the citizen-viewer

I know, I know. I’ve read the comments. I gotta say, however, in the spirit of Alaska’s anointed one, let’s leave family out this. My famous half-brother Tim can take it, but there’s no reason to go picking on my other half-brother Stan. Although I must warn that while Timmy is slow to anger, he’ll serve it up with hot relish. Just keep it coming.

After last week, the million-plus readers out there have been wondering: Did Sausage shrivel up and hide in his kaiser roll rather than face the facts about McCain’s post-convention polling bounce? Did the enviro-geek decide to go to the woods, commune with the squirrels, and forget about politics? Because it wouldn’t be a bad idea after the weekend polls came through showing Old Man River and his mean-girl granddaughter (McCain-Palin) tying or leading Obama-Biden. In short, was I wrong when I said the GOP lost the election when they nominated Palin?

In a word, hell no! I’ve been watching right along with the rest of the world, and while I wish the Repubs had conceded the election at the convention, they are still deep in the swamp and slurping up more muck in their boots with every half-hearted trudge towards the light. Sure, yes, ok, they got a poll bounce. They also bullied the media into a good week of coverage and got the major papers and networks to lay off Palin with the smoke-and-mirrors claim that investigating her lousy record is tantamount to saying she had conjugals with a polar bear.

The Republicans spin well. They have world class spinners, deceivers, media maulers, mouthpieces, and megaphones to spew the lie that McCain-Palin is a hybrid of William Proxmire, the Good Lord, and Lo Bosworth, Lauren Conrad’s feisty wingwoman from The Hills. Readers are probably thinking, gale-force hyper-Orwellian spin worked for Bush. He was total BS but the media gave him a free pass and he won twice.

In answer to that, I note two problems for Gramps McCain and his gun moll:
1) On top of the existing 48% that voted for Kerry, at least another 20% of the country got sick of the Rove routine between ‘04 and ‘08.
2) Unless someone goes haywire in the next two months there is no plausible war and patriotism backdrop to give some reality-based oomph to the snake oil up for sale.

On that score we may forget that Kerry did OK (coulda done better, like this) against a sitting president with a war on. The GOP pretends they love Harry Truman. One reason they do is that Truman was also getting his ass kicked in the 1948 campaign but he showed leadership during an international crisis (Berlin et al in 1948) and got over the finish line. Adlai Stevenson, Truman’s unsuccessful successor, wasn’t so lucky, and neither is McCain.

Obama keeps getting misunderestimated when his polls sink, like when was losing primaries to Hillary. Savants such as myself want the Dems to hit back, hit hard, keep hitting. Obama never hits as hard as we would like, but he also stays on his message, something Kerry could not do. Today he got some airtime with the “more of the same” mantra on McCain-Palin. He and Hillary and Biden and the rest will keep it up, and they are folding Palin into this refrain by showing that her saying one thing “I’m a reformer” is actually more of the same GOP corruption.

Give it time, and there is time, I mean like the rest of the week, not until November.

The big problem for the Obama strategy is the McCain campaign’s skill at disrupting the news cycle as they did with the Palin announcement the Friday after the Dem convention. They won the week that came after it. But that’s also a big downside for the McCainiacs. All their flails and gambits come back to bite them in the ass a week later. Anyone out there still cheering for tire gauges and Georgian independence? Hey, Mr. I-hate-big-government, how do you like that $300 billion mortgage company bailout that Bush just OK’d? And with Palin they still have the conversation more about Palin than they really want. She is never going away, with flubs like this and as more reporting comes out on the leads that are already out there.

So I stick to my guns of a week ago and say that the GOP lost the election when they picked Palin. I may be crazy, but now that I’ve laid a claim to seeing the future I can’t quit on it, can I? Meanwhile I’ve been sending money to Obama and spreading the good word about him in my small corner of the universe, because prediction is no substitute for action.

BTW, wouldn’t it be nice if the major media took offense at getting told to sit down and shut up by the GOP? Also while Obama can’t turn into an attack machine, his seconds can. I’d like to see Hillary get out there and tell the voters no one steals her campaign themes in the name of anti-feminism. If both of those tumblers clicked it might get this wrapped quick.

Then Sausageman could go back to listening to what the squirrels were saying about storing their nuts.