[I’m borrowing the pun from Michael Bérubé]
In the absence of any more “game changing” impulsive madness from Walnuts, all eyes will probably be on the Veeps debate on Friday - although our friends in the House Republicans or more spectacular crashes on Wall Street might diminish the focus a tad. Sarah Palin won’t be able to pull a McCain though, and “suspend” her campaign, after that trick spectacularly failed as Walnuts slunk out of Washington calling for bipartisanship on one hand while slagging off Obama on the other, after fairly poor reviews of whatever contribution he may have made to the crisis from his fellow Republicans. Nor will Palin be dropped from the ticket - I think (presuming there’s any rationality to the McCain strategy). As Nate Silver observes, there are at least three good reasons why it would be dumb (but again, I’m thinking dumb is the name of the McCain game). And the last time a Veep candidate was dumped - Thomas Eagleton in 72 - McGovern dropped 7 points in the polls.
Anyway, that’s that for the moment, but in this increasingly bizarre campaign which in true postmodern style seems to have as fictive a relationship to the real world as all that fictitious capital swirling around Wall Street waiting for the government to buy it, who knows what lies ahead, or even what lies lie ahead. My main purpose in posting was to draw attention to two excellent pieces from two of my favourite Stateside online writers on the bizarre phenomenon that is the Palin pick, something I continue to believe deserves more analysis than just political calculation or the desire to diss implies.
Newspaper understands poll shock! And Costello breaks silence!
Props to Peter Hartcher at the Sydney Morning Herald for actually including some vaguely sensible commentary in his column on the Nielsen preferred Liberal leader polling, and not beating it up as “Voters Want Costello!”. Perhaps the Fairfax crew are trying to establish a point of differentiation in the market:
More on the poll from The Poll Bludger and Possum Comitatus.
Meanwhile, the Great
ManPretender breaks his silence! … Continue reading ‘Newspaper understands poll shock! And Costello breaks silence!’