Dolphin’s Dock

Palin didn’t need to do better than Biden, she only needed to not be the same Sarah Palin she was with Katie Couric. All she really needed to do to look good in this debate was speak in coherent sentences, and for the most part, she did. That’s the tragedy of this debate. Palin rarely answered the question asked of her. She didn’t even stay on the topic of the question asked (for instance, I believe it was when she was asked about health-care reform the first time, her response was, “We’ll I’d like to talk about energy…”). She used colloquial grammar and slang regularly (which would be appropriate if she was running for VP of The Baby-sitters Club, but not for the second highest office in the country), and her voice was shaking throughout most of the debate. If any other candidate had performed in that manner they’d have been laughed off the stage, yet we expected so little of Palin that her lackluster performance is being touted as “beating expectations” and “holding her own.” It’s scary that we have a VP candidate that is so inept that our expectations could possibly be that low. It’s scary to me that alot of people tuned into the VP debate not to hear the candidates take on issues or even to see the candidates take pot shots at eachother. They tuned in because there’s a candidate so woefully in over her head that a simple debate was largely expected to be an utter train wreck for her. That’s right, I said it. People tuned into the debate largely for one reason; to watch Palin fail miserably.

I feel bad for her about that. She’s been thrust in way over her head and she’s just struggling, no different than most of us would were we suddenly put in her position. Obviously she didn’t have to accept the offer, but I don’t really think she knew exactly what she was getting herself into. Campaigning in Alaska is nothing like campaigning on the federal level. One wonders if she could do it all again, would she?

Meanwhile, Biden was great. He avoided the trap of attacking Palin (which, right or wrong, would have been seen as the mean old man picking on the cute little girl). Despite Palin’s “Can I call you Joe?” comment when they first walked on stage, Biden was smart enough to stick with the respectful “Governor” title when address Palin directly. He aimed his attacks squarely at McCain and was able to throw quite a few in because Palin didn’t dare go off script to defend McCain (probably a good move on her part as it’s better to have a few attacks on McCain to go unchallenged and ultimately forgotten than to have another “Couric moment” which would have been headline news for the next week). He was confident, relaxed, and had his facts in order. Choking up when speaking of his son may or may not have been planned, but it was politically perfect. It connected him with mainstream America (especially those with children in Iraq and Afghanistan), and sharply contrasted him with Palin who (unbelievably) defied basic humanity by immediately going back right back to the “maverick” script.

The low point of the night was clearly when the two decided to at least agree on their opposition to gay marriage. Not unexpected but still disappointing, particularly so after Biden had (accidentally?) referred to long-term committed gay couples as “gay marriages” in his answer to the previous question. Palin’s response about giving gay couples the same rights (short of marriage) will likely be trumpeted by the Log Cabin Republicans, despite the fact that her record (and previous statements) shows an opinion that is quite the opposite of that which she gave last night.

First of all, the debate seems to have sparked some tightening of the race in a few key battle ground states where McCain was previously edging out Obama. However steady national polls may stay, gains in swing states are hardly nothing. I’m sure either candidate would happily take a slight hit in the national polls if it meant a boost in the swing states.

Just as importantly, Obama got his supporters excited during the debate (well some of them anyways, as I said, I thought the whole thing was boring as Presidential debates go). According to the Diageo Hotline Poll, enthusiasm from Democrats has rocketed from 60%-69% while GOP enthusiasm is all but flat-lined around 50% (it has gone from 48%-50% since the debate). The increase in enthusiasm is even more pronounced when divided by candidate instead of party with an 11% change (57->68) among Obama/Biden supporters and only a 1% change (45->46) among McCain/Palin fans.

Enthusiasm is remarkably important, especially in swing states, because enthusiasm is what wins votes. After all, the most important poll of all, the one that takes place on Nov 4, takes more effort on the part of the voter than just picking up the phone. An enthusiastic voter is also harder to sway. Obama may not have increased his lead with his debate performance but he’s surely solidified it. Polls can’t tell the difference between a barely-decided Obama supporter and a full-fledged Obama supporter. That difference is enthusiasm.

I also wanted to use the theme as a means to further familiarize myself with the wonderful javascript library, jQuery. Now I know I’m really late to that particular party, but while I’ve obviously known about jQuery for a long time, I’m a designer not a developer so I assumed jQuery would be a little over my head. Turns out, I was very wrong; jQuery is easy. If I’ve overdone it a bit here, then let that be my excuse. The best was to learn is to do, so perhaps in the interest of learning I’ve done a bit more than I’d have done sheerly in the interest of design.

The theme has been tested in IE 6 & 7, Firefox, and Safari. There’s the little bonus of getting to see the number of comments in the headline bar for each post if you are using a non-IE browser, because doing so broke the layout in IE and I’m too lazy to go and try to figure out the problem for nothing more than a comment count (which is duplicated in the footer of the post when you expand it anyways). As always, feedback is appreciated.