Friday, September 12, 2008

Re: Never Been So Proud

Q: How did the coventions play in the heartland?

A: My prediction for Denver was to “beware the puma” and we certainly got a wildcat in Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin has really changed the story in the heartland. I didn’t see that coming, but some in Iowa did. The Iowa Political Alert blog had the Palin story in June. Republican Steve King, who represents Western Iowa in Congress and made some controversial anti-Obama remarks back in March, was apparently up in Alaska over the summer talking to Eskimos and scoping out ANWR. I suspect the McCain campaign shopped the Palin choice around other swing states too over the summer.

Barack Obama needs to get out of the Palin trap he has fallen into and get back on message. He’s getting a lot of bad advice and a lot of help from pundits in the media that isn’t really helping. From my vantage, it looks like he is running against Sarah Palin, Joe Biden is running against Bristol Palin and Trig Palin, and no one is running against John McCain. Every time I hear someone on CNN talk about Sarah’s small town mayor experience being insufficient, I cringe for how that will go down in small town Iowa and other rural states. Another thing that made me cringe was the Bill Buckner moment Obama had in the George Stephanopoulos interview on ABC.

Barack Obama should be running for what he will do as President. Joe Biden should be running against John McCain. Sarah Palin should be left to Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferrarro, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, or just be left alone.

I thought Barack did very well in the Bill O’Reilly interviews on Fox. And he did very well on the Service Nation forum last night.

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