Sarah Palin is just a smorgasbord of unqualified, hypocritical, scandal-plagued non-governance. And John McCain has recently gone out of his way to highlight his own hypocritical tendencies and willingness to sellout whatever shreds of credibility he still had. And the media seems to be, surprisingly, taking note. Even the crew at the The View got into the act. Watching McCain's head swivel from one side of the sofa to the other as attacks came in from all angles was beautiful. And the Palin interview with Charlie Gibson may be having a negative impact. The interview gave Gibson's World News a big boost in the ratings so it was watched and a Nightline that included another portion of the interview beat out both Letterman and Leno. What is the impact? Take a look at the internals from today's dKos tracking poll by Research 2000. Palin now has the lowest favorable rating of all 4 of the candidates. And unlike Joe Biden for whom 18 percent are undecided, only 11 percent are undecided about Palin. The gap between her favorable and unfavorable, which a candidate wants to be as large as possible is down to just +9, the smallest, again, of the four. With a few more days or a few more gaffes it might go down to zero or even move into negative territory. So maybe the Obama strategy is to let the press do the dirty work of tearing down the opponents. Maybe they are working the back channels to push these lines of attack. And certainly Obama has been pointing out the lies and distortions in his campaign appearances. But I've been surprised at the rather minor squawking they've done over the “sex education” attack ad but perhaps they think it will backfire on McCain-Palin on its own. Or maybe I'm giving the campaign too much credit and the press is starting to do it's job because they know they abdicated it for much of this decade and this is a “make good” moment. |
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