’s platform of issues is textbook scary conservative. Pro gun. Pro death penalty. Pro creationism in schools. Anti gay marriage. Anti environment. (Seriously, who still believes global warming isn’t our species’ fault?) Pro oil drilling. Pro gunning down wolves with helicopters. She attends a pentecostal church (although she now conveniently labels herself as “non-denominational”). She supported the bridge to nowhere back when it was politically convenient. Oh, and she doesn’t concern herself with things like the war in Iraq–not with so many square miles of tundra to govern.

Sarah Palin’s candidacy is a false milestone. It undermines the feminist movement to support a candidate who touts feminism while advocating the rollback of much of what the movement has achieved in the last 50 years. It’s a shame that her personal life is making news, because it distracts from what we should be talking about: Palin’s faux feminist beliefs and sheer inadequacy for the job.

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