The Press, SNL, and the Palin Factor
BU blogs the campaign
What will happen in the 30 seconds after voters close the curtain on their voting booth today? Will Barack Obama’s reported 11 percent lead be revealed as the politically correct response to a survey question? Will race matter in the wrong way? Will some small but significant number of voters decide, in the final seconds, that what America needs is not another Harvard-educated intellect but the world’s most energetic number two?
This Is My Party reminds us of a recent AP poll indicating that one in seven people may change their mind in the final days of the campaign. The Republican-minded blog also argues that in recent days Obama has been “treating freedom of the press as a privilege, not a right,” as evidenced by his kicking three reporters — all from newspapers that endorsed Republican John McCain — off his plane.
“The New York Post, Washington Times, and Dallas Morning News now join WFTV as casualties of Obama’s assault on the First Amendment,” the blog reports. This Is My Party criticizes the Democratic candidate for “telling voters who don’t want to pay higher taxes they are being selfish.”
“That’s funny,” the blog opines, “I was taught that making money was the reward for working hard. Asking for something you haven’t earned was being selfish. So was taking something from others that wasn’t yours to take. Maybe that’s why I’m not a politician … or at least why I’m not a Democrat.”
In other polling news, New York Times/CBS numbers suggest that the percentage of voters who think that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin can’t do the job is climbing fast — 59 percent, up from 50 percent four weeks ago.
Who then, if not Palin, should McCain have chosen for his running mate? Rachel Polan (CAS’09), a political science major studying in France, laments in PolanPosts that McCain couldn’t have gone with Jennifer Granholm, the Canadian-born Democratic governor of Michigan, whose Canadian birth precludes her from being president. “They love her over there,” says Polan, “and she’s a UC Berkeley graduate. She could have also run circles around Mrs. Palin.”
Ironically, McCain is now trying to escape the drag coefficient of his running mate by following in her tracks. Mindful of the bump Palin enjoyed after an appearance on Saturday Night Live, the Republican candidate gave that a go himself this past Saturday night.
But even in the final days, Ben Buckman (CAS’08) writes in The Buck Stop, nastiness remained a staple of the McCain campaign.
“Their latest attack,” writes Buckman, “is accusing Obama of ties to a Palestinian scholar — gasp! an A-Rab! — whose foundation McCain himself directed money to. They’re calling Obama a ‘socialist’ for having a more progressive tax plan, while McCain’s health-care and school voucher plans would use the same kind of mechanism, and Palin promoted ‘sharing the wealth’ from her state’s oil money.”
A Buck Stop piece posted Saturday returns the disfavor by directing our attention to a New Republic story that strongly suggests that during the Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the Charles Keating banking scandal in the 1980s, McCain was responsible for leaking information about the proceedings. The leaks, which were illegal as well as prohibited by Senate rules, would have cost the culpable party a Senate seat, but McCain, who had the most to gain from the leaks, was never definitively tied to them.
Today, in the final hours of the campaign, voters inevitably start to hear more numbers — projections on the final makeup of the Senate and on the electoral and popular votes. It’s helpful then, to follow a link from AlexWhalen.com, a blog created by a Ph.D. candidate in political science at BU, to FiveThirtyEight.com, an infographic-heavy site that makes excellent use of charts and graphs.
“We can probably assume,” writes FiveThirtyEight, where predictions have been sprouting like mushrooms after a rainstorm, “that IF the national polls tighten significantly, McCain will edge out a victory in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia, and Missouri; put those states in the McCain column for the time being. Likewise, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all appear safe for Obama, even in the case of significant tightening. Put those in the Obama column.”
Maybe. Or maybe not. What do you think? Tell us in the comment space below.
Art Jahnke can be reached at jahnke@bu.edu.
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